Working together separately

Say you visited Pittsburgh for the High Holidays in 1851. You’d find about two dozen Jewish families. They might seem similar to you: all young, European and Orthodox.

Stay long enough, though, and the differences would become clear.

Some of these families came from southern Germany, while others came from the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They spoke different languages. They used different prayer books. The Polanders were traditional. The Germans were eyeing liberalism.

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And that’s before you get to the personalities.

Internal divisions between these groups guided communal decisions for the first 20 years of Jewish life here. By 1848, we had a synagogue called Shaare Shamayim. The Polanders left it in 1852 to form their own congregation, Beth Israel. Pittsburgh couldn’t support two shuls, so the factions reunited in 1853. As consolation, the Polanders kept their president, Leopold Jaroslawsky, and spiritual leader, Rev. Emanuel Marcusson.

In a report for the American Israelite in August 1854, Jaroslawsky noted that the merger had allowed the community to start a school “for instruction in the Hebrew, and English languages, translating the Pentateuch, etc., and for teaching Jewish religion in general.”

This school was short-lived. The Germans left Shaare Shamayim in 1855 to form Rodef Shalom. “Rodef Shalom” means “pursuing peace.” Rabbi Walter Jacob always believed that the name was subversive. They were “pursuing peace” by keeping their distance.

By 1856, Shaare Shamayim and Rodef Shalom were both operating small religious schools, each with about 20 students. But both schools appeared to have closed by the summer of 1857, when the Occident newspaper sent a correspondent to Pittsburgh.

The newspaper reported: “We hope … that the good sense of the Israelites of Pittsburgh will convince them that they are too few in number to afford paying rent for two meeting houses, and to pay the salary of two ministers; but that should they unite with a sincere desire to elevate their religious character, much good could be effected, and proper steps be taken to advance the careful training of the rising generation in Hebrew and religion.”

Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati visited Pittsburgh in October 1857. In a report in the American Israelite, he described our growing Jewish population as “sober, industrious, and intelligent” and “fairly reckoned among the best class of society.”

Thus ended the compliments.

“As much praise as can be spoken of the social position of our brethren in Pittsburgh, as little can be said of their congregational affairs,” Wise continued. “Of the fifty resident families, thirty odd belong to two congregations. The Germans and the Poles can not agree, and, therefore, they must have two congregations, none of which can do anything. No school for religious instruction, not a word of instruction in the Synagogue, not an idea of Judaism is promulgated to either the young or the old. They meet every Sabbath to read a set of prayers, eat kosher meat, and quarrel. That’s all.”

In an anonymous response in January 1858, a local leader — likely Jaroslawsky — revealed that a few people had tried to start a school but had failed. There weren’t enough children to make it work. If the two congregations could just merge, he lamented, the combined revenues would certainly be enough to hire a good teacher. “We have but few contentious persons among us, and even they could be gained over if they see that the disorder they produce by their onesided views, has become subject to notice by our press,” he added.

A few weeks later, a second anonymous letter out of Pittsburgh claimed that the author of the first anonymous letter had stymied efforts to start a Jewish school because he hadn’t been asked to lead it. The proposed merger was just a new means toward the same end.

Wise swung through town in August 1858, surveyed this scene, and concluded dismissively, “Everything else is in the old track. The school is not established yet.”

A subtle theme runs through these accounts, an acknowledgement that every community wrestles with disputes, but smaller communities bear the weight more heavily than larger communities. Subdivision becomes more sustainable with a critical mass of people. And in fact, our early communal disputes were resolved by immigration, not reconciliation.

As more Germans came to Pittsburgh, Rodef Shalom grew. Soon, its Rev. Armhold was operating daily religious schools in Allegheny and Pittsburgh, likely boating between them. Jaroslawsky left town. Without its strongest voice, Shaare Shamayim stalled. The congregations merged in 1860 as Rodef Shalom because Rodef Shalom had a charter.

This merger was well timed. Changes were underway in public education. The School Code of 1854 had empowered local school boards to set educational priorities. The Pittsburgh Board of Education assumed control of local schools in 1855 and soon created Central High School. The Pennsylvania Department of Education began in 1857.

According to community historian Jacob Feldman, a wave of Protestant evangelism infiltrated public education in the late 1850s. Christian prayers and sermons were added to the end of the formal school day. The Jewish community was justifiably concerned.

A similar problem in other major American cities prompted the creation of new Jewish day schools in Philadelphia (1851), Chicago (1853), Boston, Albany, and Cincinnati (1854). A survey in 1854 found 857 students in seven Jewish day schools in New York.

With its merger, the expanded Rodef Shalom could also support a Jewish school. It opened a day school in April 1860 with 32 students. Rev. Armhold provided instruction in German and Hebrew, and Josiah Cohen was hired to provide English instruction.

The Rodef Shalom Day School got a boost in 1862 when the congregation dedicated a beautiful new synagogue on Hancock Street in downtown Pittsburgh, now Eighth Avenue. By 1863, school enrollment had nearly tripled to 90 students with two teachers.

Samuel P. Bates of the Pennsylvania Department of Education visited the Rodef Shalom Day School the following year and published a report in January 1865. He described a co-educational school with 75 students ages 5 to 15, arranged into two classes. The basic curriculum was similar to public school, but Bates was stunned to find classroom instruction gliding naturally between three languages — English, Hebrew, and German.

And yet, problems lurked.

You may have noticed a 16% drop-off in student enrollment over one school year — from 90 students in 1863 down to 75 in early 1865. What happened?

Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise visited Pittsburgh during Chanukah in December 1863 with the goal of persuading Rodef Shalom to join the Reform movement. The following spring, Rodef Shalom voted to replace its traditional Minhag Ashkenaz prayer book with Wise’s English language Minhag America prayer book. It was an early step toward reformation.

Shortly after the vote, a coalition of Poseners, Lithuanians, Dutch, and traditional Germans left Rodef Shalom. They formed a new congregation called Tree of Life.

The Pittsburgh Board of Education began addressing its sectarian problem, and Jewish families returned to public school. Tree of Life started an afterschool religious school, and its families mostly pulled their children out of Rodef Shalom’s educational program.

Facing declining enrollment, Rodef Shalom closed its day school in 1868, keeping only an afterschool program. This established the educational culture of our community. Until the creation of the Hebrew Institute in 1916 and the day schools of the 1940s, youth education here largely occurred in the synagogue for just a few hours each Sunday morning. PJC

Eric Lidji is the director of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. He can be reached at rjarchives@heinzhistorycenter.org or 412-454-6406.