The Jewish Community of New Haven, CT
New Haven
The principal municipality of Greater New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
New Haven was settled in 1638 by Puritans, who saw their new home as a wilderness Zion based on Biblical law. The first Jews, brothers Jacob and Solomon Pinto, arrived 120 years later, in 1758. They soon became heavily involved in the life of the town. With the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Jacob Pinto's three sons, Solomon, Abraham, and William, joined the Continental Army. In 1783, Jacob Pinto signed the petition to Connecticut's General Assembly which led to the incorporation of New Haven as a town.
President Ezra Stiles (who was not Jewish) of Yale College recorded in his diary the arrival of an unnamed Venetian Jewish family in the summer of 1772 who observed the Sabbath in a traditional manner, "worshipping by themselves in a room in which were lights and a suspended lamp." He noted that this was purely private Jewish worship, since the Venetians were too few to constitute a minyan (prayer quorum), "so that if thereafter there should be a synagogue in New Haven, it must not be dated from this."
A slow influx of Jews began arriving around 1840. Enough families arrived from Bavaria that eventually there was, indeed, a need for a synagogue in New Haven, which they named Congregation Mishkan Israel. The community acquired a cemetery in 1843. Mishkan Israel was New England's second congregation, and the 14th in the United States. Shortly after its founding, however, conflicts stemming from religious differences began to emerge. It became clear that while some members of the community were drawn towards more modern approaches to Jewish practice, others were more traditional. In 1846, a Reform group broke away and created its own congregation.
Until 1854, the New Haven congregation met for services in a variety of local halls. In 1854, Mishkan Israel and other US congregations received a bequest from the estate of philanthropist Judah Touro. With this money, Mishkan Israel purchased and renovated a church to serve as its first synagogue building. By then, the Reform segment of the congregation had become the majority and in 1855 the Orthodox members seceded and established B'nai Sholom Congregation, which functioned as a small congregation until it closed in the 1930s (though the congregation's cemetery remained).
Mishkan Israel prospered over the decades, led by German-Jewish rabbis who maintained close ties with Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise and the growing Reform movement in the United States. The congregation underwent significant changes at the end of the 19th century; in 1897 it built a large Byzantine-style synagogue building that reflected the community's growing affluence. Additionally, services and sermons, which were previously in German, began to be conducted in English.
The first Jewish refugees from Russia arrived in February 1882 and were followed by a steady influx of Russian-Jewish families. By 1887, the Jewish population had grown to about 3,200; during the next decade it grew to about 8,000, spurred by the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 that brought many Jews from the area to the US. By the start of World War I, there were about 20,000 Jews living in New Haven.
B'nai Jacob Congregation was established in 1882, and was the first congregation established by Eastern European immigrants to New Haven. It eventually grew to become New Haven's largest Conservative Congregation.
The first organized charitable organization established by the Jews of New Haven was the Hebrew Benevolent Society, founded in 1881 by the established German Jews in order to help the Russian-Jewish immigrants who were newly arriving. These Russian-Jewish immigrants, in turn, established the Hebrew Charity Society in 1885. In 1910, the Sisterhood of Mishkan Israel began to devote itself to charitable works, even opening a separate office for this purpose. These three charitable organizations were eventually incorporated under the United Jewish Charities.
By the mid-1920s, New Haven had over 60 religious, charitable, fraternal, and Zionist organizations serving the Jewish community. These included the Jewish Home for Children, the Jewish Home for the Aged, and the Yong Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association. Community leaders, recognizing that these organizations needed some degree of organization and coordination, created the New Haven Jewish Community Council in 1929, to which member organizations elected delegates. The council's efforts resulted in the creation of the Jewish Welfare Fund and the Bureau of Jewish Education. The Jewish Family Service was created in 1939.
Since the 1950s, Jewish education has grown in New Haven, with the emergence of synagogue schools, a Chabad-sponsored Hebrew Day School, and the Conservative Ezra Academy, all of which are coordinated by the Bureau of Jewish Education. Yale University has also had an impact on the community; many of the community's lawyers and physicians have studied there. Jewish student needs are served at Yale through the Hillel.
Of the 11 Orthodox congregations that sprang up in New Haven during the height of Eastern European immigration to the US, 4 remained by 1968. Around 1970, the population of New Haven was 135,468, 22,000 of which were Jews.
By the end of the year 2000, approximately 25,000 Jews lived in the Greater New Haven area. Within this area, Westville had the largest concentration of Jewish inhabitants. One member of the New Haven Jewish community of particular note is Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Democratic candidate for vice president during the 2000 presidential race, attended the Westville Synagogue.
Gerald Bock
(Personality)Gerald Bock (b. 1928) Composer. Born in New Haven, Connecticut (USA), he began his career in the early 1950s writing for television. He then moved to Broadway where he composed numerous successful musicals, including: Mr. Wonderful (1956); Fiorello! (1959); She Loves Me (1963); Fiddler on The Roof (1964); The Apple Tree (1966); and The Rothschilds (1970).
Newman, Alfred
(Personality)Hans Tischler
(Personality)Hans Tischler (1915-2010), musicologist, born in Vienna, Austria. He settled in the USA in 1938 and studied musicology at Yale University. From 1945-1947 he taught at Weselyan College, West Virginia, from 1947-1965 at Roosevelt University, Chicago and at Indiana University (1965). He retired in 1985. Tischler is an expert on 13th century music. He is author of Harmony in the Works of Gustav Mahler (1937), The Motet in 13th-century France (1942), The Perceptive Musical Listener (1955), A Humanistic Approach to Music (1957), Practical Harmony (1964) and A Structural Analysis of Mozart’s Piano Concertos (1966). He died in Bloomington, IN, United States.
Serge Moscovici
(Personality)Serge Moscovici (born Srul Herș Moscovici) (1925-2014), psychologist, historian of science and one of the main theorists of political ecology and social psychology, born in Braila, Romania. The implementation of the anti-Semitic policy by the Romanian government led to his expulsion from the high school in 1938. During the Holocaust he was sent to forced labor until August 1944, when Romania left the alliance with Nazi Germany and sided with the Allies. He joined Romanian Communist Party in 1939 at a time when the Communist movement was illegal in Romania, but he was increasingly disappointed by its policies after 1944, particularly by the censorship of the literary and artistic magazine Da (“Yes”) he founded in Bucharest with Isidor Goldstein, later known as Isidore Isou, the founder of the current called lettrisme, and his implication in a trial for helping Zionist dissidents cross the border illegally. Moscovici left Romania illegally in 1947 and after passing through Hungary, Austria, and Italy he arrived in France. With the assistance of a refugee fund, he studied psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris earning a PhD in 1961.
He was a researcher at Standford University in California and at Yale University in New Haven, CT, before returning to Paris where he became a lecturer at École pratique des hautes études. Moscovici was a visiting professor at the New School in New York, at the Rousseau Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium and at the University of Cambridge in England. Moscovici was director of the Laboratory of Social Psychology at École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), founder of the European Laboratory of Social Psychology at the Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris (1976-2006), first President of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology and, from 1974 to 1980, of the Committee on Transnational Social Psychology of the Social Research Council. He was also a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Until his death, he was honorary president of the Serge Moscovici Global Network, founded in 2014 at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme foundation in Paris. He was named Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur and Doctor Honoris Causa of over fifteen universities in Europe and the Americas.
Moscovici is best known for his research on the influence of minorities on majorities. He published over twenty books, including Essai sur l’histoire humaine de la nature (1968/1977), Hommes domestiques et hommes sauvages (1974), Psychologie des minorités actives (1979), L'Âge des foules: un traité historique de psychologie des masses (1981), Psychologie sociale (1984), De la nature : pour penser l’écologie (2002), Le scandale de la pensée sociale (2013). Chronique des années égarées: récit autobiographique (1997) and Mon après-guerre à Paris: chronique des années retrouvées (published posthomously in 2019) describe his experiences during the Holocaust in Romania and his life in Paris as a refugee during the late 1940s.
Serge Moscovici is the father of the French politician Pierre Moscovici.
Hermann Broch
(Personality)Hermann Broch (1886-1951), novelist, born in Teesdorf, Austria (then part of Austria-Hungary), the son of a Jewish industrialist. He studied natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. Later he became director of a Viennese textile firm. Only in his forties did he abandon trade and devote himself wholly to writing. He gained fame with his first literary work, a trilogy titled Die Schlafwandler (“The Sleepwalkers”) published in 1932. In this work, through the three main characters he describes the decay of values during three decades (1888-1918).
On March, 13 1938, a day after the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany), Broch was arrested on suspicion of being a communist. He was released after three weeks in prison in Bad Aussee. Upon returning to Vienna he was under constant fear of being arrested again. Through the intervention of the Irish writer, James Joyce, he received an entry visa to Britain. Later, Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein, who already lived in the USA, signed affidavits for Broch. In 1939 he immigrated to the United States and settled in Princeton, N.J., and there he completed his masterpiece Der Tod des Vergil (“The Death of Virgil”). Hernann Broch died in New Haven, CT., USA, in 1951.
Seyla Benhabib
(Personality)Seyla Benhabib (b.1950), professor of political science and philosophy, born in Istanbul, Turkey. She obtained her BA in Humanities from the American Girls' College in Istanbul, Turkey in 1970, followed by a BA in Philosophy from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, in 1972, and a Doctor of Philosophy from Yale University in New Haven, CT, in 1977. She has held teaching positions in philosophy departments at Boston University, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the New School for Social Research, and the Department of Government at Harvard University. In 2001, she was appointed Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University.
Since May 2011, Benhabib has served as a co-editor of the political-scientific monthly journal Blätter für deutsche und Internationale Politik. A liberal democratic theorist who does not believe in the purity of cultures, she has collaborated with notable philosophers and scholars such as Herbert Marcuse, and her work combines critical theory and feminist theory. Benhabib is the author of several books, including The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (2003), Exile, Statelessness, and Migration: Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin (2018), and other studies on feminism and democracy in contemporary history.
Gregory Breit
(Personality)Gregory Breit (born Breit Schneider) (1899-1981), physicist who supervised the early design of the first atomic bomb in what would later become the Manhattan Project, born in Mykolaiv (Nikolayev), Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire). He immigrated to the United States in 1915, following his father who had arrived there four years prior. Breit studied Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he earned a Ph.D. in physics in 1921.
In the 1920s, he played a crucial role in the creation of the first cyclotron, and during the 1930s, he contributed significantly to the development of the resonance theory of nuclear reactions. Renowned for his prowess as a theoretical physicist, Breit contributed significantly to the Manhattan Project in 1942 in Chicago, where he initially worked on atomic bomb designs. After a few months, he left the project to focus on ballistics research at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
In 1950, due to his expertise, Breit was called upon again to investigate the possibility of a worldwide chain reaction caused by the detonation of a hydrogen bomb. Through meticulous calculations and tests using a new cyclotron at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, he dispelled the theory, demonstrating that such an event was not plausible.
Breit held academic positions at various institutions, including the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis (1923–1924), the Carnegie Institution for Science's department of terrestrial magnetism in Washington, DC, (1924–1929), New York University (1929–1934), the University of Wisconsin in Madison (1934–1947), Yale University in New Haven, CT, (1947–1968), and the State University of New York at Buffalo, NY, (1968–1973). He also was associate editor of Physical Review during 1927–1929, 1939–1941, 1954–1956, and 1961–1963. A number of physics discoveries, among them including the Breit system, have been named after him. Breit died in Salem, OR, United States.
David Leib Genuth
(Personality)David Leib Genuth (1901-1974), rabbi, born in Viseu de Sus, Romania (then part of Austria-Hungary). He studied at the local yeshiva before immigrating to United States in 1922. In United States he continued his studies at the Yeshiva University in New York, the Yeshiva in New Haven, CT, and the Yale University Divinity School. Genuth received his ordination in 1926. In 1930, he became rabbi at Beth Israel Synagogue in Norwalk, CT, serving there until 1931, when he moved to Cleveland. In 1933, Genuth became the first rabbi at the Kinsman Jewish Center. At the Kinsman Jewish Center, which counted numerous members of the radical Labor Movement among its ranks, he established a significant congregation by incorporating a contemporary interpretation of Orthodoxy.
In 1950, following a disagreement with board members, Genuth departed from the Kinsman Jewish Center, and together with eight families, he founded Temple Beth El, which identified itself as "egalitarian/traditional" and was distinctive for allowing men and women to sit together during services. The congregation established the first synagogue within the city limits of Shaker Heights in Cleveland greater area. Genuth served as the sole rabbi of Temple Beth El.
During the 1930s, Genuth actively engaged in charitable endeavors, including the Orthodox Jewish Children's Home and Mt. Pleasant Consumptive Ladies Aid Society. He played a pivotal role in the United Order of True Sisters, American Jewish Congress, and organized the Jewish Community Council. Genuth delivered monthly lectures at Montefiore Home, was a member of the Cleveland Zionist Society, and supported the Jewish National Fund and Israel Bonds. His contributions spanned diverse Jewish organizations, reflecting his commitment to community and religious causes.
Louise Glück
(Personality)Louise Elisabeth Glück (1943-2023), poet, winner of 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, born in New York, United States. Glück grew up on Long Island. During her childhood, her parents introduced her to Greek mythology and classical material, such as the life of Joan of Arc. She began writing poetry at a young age. Glück studied at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University in New York. After the publication of her first book of poetry, Firstborn, in 1968, she suffered from writer's block, which she overcame when she accepted a teaching position at Goddard College, a private school in Plainfield, Vermont, in 1971. She then held a professorship at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, for 20 years. From 1999 to 2003, Glück was a member of the honorary Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets. As of 2004, Glück was Writer in Residence and Professor of English at Yale University. Gluck died in Cambridge, MA.
Her work has been translated into numerous languages. During her career she published over 15 collections of poetry, includin Firstborn (1968), The House on Marshland (1975), The Triumph of Achilles (1985), Ararat (1992), The First Four Books of Poems (1995), Vita Nova (1999), The Seven Ages (2001), Poems: 1962–2012 (2013), American Originality: Essays on Poetry (2017), and Winter Recipes from the Collective (2021).