A Century of Jewish Life In Dixie: The Birmingham Experience

By Mark H. Elovitz

The first substantial history of the Jews in the industrial south

This is the first substantial history of the Jews in any inland town or city of the industrial South. The author starts with the Reconstruction Period when the community was established and he carries the story down into the 1970’s. First there were the “Germans,”' the pioneers who built the community; then came the East Euopean emigres who had to cope not only with the problem of survival but the disdain if not the hostility of the already acculturated Central European settlers who had forgotten their own humble beginnings. After World War I came the fusion of the two groups and the need to cooperate religiously and to integrate their cultural, social, and philanthropic institutions. Binding them together and speeding the rise of a total Jewish community was the ever present fear of anti-Jewish prejudice and the “peculiar” problem, a real one, of steering a course between the Christian Whites and the Christian Blacks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Aug 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9780817391270

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A Century of Jewish Life in Dixie:

The Birmingham Experience

The author and the publisher acknowledge with especial gratitude the liberal grant in aid of publication made available by the Birmingham Jewish Federation.

A Century of Jewish Life in Dixie:

The Birmingham Experience

Mark H. Elovitz

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Copyright © 1974 by

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

ISBN 0-8173-5021-7 (alk. paper)

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 73-22716

All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN-13 978-0-8173-9127-0 (electronic)

To the memory of my father

MEYER DAVID ELOVITZ

He who has a son devoted to Torah

is as though he had not died.

GENESIS RABBAH 49:4

FOREWORD

Writing a good history of the Jews in the United States is a problem. No one has as yet chronicled the authentic story of the Jews on this continent starting with the day that Luis de Torres, Christopher Columbus’ interpreter, first set foot on American soil in 1492. Although there are two very useful multi-volume works and at least a half a dozen single-volume histories on American Jewry, not one of them is of magisterial quality. We are of course happy to have them; indeed they are all useful; but no American writer has yet produced a work comparable to that of a Beard or a Morison.

One may also argue that the synthesis, the skeletal structure, hitherto employed, is unacceptable. Admittedly, a synthesis, the choice of the theme that ties events together, is a relative matter. In Jewish historiography, up to now, the law and the word of God have gone forth from New York City. There, in the most important, most powerful city of the world, one will find about two and a half million Jews; it is there that the great national Jewish agencies that dominate Jewry in this land are located. The religious unions, the overall defense, relief, and philanthropic associations, the Zionist organization, all these have planted themselves in that megalopolis. They make the important decisions for all Jews in this land; they make the headlines and they determine the content of practically all histories of American Jewry. To a certain extent the story of the American Jew as now written has been the history of these national societies. But is this truly American Jewish history?

The societies and associations ensconced in New York City may indeed represent American Jewry; it is a question whether they reflect the history of the American Jew. Does this Jewish congeries of offices, executives, and bureaucrats even represent New York Jewry which has no overall structured local Jewish community to tie together its more than two million Jews? What of the three million Jews who live south and west of the Hudson?

If a history of the American Jew is to be written it will have to be about the myriads of men, women, and children in Manhattan and its dozens of bedroom and satellite communities. We shall have to know more about the hopes, the ambitions, and the accomplishments of the three million who stretch from the Appalachians to the Pacific. To be sure a start has been made, though not with New York City; there is not even one work that records the history of that great city from the 1650’s to the present day. There are, however, a number of good books that tell us about Jewry in the distant reaches of the land. We now have another one, a good one, Dr. Mark H. Elovitz’s A Century of Jewish Life in Dixie: The Birmingham Experience.

This is the first substantial history of the Jews in any inland town or city of the industrial South. The author starts with the Reconstruction Period when the community was established and he carries the story down into the 1970’s. First there were the Germans, the pioneers who built the community; then came the East Euopean émigrés who had to cope not only with the problem of survival but the disdain if not the hostility of the already acculturated Central European settlers who had forgotten their own humble beginnings. After World War I came the fusion of the two groups and the need to cooperate religiously and to integrate their cultural, social, and philanthropic institutions. Binding them together and speeding the rise of a total Jewish community was the everpresent fear of anti-Jewish prejudice and the peculiar problem, a real one, of steering a course between the Christian Whites and the Christian Blacks.

Is it too much to hope that Dr. Elovitz’s useful, thoughtful, and well-documented history of Birmingham Jewry will help us to understand the history of Birmingham itself and thus be a contribution to Southern and general American history? Is not the American Jew the barometer of the American ethos?

American Jewish Archives

August 1973

DR. JACOB R. MARCUS   

Director

PREFACE

In a moving farewell to his people at the very onset of their march through the centuries, Moses pleaded with the Israelites to study their history. He begged, Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations. Ask your father and he will inform you, your grandfather and he will declare unto you. . . . Nowhere has the dependence of the Jews upon their past been more eloquently urged. Yet, as Dr. Solomon Grayzel observed in his A History of the Contemporary Jews, rarely has there been an age like the present in greater need of the self-knowledge and strength that can be derived from studying its past.

The foregoing quest by Jews for identity via an examination of their history has elicited during the past decade alone an ever growing number of histories of local American Jewish communities. Included among these are histories of the Jewish Communities of New York, Syracuse, Sioux City, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and others. As such, a history of the Jews of Birmingham from 1871, the year Birmingham was born, to 1971, the city’s centennial year, should not only be relevant to the cause of Jewish identity and self-knowledge by the Jews of that specific community (whose Jewish Community Council requested the author to write this history), but also—and perhaps more importantly—would contribute to the overall historical picture of Jewish settlement of and life in America during the cited period.

In a 1971 critique of 5 Views of the American Jewish Experience one historian wrote: Localized history is somewhat akin to inductive reasoning. It ought to provide the specifics from which we can generalize national tendencies. Just as importantly, these new generalizations allow us a benchmark against which to check earlier national observations made without benefit of localized studies. Since Birmingham is a Southern community whose birth was as recent as 1871, this study will hopefully provide an interestingly valuable and informative inquiry into the nature and development of its Jewish citizens and the specific ethnic community they have developed.

Therefore, it is hoped that the ensuing study will be of significance to the Jewish community of Birmingham, the City of Birmingham and its centennial records, as well as to historians and academicians in general on the state and national levels. In sum, a history of the Jews in Birmingham should further assist in the evolution of a more fully developed picture of the Jewish experience in America.

It is the author’s desire to utilize this opportunity to extend his appreciation to Professor F. E. Peters, Head, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, New York University, who assisted the writer with numerous matters. The writer also extends particular thanks and grateful appreciation to the following professors who carefully read the original manuscript and tendered numerous suggestions to the author: Professor Baruch A. Levine, Director, N. Y. U. Institute of Hebrew Studies; Dr. Bayrd Still, Professor of Urban Affairs, N. Y. U., Department of History; and Professor Jacob Rader Marcus, Director, American Jewish Archives. The latter gave unstintingly of his time and unsparingly of his vast knowledge of American Jewish history. His warm guidance, punctilious attention to detail and critical comments were invaluable. The writer also desires to extend warm thanks to his devoted secretary, Mrs. Aaron Rosenfeld, whose desire to see the successful completion of this work was as strong as the author’s. In addition, the writer expresses loving appreciation to his wife, who originally suggested that this book be written and who spurred the writer continually forward. While the writer is grateful to all the foregoing, the errors and shortcomings of this work are the sole responsibility of the author.

MHE

CONTENTS

PART I. THE BIRTH OF A JEWISH COMMUNITY: 1871–1900

1. Birmingham Beginnings and Founding Fathers

2. A Temple is Formed

3. Economic Affairs in the Eighties and Nineties

4. Early Social, Civic and Fraternal Life

5. Jewish Welfare and Fraternal Organizations

PART II. ACCOMMODATION, ADJUSTMENT, AND AMERICANIZATION

6. A Radically Different Image and Life-style: The East European Immigrants

7. Worlds Apart: The Emanu-El Community Prospers

8. The K. K. K. and a New Temple in a House Divided

9. Drawing Together

10. Three who made History

PART III. APPROACHING MATURITY

11. Zionism in Birmingham

12. The Grafman Years: Interfaith and Community Relations

13. Temple Beth El: Growth Amidst a Cemetery Dispute, an attempted Bombing, and a Civil Rights Confrontation

14. Toward Unity

Appendixes

Glossary

Notes

Sources Consulted

Index

I

THE BIRTH OF A JEWISH COMMUNITY: 1871-1900

1

BIRMINGHAM BEGINNINGS AND FOUNDING FATHERS

In the years prior to the onset of the Civil War, regular stage coaches began stopping at the little town of Elyton, the county seat of Jefferson County, Alabama, which lay enroute from Tuscaloosa to Huntsville. Many travelers passing through often commented on the huge outcroppings of the strange red rock so distinctive to the nearby wooded mountains and fertile valleys that were destined to become Birmingham. In due course, one traveler, Frank Gilmer, had the red rock tested; it proved to be high grade iron ore. Learning this, Gilmer and John T. Milner of the South and North Railroad enthusiastically persuaded the Alabama Legislature to adopt a plan to tap the possibilities of the region by building a railroad to encourage development of the area.¹

The Civil War slowed the plans, but by 1870 the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad was open as far as Tuscaloosa. Obviously, the railroad builders realized the vast industrial potential of the valley and the potential crossing of two major railroads in the vicinity set the stage for the development of an important new city. Initially, there was an agreement between the two railroad companies—the North and South Railroad and the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad—that each would share half the site of the new city, which would be at the point where the railroads intersected. The original location chosen was seven miles northwest of the present site of Birmingham and had excellent access to water. However, there was a change of plans and after some attempted land speculation the Alabama and Chattanooga was left outwitted and empty-handed, while the South and North, in the name of Josiah Morris, a Montgomery banker, had options on 4,150 acres of land two miles east of Elyton where the access to water was much less favorable, but was where the railroads did in fact eventually cross. The land was purchased for $25.00 an acre, three-quarters cash and a quarter stock, and the Elyton Land Company was formed on December 20, 1870.² It was then that some observant traveler, jotting down notes while on tour of the South, called this area a vast field. He wrote:

it may not be surprising if—somewhere midway betwixt the Tennessee River and the prairie lands of Alabama, in the mineral region now for the first time being pierced by lines of railway—a populous place should raise to throw all the interior towns of Alabama in the shade.³

At that time, according to the Jewish Ledger, there existed but one solitary farmhouse on what was to be the future site of Birmingham. Yet by 1900 the vast field had been transformed into a city with a population of 20,000 souls.

On January 27, 1871 the incorporators of the company met and adopted the following by-law: The city to be built by the Elyton Land Company near Elyton in the county of Jefferson, State of Alabama, shall be called Birmingham. Speedily thereafter, land company surveyors began laying out broad streets, avenues, and parks where there had previously been only tangled woodlands, creeks and cornfields. Colonel James R. Powell, the legendary Duke of Birmingham, was President of the Elyton Land Company and he personally acted as auctioneer for the first sale of land. The initial lot, a section 50 x 100 feet, was purchased on June 1, 1871 by Major A. Marre for the price of one hundred dollars. By 1892 the same lot was worth not less than $50,000. The lot was located at the corner of First Avenue North and Nineteenth Street.⁴ In order to stimulate industrial development, the company donated land for that purpose. Almost immediately, hundreds of people began pouring into the nonexistent city whose population mushroomed to 1200 souls by December 19, 1871, when the city was officially incorporated. Birmingham was already being described as a staring, bold, mean little town’ of twelve hundred speculative residents living in hastily-constructed houses along mud streets.⁵

Pointedly, when Birmingham was a mere village, only here and there a few pretentious buildings being in a semi-chaotic condition of construction, Israelites, attracted by its promising advantages, located there. These few pioneers were as enthusiastic and as painstaking as their other fellow citizens and their zeal and belief in the future of Birmingham has met with the reward of duty well done.⁶ Indeed, in a 1911 edition of the Reform Advocate its editor, Emil G. Hirsch was moved to editorially assert that:

In spite of the groundless assertions of ignorant persons, the Jew always has been and always will be found among the pioneers of a community. Whether it be in the work of cutting away the barriers of the mighty forests, whether it be in the work of blazing a new trail, in fact wherever the forces of civilization endeavor to grasp power out of the hands of the wilderness, the Jew can be found exercising his boundless energy and dynamic intellect.

The history of Birmingham has proven no exception to the rule, for during the first struggling years of the new mineral center’s existence, no citizens proved themselves more faithful and loyal than the Jews.⁷

All the above was unquestionably true of the first three pioneer Jewish families who settled in Birmingham. The very first of these pioneer Jewish settlers was Mr. Henry Simon who arrived with his family early in 1871.⁸ Prior to coming to the then unincorporated village of Birmingham, Mr. Simon had been engaged in a general merchandizing business in Selma, Alabama. He had also dabbled in the coal and iron business. Once in Birmingham, Simon again opened a general merchandizing establishment and achieved a splendid business.⁹

The second Jewish man to locate in Birmingham was Samuel Marx. He was born in Bavaria, Germany, in 1822 and, as a youth, had emigrated to Montgomery, Alabama, where he lived until 1872. In that year, hearing distant but yet audible rumors of a great metropolis to be, Mr. Marx left Montgomery, and reestablished himself in Elyton, the parent of Birmingham. The rapid growth of the offspring became so wonderful that in 1873 Marx relocated himself in the city proper where he too established a very successful mercantile business.¹⁰

The Isaac R. Hochstadters became the third Jewish family to settle in Birmingham. As it happens, I. R. Hochstadter’s parents, Charles and Rosa (Rubel) Hochstadter, became residents of Birmingham in 1873. Their twenty-two-year-old son followed them here from the previous family residence in Philadelphia. Interestingly enough, Isaac Hochstadter also engaged in the mercantile dry goods trade when he came to Birmingham and he too became an active business factor in the city.¹¹ Notably, from the date of his arrival . . . Mr. Hochstadter has been one of its [Birmingham’s] most energetic and respected citizens and has participated in the days when the prospects of Birmingham were brilliant as well as when its best interests seemed doomed to failure.¹²

Certainly the initial several years of Birmingham’s life were marked by brilliant prospects for the future. In 1872 the city was booming, so much so that the first amusement house of the city opened amidst much attention in April of that year.¹³ In reacting to the amusement house, Frank O’Brien, a leading showman of that era, wrote:

. . . the manager was one Harry Jacobs from Atlanta, Georgia. His company would be termed a vaudeville attraction in this day and time. Jacobs conceived the idea that the citizenship of the little city was of such a cosmopolitan makeup that in order to popularize his place of amusement it would be a masterstroke to put on shows known to be tough. About the third performance of this character, the change of theatrical tactics caused such opposition that on the complaint of the writer and several citizens the house was closed and Jacobs’ license revoked about the middle of June the year of its opening.¹⁴

That was an inauspicious begininng for the theatre in Birmingham, but it was strong testimony to the lure and bustling attractions provided by Birmingham in 1872.

But if 1871 and 1872 were years of brilliant prospects, so 1873 was the beginning of a period when the best interests of the Hochstadters, the Simons and the Marxes, indeed all of Birmingham’s citizens, seemed doomed to failure. By that year the population had virtually quadrupled from twelve hundred people in December, 1871 to four thousand persons in 1873. But that summer a cholera epidemic broke out which left one hundred twenty-eight people dead in its wake. Many settlers rapidly left town and the city was almost wiped out in its infancy. The basis of the epidemic is probably traceable to the situation in which the only sanitation was the privy. Some water was available from local wells, but in view of the drainage problem, was dangerously unhealthy. Other drinking water was brought in by mule from Avondale Spring, and was sold by the barrel, lukewarm, and frequently stagnant and full of insects.¹⁵ The aforementioned poor access to water in the area was compounded by the fact that rain often turned the unpaved, undrained dust streets into seas of mud which collected in pools on the low ground in the center of town. Yet in spite of the mass exodus from town, Birmingham’s Jewish families of Simon, Marx and Hochstadter all remained dedicated to their new city and stayed.

By dint of circumstance or fate, the city somehow survived the disastrous epidemic of 1873 only to face further severe complications when the Elyton Land Company went deeply into debt in an effort to supply the city with a safer water supply. The company was pushed to the verge of bankruptcy when the epidemic itself was followed by a national economic panic. Thus, by 1875 the infant city had been severely crippled. Its population had dropped back to twelve hundred people from its pre-epidemic high of four thousand. By 1879 an epidemic of scarlet fever accompanied by an almost annual reappearance of typhoid forced the city’s money and morale to a new low. Indeed, gloom had settled like a dark pall over the young city, while despair had seized upon its people who were formerly buoyant with hope. . . . Croakers were not wanting who expressed no hope for the future of the city.¹⁶ In any event, the Jewish citizens of Birmingham not only retained their residences and businesses in the city, but they began to add to their ranks in spite of the adversity afflicting and driving other citizens out of Birmingham. In these years, the first Jewish children born in Birmingham, Miss Bertha Marx (later Mrs. Samuel Adler) and Hugo Marx, added joy to the Samuel Marx family; but there were no other additions to the fledgling Jewish community until the years of 1878–1880 when the Magic City received a new influx of Jewish settlers who braved the economic and health problems afflicting Birmingham. These new families included:¹⁷ the A. Schuesters and M. Foxes in 1878, the Abe Wises in 1879, Henry Lazarus, Ben Jacobs, Ike Adler, and B. Wellman in 1880 and Emanuel Rubel in 1881.

It is pertinent to indicate at this juncture that little is known about Messrs. Schuester, Fox, Wise and Adler, except that they were undoubtedly of German-Jewish descent as will be indicated later. Mr. Wellman was born in the Kingdom of Prussia, Germany, in 1839. After a sojourn in Memphis, Tennessee, he came to Birmingham where he immediately established the first exclusive clothing store in the city.¹⁸ Emanuel Rubel, the father-in-law of pioneer Jewish settler I. R. Hochstadter, was born in 1835 in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and came as a youth to the United States. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was living in Mississippi where he enlisted in the Nineteenth Regiment of that state. He fought valiantly for three years and, after being wounded in the battle of Sharpsburg, Maryland, was honorably discharged.¹⁹ It seems likely that once in Birmingham he entered the mercantile business of his son-in-law with whom he had previously been similarly associated in Okolona, Mississippi from 1869 to 1874.²⁰

1881 marked the end of the first decade of life in Birmingham. The city had grown to a population of 3,086 citizens. It counted the presence of nine churches and twenty-five saloons and was a robust pioneer town with two daily and eight weekly papers. The city also boasted about its electric fire alarm systems and its gas and electric lights. There were thirty Jews living in Birmingham and they constituted one percent of the city’s population.²¹

The first decade had been difficult and it was perhaps providential for the city that experiments which had been carried out locally to make coke from area coal proved successful; production started immediately. This notable breakthrough meant that pig iron could also be made locally from the abundant supply of iron ore deposits long evident in the often massive outcroppings of the area’s distinctive red rock. Thus the early years of Birmingham’s second decade witnessed an iron boom which was signaled when two coke furnaces went into blast. The iron boom spread prosperity to the Elyton Land Company and the city’s rejuvenation was marked by renewed manpower, resurrected morale and the financial potential to continually stimulate the former. This in turn stimulated a multi-faceted boom which turned the small town of Birmingham into a bustling city.²²

But the city’s bustling not only meant the rapid development of coal and ore mining and the industrial diversification provided by a new cotton mill; it also signaled the influx of new money, new conveniences, new people, and a recognizable amount of air pollution.²³ Interestingly enough, Birmingham’s first city directory claimed that the air pollution caused by the increase of the manufacture of iron has a tendency to purify the atmosphere and destroy germs of the various diseases common to any country.²⁴

A land boom in 1883 yielded the first shift in residential areas. The Elyton Land Company began developing residential areas south of the railroads and in some parts of the Northside farther away from the business district. At the extreme Southside, on rolling terrain along the foot of Red Mountain, the company developed the South Highlands, which replaced Fifth Avenue, North, as the most fashionable and socially prestigious residential area in the city. On Highland Avenue, which curved gracefully along the foot of Red Mountain, the managers of coal and iron development built fashionable homes and were soon calling the avenue the most beautiful residential street in the South.²⁵ Here we must specifically note that, after the turn of the century, this street became the residence of many affluent Jews. Indeed, the vacated Fifth Avenue North area became the very center of Jewish residence during the era from 1882–1930. Perhaps, predictably, the entire fashionable South Highlands area became the dominant locale of Jewish life and residence during the years from 1935–1950.

But in those early years all was not merely frills and fashions for Birmingham was still dusty in summer and muddy in winter. In addition, 1883 witnessed the city’s first lynching when a Negro, being detained on a rape charge, was pulled out of jail and lynched by a mob. In short, all must remember that Birmingham was a frontier town—tough, calloused, hell-bent—even in adolescence.²⁶ Amidst all this fashion and fury, the first public Jewish services were held and a synagogue, the prime physical manifestation of the Jewish presence in the community, was established.

2

A TEMPLE IS FORMED

Upon the occasion of Birmingham’s Centennial Year one astute newspaperwoman properly observed:

It’s fundamental. It’s advanced. It’s strict. It’s loose and interpretive. But it’s religion and Birmingham has it. And has had it all along, ever since the days when the God fearing met in O’Brien’s Opera House or Gafford’s Livery Stable to worship, before the tithing got good enough to go out and erect their own temples on land whose developers were religious enough to set aside plots for churches on virtually every other block.¹

It was not long into the history of Birmingham before its pioneer Jewish families gathered themselves together, held services and then founded Birmingham’s first synagogue. It all began during the summer and fall of 1881 which saw Jewish newcomers arriving quite frequently as Birmingham was booming. Indeed, with the advent of new settlers was aroused the desire to cultivate the feeling of religious fellowship which had thus far been allowed to remain dormant.² Accordingly, as the summer of 1881 came to its zenith, a group of young Jews began preparations to hold services in observance of the forthcoming High Holy Days. They decided to meet in the spacious parlors of the H. Simon residence located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventeenth Street. It was there, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, that some twenty-five to thirty worshippers—not more than a dozen families—gathered together to hold the first Jewish services ever held in Birmingham.³ The services were observed without benefit of clergy and were ably conducted by several laymen.

Readers from among the people read the beautifully solemn words. Jew worshipped with Jew reading the prayers of Israel and intoning the responses. In thankfulness and with humble hearts these pioneer families ushered in the year which was to see them bound more closely together through the ritual of their faith.⁴

It was with the enthusiasm kindled by this modest beginning that these pioneer Jews determined to hold services regularly and to take the appropriate steps to follow the invariable custom of Israel and organize for charity’s sake and to rear a Temple to the Most High.⁵

Ike Hochstadter, a twenty-nine-year-old bachelor, provided the leadership of this drive to establish a permanent religious organization. His efforts bore fruit on June 28, 1882 when Temple Emanu-El was formally incorporated.⁶ The charter was presented at a meeting held later that evening in the Masonic Hall of the then nearly completed First National Bank Building on the corner of First Avenue and Twentieth Street, later to become the site of the Brown-Marx Building. But in 1881 the edifice in which Temple Emanu-El came into being was considered a fine, tall building. . . . It was three stories high.⁷ The incorporation records of the Probate Court list Abe Wise, B. Wellman, I. R. Hochstadter, Ben M. Jacobs, Samuel Marx, H. Simon, H. Lazarus and M. Fox as trustees of the new congregation whose avowed purpose was to advance the cause of Religion and the Cause of Benevolence in its full sense.⁸ Regrettably, there are absolutely no surviving official records concerning the initial four years of the synagogue’s existence. This fact is not altogether surprising since according to Uriah P. Engelman: There is very little information on Jews in the primary source material, and even in the secondary materials dealing with the origin and development of cities and regions. To this might be added the fact that very few articles and no books are published which bear upon Jews or the Jewish congregations and institutions of Alabama; and the early congregational records have, in the majority of instances, been lost. In cases where the latter have been preserved they have been so imperfectly kept that few correct or important dates can be gathered from them.⁹

Be that as it may, Congregation Emanu-El began its life with no resident rabbi; its thirty-two members held meetings irregularly in various churches of the city loaned for the purpose.¹⁰ One also gathers from the memoranda of Captain Frank P. O’Brien—a fairly accurate chronicler of early Birmingham—that the following sixteen men were enrolled as charter members: Samuel Marx, Ike R. Hochstadter, Ben M. Jacobs, Abe Wise, Bernard Wellman, Al Hochstadter, Henry Lazarus, Henry Simon, Morris Fox, Ike Forst, Ike Adler, Sam Rich, Joe Beiderman, H. Schuester, Monroe Hochstadter and Robert Jacobs.¹¹ In addition, the congregation elected the following officers: Abe Wise, President; Ben M. Jacobs, Secretary; Ike Hochstadter, Treasurer and E. Rubel, Collector. There is an undocumentable suggestion based on the indefinite recollection of surviving charter members in 1911 that the list of officers included Henry Lazarus as Vice President, but this is not verified by Captain O’Brien’s memoranda.¹² It is perhaps significantly noteworthy to point out that exactly half of the original sixteen charter members of Congregation Emanu-El were young unmarried men; the identical proportion also prevailed in the ranks of Emanu-El’s first executive officers. Furthermore, in 1911 Rabbi Morris Newfield remarked: It may not be amiss to state that this remarkable interest and activity of young men in the communal life of Birmingham has been maintained up to this day.¹³

Once they had formally organized themselves, and the congregation, the officers set about making preparations for the proper and solemn observance of the High Holy Days of 1882. The officers rented a church building and obtained the services of a young student of Cincinnati’s Reform Hebrew Union College to officiate during the High Holy Days.

Thus, the first public Jewish service ever held in Birmingham was conducted on the Friday evening preceding Rosh Hashanah, September, 1882 in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church located on Fifth Avenue.¹⁴ The services were impressively conducted throughout the holiday period by student Rabbi Joseph Stolz, then a junior at Hebrew Union College’s Rabbinical School. Indeed, young Stolz’s ministrations so pleased the members of the small congregation that he was re-engaged to officiate at the High Holy Services in 1883. Again, regrettably, there are no complete records of these first public Jewish services in Birmingham, but here too some first-hand impressions are detailed in the memoirs of Captain O’Brien, the robust Irishman who built the Birmingham Opera House. According to the memoirs, it was Captain O’Brien himself who

. . . arranged and attended to setting up the music for the occasion and the choir consisted of Mrs. George R. Ward, Mrs. Robert H. Pearson, Miss Nellie Cobbs, Mr. Elias Gusfield and the writer (Captain O’Brien), with Professor Fred Grambs at the organ. It was a singular fact that the choir was composed of one Methodist, one Roman Catholic, one Baptist, two Episcopalians and one Hebrew; quite a conglomeration.¹⁵

Yet these choir members of disparate religious persuasions all joined in praising God under the Eternal Light of Israel, in a Presbyterian Church, in reverence, in piety, in understanding. ¹⁶ It was thus that in 1882 Birmingham’s newest house of worship began its religious services in an atmosphere of neighborliness and tolerance. Indeed, this interfaith cooperation was to become a hallmark of Congregation Emanu-El in its associations and interactions in the life of Birmingham down through the years.

The success of the initial High Holy Services and the enthusiasm engendered by the student rabbi¹⁷ quickly led to the formation of a small Sunday School group under the leadership of Ike Hochstadter. During the course of the year he guided and prepared a small class of girls and boys for confirmation which was scheduled to be held upon the return of student rabbi Stolz in the autumn of 1883. In point of fact, this congregation, which had been organized for the holidays only, was made permanent at the instance of Mr. Stolz. Mr. B. Jacobs and Miss Nettie Newman also taught in the Sabbath School. It was thus that at that time the first confirmation services in Birmingham’s history were then indeed conducted in impressive services held on Yom Kippur 1883. The confirmation class of five students included: Miss Hannah Wellman (Mrs. I. Lebolt), Miss Hattie Lazarus (Mrs. Mose Sabel), Mose Lazarus, Eugene Fies and Julia Silverman (Mrs. M. Lowenstein).¹⁸

All these events—two impressively successful High Holy Day seasons, the experience of the congregation’s initial confirmation exercises, the influence of an enthusiastic student rabbi, and a continued small but steady growth of the local Jewish population—led the congregation to a realization of the growing need to acquire a place of worship of its own. In the meantime and impelled by necessity, in 1883 Congregation Emanu-El had purchased a large plot of land located on beautiful Enon Ridge in what was then the northwestern outskirts of the city for use as a cemetery. It is noteworthy that Congregation Emanu-El was not in any respect the outgrowth or by-product of a cemetery organization or any other charitable organization, as was so often true of many other synagogues throughout the United States. Rather, and most poignantly, the