The Jewish Community of Cincinnati
Cincinnati
City on the Ohio River in the state of Ohio, United States.
The oldest Jewish community west of the Allegheny Mountains and a center of American Reform Judaism.
21st CENTURY
In 2019, there were 18,900 Jewish households in the Greater Cincinnati area, comprising 32,100 Jewish individuals. There were 10,200 children living in the Jewish households, of which 5,700 (56%) were being raised Jewish in some way. The city has an active Jewish Federation and Jewish Foundation.
HISTORY
The first permanent Jewish settler in Cincinnati was Joseph Jonas, a watchmaker, who arrived from Plymouth, England in 1817. Two years later, in 1819, he was joined by several additional Jews from England, including his brother Abraham Jonas and his sister and brother-in-law Sarah and Morris Moses. That year, for the High Holidays these Jews of Cincinnati joined with David Israel Johnson of Brookville, Indiana (originally of Portsmouth, England) and held their first Jewish service.
Jewish settlers continued to arrive, mostly from England, and High Holiday services continued to be held. In 1824, the Jewish population of Cincinnati had reached 20 families, and they met in the home of Morris Moses to draft a constitution for a synagogue, B’Nai Israel (later to be renamed the Rockdale Temple). It was chartered by the State of Ohio on January 8, 1830, and Joseph Jonas became its first president. in 1836, after 12 years of meeting for services in rented rooms, the congregation dedicated a new synagogue building, a stucco structure, measuring 60 feet by 33 feet with a 12-foot dome and four columns in front. Because of a growth in membership, a new building was constructed in 1852. By 1860 there were over 200 families in the congregation, and in 1869 a new more spacious edifice was erected on Eighth and Mound Streets.
Subsequently, many Jews from Germany began settling in Cincinnati. In 1840 German immigrants founded their own synagogue, B'nai Yeshurun. It was incorporated by the State of Ohio in 1842, and its new building dedicated in 1848 with a procession of 300 people accompanied by a band. It was replaced in 1866 by the ornate Plum Street Synagogue. Other German Orthodox congregations were established included Ahabath Achim (1848), and Sherith Israel (1855). The Orthodox congregation, Adath Israel (1847), was established by Eastern European immigrants. Ahabath Achim and Sherith Israel became more liberal and merged in 1907, becoming the Reading Road Temple. The Reading Road Temple, in turn, would later merge with the Wise Temple in 1931.
Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900) came to Cincinnati in 1854 to lead both the B’Nai Yeshurun and B’Nai Israel synagogues. In 1855 Rabbi Max Lilienthal (1815-1882) assumed the leadership of the B’Nai Israel Synagogue. The two rabbis collaborated in introducing the rituals of Reform Judaism into both congregations, and in the next decades Cincinnati became a center for the Reform movement. Wise became the leading figure in the development of the institutions of Reform Judaism in the US. In 1873 he founded in Cincinnati the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC). All the local pre-Civil War congregations joined the organization although Adath Israel withdrew in 1886 and eventually became a Conservative congregation. In 1875 Wise founded Hebrew Union College and in 1889 he established the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
Although the Reform movement had a major impact on the Cincinnati Jewish community, an influx of East European Jews founded a number of Orthodox congregations. Shachne Isaacs who arrived from Lithuania in 1853 and founded Bet Tefillah in 1866, known as Reb Shachne’s Shul, was a vociferous opponent of reform and supporter of tradition, and publicly burned a Reform prayer book. In 1931 Rabbi Eliezer Silver, head of Agudat Israel (Union of Orthodox Rabbis) became the leader of Kneseth Israel synagogue, which had been founded in 1912. He helped organize the Va’ad ha-Hazzalah, the worldwide rescue effort organized by Orthodox Jewry during the Holocaust.
In the 1840s, Bene Israel established the first religious school and Talmud Torah. In 1848 B'nai Yeshurun opened an all-day school which became the Talmud Yelodim Institute, supported by a grant from Judah Touro. It operated until 1868, after which it became a Sabbath and eventually a Sunday school. Bene Israel's Noyoth School, established in 1855 merged with it for a short time. In later years all of the major synagogues maintained religious schools. A Talmud Torah was established by Moses Isaacs and Dov Behr Manischewitz to accommodate the needs of the increasing number of immigrants from eastern Europe. When he died in 1914, Manischewitz left a bequest that provided the seed money for constructing a new building for the school that served the community until 1927.
The Bureau of Jewish Education began operations in 1925. On the level of higher education, Zion College was short-lived (1855-1857), but Hebrew Union College became a major center of higher Jewish learning and Reform rabbinical training, and continues to be so today.
In 1947 the Orthodox Chofetz Chaim School (later renamed the Cincinnati Hebrew Day School) was founded. In 1952 a non-Orthodox Yavneh Day School was opened, and in 1988 a Hebrew high school for girls, the Regional Institute for Torah and Secular Studies (RITTS). In 1995 the Cincinnati Kollel was established to provide Torah study and Jewish learning opportunities for the entire community.
Jewish newspapers that were published in Cincinnati include the English-language The Israelite, begun in 1854 and the German-language weekly Die Deborah (1855-1900), both founded by Isaac Mayer Wise. The Israelite was renamed The American Israelite in 1874 and is still published today, being the oldest English Jewish weekly in the US. The Sabbath Visitor appeared between 1874 and 1893, and the weekly Every Friday between 1927 and 1965.
In 1838 a Benevolent Society was founded, and in 1849 a B’nai Brith Lodge, the first in the western part of the US, was opened. The Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati, the first Jewish hospital in the US, was founded in 1850 in response to a cholera epidemic that broke out in the city, and in reaction to the pressure to convert exercised by Christian missionaries on dying Jewish patients at local medical institutions. Although it subsequently merged with other health institutions, it retains to this day its original name and association with the Jewish community.
In the 1880’s the Jewish Home for the Aged and Infirm (later renamed Glen Manor) was established on the grounds of the Jewish Hospital. In 1914 the Orthodox community founded their own Jewish Home for the Aged. In the 1990’s, with the migration of the Jewish community to the northern suburbs, the two institutions merged at a new location, creating Cedar Village staffed by both an Orthodox and a Reform rabbi.
By the 1890s numerous philanthropic organizations had been established, uniting in 1898 under the umbrella organization United Jewish Charities (which would later be renamed Associated Jewish Agencies, or AJA). In 1904 Boris Bogen, who would become instrumental in the professionalization of social work in the US, became its director. In 1967, the Jewish Welfare Fund merged with AJA to form the Jewish Federation. The Jewish Community Center began operations in 1932, acting as a successor to the YMHA-Settlement House Movement of the previous generation. There were also two Jewish country clubs, Losantiville and Crest Hills (to merge in 2004 to form the Ridge Club).
Jews have been represented in nearly every sector of Cincinnati's economy. During the mid-1800s they were especially prominent in the garment and distilling industries. B'nai Yeshurun's impressive Plum St. Temple building, dedicated in 1866, reflects the level of prosperity attained by Cincinnati's Jews during the Civil War era.
The B. Manischewitz Company was founded in 1888 in Cincinnati by Dov Behr Manischewitz, an immigrant from Lithuania. It revolutionized the baking of matzo by automating its production, cutting it in uniform squares and packing it in shippable boxes.
During the 20th century Jews were prominent in merchandising, real estate, construction, law, and medicine. One of America's leading mercantile empires, Federated Department Stores Inc., which later merged with other companies to form Macy's, was controlled by Cincinnati's Lazarus family, whose patriarch was Fred Lazarus Jr. The Jews of Cincinnati were active politically and in the local judiciary. There have been six Jewish mayors of the city, and in 1900 two Jews ran against each other for this office.
Jewish residential movement reflected Cincinnati's growth as a city. What had been the center of the community during the 19th century in the downtown west end, shifted in the early 1900s to Walnut Hills and Avondale. Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, it shifted yet again, to Roselawn and Amberley. By the mid-1960s, Cincinnati Jewry had become a largely upper-middle class suburban community, and in 1968 they numbered 28,000.
In 1972 the University of Cincinnati established a Jewish Studies Program. The Hillel student organization which had been founded in 1948 was greatly expanded in the 1970s.
Louis Finkelstein
(Personality)Louis Finkelstein (1895-1991), Conservative rabbi, scholar and educator, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He was a leader of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) and Conservative Judaism born into a rabbinic family who moved to New York where he graduated from City College in 1915. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1918 and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) the following year. Two years later he joined the Theological Seminary's faculty as a lecturer in Talmud. In the course of time he became associate professor and professor of theology and then provost, president, chancellor and chancellor emeritus.
Finkelstein was appointed chancellor of JTS in 1940 and remained chancellor until 1972. During his tenure Conservative Judaism developed to be the branch of Judaism with the largest number of synagogues and members and Finkelstein was described as "the dominant leader of Conservative Judaism in the 20th century". During this time the seminary grew from a small rabbinical school and teacher training program to a major university of Judaism. Finkelstein also established the seminary's Cantor's Institute, the Seminary College of Jewish Music, the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (predecessor of the Graduate School), and a West Coast branch of the seminary that later became the University of Judaism (now the American Jewish University).
He also became a well-known public figure throughout America. For many years he appeared on a radio and television show called "The Eternal Light", which explored Judaism and Jewish holidays in a manner that was accessible to persons of any faith. Finkelstein established the Institute for Religious and Social Studies, which brought together Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish scholars for theological discussions.
Finkelstein served as the official Jewish representative to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's commission on peace, and in 1963 President John F. Kennedy sent him to Rome as part of an American delegation to the installation of Pope Paul VI.
He was the author or editor of more than 100 books, both scholarly and popular. His major scholarly pursuits were works on the Pharisees, a Jewish sect in Second Temple times from which modern Jewish tradition developed, and the Sifra, the oldest rabbinic commentary on the book of Leviticus, which was completed in Palestine in the fifth century.
Steven Spielberg
(Personality)Steven Spielberg (b.1946), film director, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to the concert pianist and restaurateur Leah Posner and electrical engineer and computer developer Arnold Spielberg. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. Spielberg grew up in Haddon Township, NJ, Phoenix, AZ, and Saratoga, CA.
As a Boy Scout Spielberg made his first movie, a nine-minute 8mm film called "The Last Gunfight", in order to receive a photography merit badge - Spielberg would eventually achieve the rank of Eagle Scout. The teenage Spielberg would continue making amateur films, some of which would inspire his later blockbusters. Spielberg attended California State University Long Beach, but after he was offered a seven-year directing contract with Universal Studios—the youngest director ever signed for a long-term deal with a major studio—Spielberg dropped out to focus on his directing career.
During the early 1970s Spielberg directed a number of television episodes and tv movies. His feature film directorial debut was the 1974 film "The Sugarland Express", starring Goldie Hawn. A year later he would become a household name with the premiere of "Jaws", an enormous hit that is credited with ushering in the era of summer blockbusters. "Jaws" was also the first of Spielberg's films to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1977 Spielberg reteamed with the actor Richard Dreyfuss, who also starred in "Jaws", on the classic UFO film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", a critical and commercial hit and the first time Spielberg was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director.
Spielberg's next smash hit and enduring classic would be with the action adventure film "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), starring Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. "Raiders earned Spielberg his second Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Picture. "Raiders" would be followed a year later with the classic "E.T the Extra-Terrestrial", about a lost alien who befriends a young boy during his attempt to return home. "E.T." was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture.
In 1984 Spielberg directed a second Indiana Jones film, "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". This was followed in 1985 by the film adaptation of Alice Walker's book "The Color Purple", and starred Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey. Though Spielberg did not receive an Oscar nomination for Best Director, the film received 11 Oscar nominations. Spielberg's 1987 film, "Empire of the Sun", was the first American film shot in China since the 1930s. At the end of the decade, in 1989, Spielberg directed the third Indiana Jones film, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". He also directed his first romantic comedy, "Always", his third collaboration with Richard Dreyfuss.
In 1991 Spielberg directed the film "Hook", starring Robin Williams as a grown-up Peter Pan. Two years later he directed the film adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel "Jurassic Park", about a park featuring genetically engineered dinosaurs. "Jurassic Park" was another smash hit, and was the third time that a movie directed by Spielberg topped box office records; in 1997 Spielberg would also direct the sequel to "Jurassic Park", "The Lost World: Jurassic Park". It was followed in 1993 by "Schindler's List", a film based on the real story of Oskar Schindler who saved over a thousand Jews from the Holocaust. Spielberg won his first Oscar for Best Director for "Schindler's list". Spielberg used his profits from the film to establish the "Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation," later renamed the "USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education", an organization that conducts and archives interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides.
Since the 1980s, Spielberg has also worked as a producer. Between directing "E.T." and "Indiana Jones", Spielberg produced three hits: the horror film "Poltergeist" (1982), the 1983 film adaptation of the television series "The Twilight Zone" (in which he directed the segment "Kick the Can"), and "The Goonies" (1985). He produced a number of classic cartoon films, including "An American Tail" (1986), "The Land Before Time" (1988), and the animation/live-action film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988). Spielberg also produced television cartoons, including "Tiny Toon Adventures", "Animaniacs", "Pinky and the Brain", "Toonsylvania", and "Freakazoid!" Spielberg would later produce the television series "The River", "Smash", "Under the Dome", "Extant", "The Whispers", as well as the tv adaptation of "Minority Report".
"Amistad" (1997) was Spielberg's first film released under the new studio he cofounded, DreamWorks Pictures; the studio would continue to release Spielberg's films until 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".
Spielberg's second Academy Award for Best Director was for the 1998 World War II film "Saving Private Ryan". The film won a total of five Oscars as well as numerous other awards and its graphic and realistic battle scenes influenced later war films. Spielberg would reteam with the star of "Saving Private Ryan", Tom Hanks, a number of times; in 2001 they would produce the HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers", based on Stephen Ambrose's book about Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division's 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment during World War II.
In 2001 Spielberg finished Stanley Kubrick's final film "A.I. Artificial Intelligence"; Kubrick had died before it could be completed. Next he directed Tom Cruise in the hit "Minority Report". "Catch Me If You Can", based on the true story of a young con artist and starring Christopher Walken and Leonardo DiCaprio, was released in 2002. His next film, 2004's "The Terminal", saw Spielberg again working with Tom Hanks. The next year saw him return to the science fiction genre, with the modern adaptation of H.G Wells' book "War of the Worlds". That same year he directed "Munich", which portrayed the events following the 1972 massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. "Munich" earned Spielberg his sixth Best Director and fifth Best Picture Oscar nominations.
In 2009 Spielberg directed the motion capture film "The Adventures of Tintin", based on the comics written by the Belgian artist Herge; due to the complex nature of the animation technology, the film was not released until 2011. Tintin was followed by the World War I drama "War Horse", another Spielberg film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. "Lincoln", Spielberg's next film, was shot in 2011 and released in 2012. It starred Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field as Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln and was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. In 2015 Spielberg again directed Tom Hanks in the Cold War thriller "Bridge of Spies", a film that was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Collectively, Spielberg is the top-grossing director of all time. He has been nominated seven times for the Academy Award for Best Director and nine of the films he directed were nominated for Best Picture. Spielberg won three Academy Awards: two for "Schindler's List" (Best Picture, Best Director), and one for "Saving Private Ryan" (Best Director).
Spielberg's first marriage to Amy Irving ended in divorce. He married the actress Kate Capshaw in 1991; they met when she starred in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Spielberg has seven children: one son from his first marriage, Capshaw's daughter from her first marriage and a son she adopted before she married Spielberg, and four children with Capshaw.
Edward Leopold Israel
(Personality)Edward Leopold Israel (1896-1941), Reform rabbi and labor mediator, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Israel was ordained as a rabbi in 1919 at the Hebrew Union College. From 1919-1920 he was rabbi at Springfield, from 1920-1923 at Evansville, Indiana and then until 1941 in Baltimore, MD. In politics he was a vociferous liberal. Israel was between 1935 and 1941 chairman of the Baltimore arbitration commission for the men's clothing industry, he was also chairman of the social justice commission of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (1927-1933) and member of the regional National Labor Relations' Board in 1934-1935. In 1940 he was president of the Synagogue Council of America.
Nelson Glueck
(Personality)Nelson Glueck (1900–1971), rabbi, academic and archaeologist, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, to German Jewish parents. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1920, was ordained as a Reform rabbi in 1923 and went on to be awarded a doctorate University of Jena, Germany, 1926. In 1928 he was appointed lecturer at the Hebrew Union College, teaching at the seminary of the Reform Jewish movement. It was during this time period that he first visited the Holy Land. During the next forty years he developed an intimate knowledge of the land's rich history. His pioneering work in biblical archaeology resulted in the discovery of 1,500 ancient sites. In the 1950s, Glueck discovered remains of the advanced Nabataean civilization in Jordan. Using irrigation, the Nabateans were able to grow crops and develop a densely populated civilization in the Negev desert, despite receiving under six inches of rainfall a year. Glueck worked with Israeli leaders to build an irrigation system modeled on that of the Nabataeans.
During World War II, Glueck used his intimate knowledge of Palestine's geography to help the US Office of Strategic Services develop a contingency plan for a retreat from Nazi General Rommel who was at the time advancing through Northern Africa and it was feared that he might overrun Palestine. (In the event Rommel was stopped at Alamein and the plan was not needed.) In 1947 he was appointed president of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and from 1950 he served as president of the merged Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. Glueck's scholarship led to personal relationships with many world leaders. He delivered the benediction at President John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961 and he was personal friends with many of the State of Israel's early leaders, including David Ben-Gurion, Abba Eban, Golda Meir, Henrietta Szold and Judah Magnes.
Glueck, an expert on ancient pottery, was able to match small fragments of ceramic to distinct time periods. He was the first to identify some ancient wares such as the Edomite pottery and Midianite ware, while he re-discovered the now-called Negevite pottery. Among the more than 1,000 sites in the Middle East that Glueck uncovered were the copper mines of King Solomon and the ancient Red Sea port of Ezion Geber. He wrote several books on archaeology, including "Explorations in Eastern Palestine" (4 vol., 1934–51), "The Other Side of the Jordan" (1940), "The River Jordan" (1946), "Rivers in the Desert: A History of the Negev" (1959), "Deities and Dolphins" (1965), and "Hesed in the Bible" (1968).
The Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at the Hebrew Union College is named after Dr. Glueck.
James Levine
(Personality)James Levine (1943-2021), conductor and pianist, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, he started studying the piano at the age of four and made his debut playing Mendelssohn’s Second Piano Concerto when he was ten. In 1956 he studied with Rudolph Serkin at the Marlborough School of Music and a year later with Rosina Levinne at the Aspen School of Music. In 1961 he started studying at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. In 1964 Levine became assistant conductor to George Szell at the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1970 he was guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. From 1973 he was the Metropolitan Opera’s principle conductor and between 1976-1981 its music director.
Zevi H. Wolf Diesendruck
(Personality)Zevi H. Wolf Diesendruck (1890-1940), philosopher, scholar, born in Stryj, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now in the Ukraine). He studied at the Jewish Seminary at Vienna, and received the Ph.D. degree at the University of Vienna. Diesendruck showed a lifelong interest in Zionism, particularly in the revival of the Hebrew language. In 1913 he taught in Palestine. He wrote essays in Hebrew, notably the volume "Min ha-Safah ve-Lifnim" (1933). A great deal of his contribution to the revival of the Hebrew language is in his Hebrew translations of Martin Buber’s "Daniel" and Plato’s "Phaedrus" (Warsaw, 1923); "Crito" (in Ha-Tekufah, (24, 1924); "Gorgias" (Berlin, 1929), and "The Republic" (Tel Aviv, 1935-36).
In 1915 he attended the University of Berlin, Germany, and during World War I he joined the Austrian Army. After the war he joined the faculties of the Jewish Pedagogium (Vienna, 1918-27). In 1919 he was co-editor, with Schoffman, of the Hebrew periodical "Gevuloth". He also served, in 1927, at the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. The following year Diesendruck returned to Eretz Israel and taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1928 to 1930. He was then appointed as professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, OH, which has been the principal institute of study for the American Reform Movement.
Diesendruck specialized in the philosophy of Maimonides and published a book on Maimonides’ idea of prophecy under the title "Maimonides Lehre von der Prophetie" (1927). Several of his smaller essays deal with Maimonides’ philosophy, notably: "Teleology des Maimonides" (in Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. 5, 1928); "Samuel and Moses Ibn Tibbon on Maimonides' Theory of Providence" (ibid., vol. II); "Maimonides Theory on the Negation of Privation" (Proceeding of the American Academy of Jewish Research, Vol. 6, 1934-35); "The Philosophy of Maimonides" (Year book of American Rabbis, vol. 45, 1935); an essay on the date of completion of the "Moreh Nebuchim" (Hebrew Union College Annual, vols. 12-13, 1937-38). He wrote another work on Plato, "Struktur und Charakter der platonischen Phaidras" (Vienna, 1927).
Diesendruck was vice-president of the American Academy of Jewish Research, editor of the "Hebrew Union College Annual", and contributed in several languages to Jewish scientific periodicals. He died in Cincinnati in 1940.
Victoria Hazan
(Personality)Victoria Hazan (1896-1995), singer and oud player, born into a family of cantors as Victoria Ninio in Salihli, north-east of Izmir, Turkey (then in the Ottoman Empire). She moved to the United States after the end of WW I, where she married. Initially she sang in her synagogue for community audiences, but later she also was persuaded to make recordings of different kinds of Sefardi music which became very popular with Jewish communities in America. Hazan sang and recorded songs in Turkish, Greek, Ladino, Armenian, French, and Hebrew.
"A Wienerwurst with each Drink" - Sign of Bar, Cincinnati, 1890s
(Photos)non-Jewish German immigrants, thus creating large
self-sufficient German-speaking areas.
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA 1890s.
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot)