HISTORY OF Har Sinai Congregation OF THE CITY OF BALTIMORE By REV. C. A. RUBENSTEIN, M. A. "Remember the days of old, consider the years Published in Commemoration of the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Incorporation of Har Sinai Congregation HISTORY OF HAR SINAI CONGREGATION HIS brief history of Har Sinai Congregation pretends to be nothing more than a mere sketch, since it has been impossible to secure all the data relating to the Congregation, many of the congregational records being lost. It would have been a source of great satisfaction to the present membership of the Congregation, as well as a matter of interest to those concerned with American Jewish history in general, if a complete and comprehensive account could have been presented, and with it a portrayal of the life of the Jewish community of Baltimore and of American Jewish conditions generally, especially during the first quarter century of Har Sinai's existence. We must bear in mind that the life story of Har Sinai Congregation is not only closely bound up with the development of the Baltimore Jewish community but also with the evolution of the Jewish Reform movement in America. This Congregation has the distinction of being the only congregation in the country that was founded upon the principles of Jewish Reform, remaining consistently Reform for threequarters of a century. At the time when David Einhorn served as Rabbi no congregation in the United States played a more conspicuous part in the shaping of the Jewish Reform movement. Unfortunately the earlier records of the Congregation have been lost. Har Sinai was compelled to weather many a storm both before and after Einhorn's time, and it is hardly to be expected that through all these vicissitudes the congregational records would come down to us to this day continuous and complete. In fact, we have no official documents from 1842 to the beginning of 1873. From 1873 to date the records of the Congregation leave little to be desired, the successive secretaries faithfully recording everything of importance in connection with the Congregation. But it is precisely this period, from 1842 to 1873, that is of real historical importance—the period when the Baltimore Jewish community was relatively young, and the battles between Reform and Orthodoxy in America were being fought. However, we are not without authentic sources of information. We may learn of the Jewish communal life in Baltimore in the Sinai, the monthly journal founded by Dr. David Einhorn in 1856 and continued to 1862, and from the history of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation written by the late Rev. Dr. Adolf Guttmacher in commemoration of the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of that congregation in January, 1905. For the larger aspect presented by the Reform movement, "The Reform Movement in Judaism," by Rev. Dr. David Philipson, that appeared in 1907, is indispensable as well as Einhorn's Sinai. For the present purpose only the main facts in connection with Har Sinai Congregation can be taken into account. The information furnished by the late William S. Rayner in his address in 1892, on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Congregation, is especially important, as it throws much light on the history of the Congregation for the period between 1842 and 1873. The facts given in this address are supplemented, especially with reference to Einhorn, by the personal recollections of Mr. Abram G. Hutzler, who was present at the first regular service conducted by the Congregation at the home of his parents, the late Moses and Caroline Hutzler. Mr. Hutzler is in his eighty-third year, but his memory is unusually accurate, his recollection of Einhorn's departure from Baltimore in 1861 being particularly vivid. Furthermore, Mrs. Aaron Maass, who, since her girlhood, has been greatly interested in the Congregation, has been kind enough to put in writing many of the events in Har Sinai from 1866 to the present day. In addition, Mr. David Kemper, president of the Congregation, has taken the trouble to go carefully over the records from 1873 to 1886. |
