Categories
Vol. 70, No. 1 (Summer 2026) - Celebrating America’s Sestercentennial

The Americanization of New York’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun

 

Jonathan D. Sarna1

Jews are marking the 250th anniversary of American independence with a renewed focus on Jewish contributions to the Revolution: the 100 or so Jews who fought under George Washington; the Jews like Haym Salomon who marketed the new nation’s bonds and extended credit to its treasury; the Jewish merchants who smuggled in arms from the Dutch island of St. Eustatius; the Jews taken prisoner, like Mordecai Sheftall, who suffered antisemitic abuse from his British captors; the women, like Frances Sheftall, who supported their husbands while they were gone; the courageous Jews who fought for Jewish religious rights, like Jonas Phillips who addressed the Constitutional Convention on that subject, and more.2

Less attention has been paid to the reverse question: What did the American Revolution contribute to American Judaism? Elsewhere I have published broad articles on that subject such as “The Impact of the American Revolution on the American Jew,” and “The Democratization of American Judaism.” Here I want to narrow the focus and look at how the Revolution and its ideology shaped one particular synagogue—B’nai Jeshurun (BJ) in New York City, the city’s first breakaway, first Ashkenazi, and first post-Revolutionary congregation, established in 1825 and for many years associated with the Conservative Movement. I shall argue that BJ’s bold, even rebellious, actions reshaped American Judaism and created precedents that synagogues across the United States continue to uphold.3

Three nineteenth-century precedents proved particularly impactful: one, in 1825, reshaped American Judaism; a second in 1849 transformed the American rabbinate; a third in 1875 promoted the separation of religion and state. Absent those developments, American Judaism today would look entirely different from the Judaism we know.

The breakaway that led to the original establishment of B’nai Jeshurun in 1825 had, like most rebellions, been years in the building. Gershom Seixas, the remarkable ḥazzan (“minister”) of what had until then been New York City’s only synagogue, Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, was a Revolutionary War hero, highly respected by local Christians, and could be claimed by both old Sephardic Jews of Iberian origin and also by the then more numerous Ashkenazi Jews of Germanic origin. Because he possessed family ties to both camps as well as an amazing temperament, he succeeded in keeping most everybody happy.4

After he passed away, in 1816, a whole series of communal tensions erupted. They pitted young against old, Sephardi Jews vs. Ashkenazi Jews, newcomers vs. old-timers, innovators vs. traditionalists. Of course, such communal tensions are common. From colonial times, Shearith Israel’s leaders had dealt with similar problems: sometimes they compromised to maintain communal peace; more often they stood firm for what they considered to be critical religious principles.

In the nineteenth century, however, challenges to authority multiplied. To take just one example, several synagogue attendees in the 1820s failed to wear a tallit during worship—one assumes that these rebels were young, single Ashkenazi Jews whose custom was to wait to put on a tallit until married. Sephardim do not follow that custom, so Shearith Israel established a special committee to deal with this deviation, and it reported that “inasmuch as it has always been strictly observed in this Congregation from its first establishment, the committee cannot but view a departure from it as an innovation which if permitted to pass unnoticed may lead to other deviations, and ultimately to the subversion of all the venerable and established usages of this Congregation.” They consequently warned that anyone not wearing a tallit would be barred from all synagogue honors.5

Shearith Israel’s leaders, like Western Sephardic Jews in many communities, believed that tradition without any innovations as well as deference to established authority were key to the maintenance of Judaism—what would later be called “Jewish continuity.” They also promoted the synagogue-community model of Jewish life, the idea that one (and only one) overarching synagogue, heir to the organized medieval Jewish kehillah, should govern each community’s Jews. Every North American Jewish community into the early nineteenth century, from Savannah in the South to Newport in the North, followed that well-established synagogue-community model.6

The problem was that the generation of Jews raised after the American Revolution found it hard to reconcile those traditional Sephardic values with the modern values of freedom and democracy espoused by America’s Founding Fathers. If all are equal, after all, why should a kohen not be allowed to marry a convert? And why should the descendant of a mamzer (the offspring of a biblically forbidden sexual relationship) be denied synagogue membership?7 Moreover, when younger Jews looked around, they saw Protestant churches undergoing significant “deviations” and democratization. The great scholar of early American Christianity, Nathan Hatch, showed in his book, The Democratization of American Christianity, that the “American Revolution and the beliefs flowing from it created a cultural ferment over the meaning of freedom.” Common people, he demonstrated, became significant actors on the American religious scene in the Revolution’s wake, challenging traditional (usually elite) leaders. Turmoil swirled “around the crucial issues of authority, organization and leadership.” The tension between traditional religious values and new American values, Hatch concluded, provoked “a period of religious ferment, chaos, and originality unmatched in American history.”8

B’nai Jeshurun emerged out of that very same period of religious ferment, chaos and originality—so did the Reform Society of Israelites in Charleston, the progenitor of American Reform Judaism, which emerged at precisely the same moment. Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia was established earlier: it began as the “Hebrew German Society” in 1795, an independent sick-burial society for immigrant German Jews, and developed into a separate “German Shul” in 1802 when the Sephardic Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia stood in danger of “being totally dissolved.” The name Rodeph Shalom hints at the absence of communal peace in Philadelphia, but the congregation was not a “breakaway” synagogue nor did its founders view themselves as “reformers,” like the Charleston group. Still, it seems fitting that Philadelphia, the city where American freedom first took root, was also the city where the monolithic synagogue community first withered away.9

B’nai Jeshurun of New York’s story began in May 1825, when a group of young, mostly non-Sephardic men (women did not at that time play an active role in synagogue or church governance in the United States) petitioned the elders of Shearith Israel for an early worship service “on the Sabbath morning during the summer months” which they would independently manage. They declared themselves zealous in “the worship of our holy religion” and pledged to follow the congregation’s Sephardic minhag, but they clearly had their own ideas about how prayer services should run and who should be eligible for synagogue honors (a committee “to be chosen from among and by those attending the early worship” would make those weighty decisions). In short, they looked to innovate. Their petition was therefore refused, for the usual reason: it violated the “rules and customs of our ancestors.”10

Rather than acquiescing, the young men did the unthinkable: they formed an independent society with a revealing Hebrew name—Chevra Chinuch Ne’arim (the society for educating young men) “to promote the study of our Holy Law and . . . to extend a knowledge of its divine precepts, ceremonies, and worship among our brethren generally, and the enquiring youth in particular.” According to the new organization’s fascinating constitution, they looked to establish a worship service run much less formally than at Shearith Israel, without a permanent leader, and with no “distinctions made among the members rich and poor.”11 Here we see themes familiar to us from the history of Protestantism in this era (the so-called Second Great Awakening): revivalism, challenge to authority, a new form of organization, anti-elitism, and radical democratization.

Shearith Israel condemned the “enquiring youth.” “We cannot,” they wrote, “recognize any society or association for religious worship distinct from Congregation Shearith Israel.” So in October of 1825 the young men announced their intention “to erect a new Synagogue in this city” that would follow “the German and Polish” rather than the Sephardic rite and be located “in a more convenient situation for those residing uptown.” On November 15th the new congregation applied for incorporation from New York as B’nai Jeshurun, the city’s first Ashkenazi congregation.12

Within a year, the energetic founders of B’nai Jeshurun purchased a new synagogue building on Elm Street, formerly the so-called First Coloured Presbyterian Church of the famous African American minister, journalist and abolitionist, Samuel Cornish—what today is known as Shiloh Presbyterian Church. That was, to my knowledge, the first time that American Jews transformed a church into a synagogue—something that would have been unthinkable in most of Europe—and was certainly the first time a Black church in the United States ever became a synagogue. The purchase anticipated an insufficiently appreciated innovation of American religion: in the US it became commonplace for synagogues, churches, and more recently mosques to purchase and transform one another’s sacred spaces for reuse.13

B’nai Jeshurun’s founders also penned an amazing synagogue constitution that appealed to new American values to justify their secession from New York’s previously unified synagogue-community. The key clauses read as follows:

WHEREAS the wise and republican laws of this country are based upon universal toleration giving to every citizen and sojourner the right to worship according to the dictate of his conscience;

AND WHEREAS also the mode of worship in the Established Synagogue of our Beloved Brethren Shearith Israel in this city, is not in accordance with the rites and customs of the said German and Polish Jews

THEREFORE we the undersigned bind ourselves under the name of the congregation B’nai Jeshurun….14

Revealingly, the new congregation justified itself here by appealing to American democratic values, “The wise and republican laws of this country.” The use of the term “established synagogue” is also telling: the “establishment” of religion had been outlawed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Between them, these two arguments undermined the whole basis for the one-synagogue-per-community model that had hitherto held sway.

Fascinatingly, congregations elsewhere in the country soon echoed—practically word for word—the stirring value-laden language that the secessionists at B’nai Jeshurun employed. Breakaway congregations in Cincinnati, Ohio (where the synagogue actually called itself B’nai Jeshurun), in Easton, Pennsylvania and elsewhere justified themselves in precisely the same way. In addition to mutual influence, this demonstrates the power of rhetoric in a democratic age. The emphasis on toleration, on equality, on conscience, and above all on the “wise and republican laws of this country” bespoke the new values that B’nai Jeshurun introduced into American Judaism.15

All over the United States in the early decades of the nineteenth century, Americans were abandoning the denominations in which they had been raised for churches that seemed to them more democratic, inspiring, and authentic. They abandoned Congregational, Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches and embraced new Methodist, Baptist and Disciples’ churches. Beginning at B’nai Jeshurun, American Jews now followed the same pattern. Henceforward, in larger communities, Jews no longer sought to compromise their principles for the sake of consensus: instead, they felt free to withdraw and start their own synagogues, which they did time and again. In New York City, there were two synagogues in 1825, four in 1835, ten in 1845, and over twenty in 1855. By the Civil War, every major American Jewish community had at least two synagogues, and larger ones like Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Cincinnati had four or more. Members dissatisfied for some reason with their home congregations now knew that they could resign and create new ones more suited to their needs and desires. Some hard-to-please Jews founded several synagogues in succession. That’s what happens under freedom.16

The result was nothing less than a new American Judaism—a Judaism that was diverse and pluralistic where before it had been designedly monolithic. For the first time, American Jews could now choose from a number of congregations, most of them Ashkenazi in one form or another, reflecting a range of different rites, ideologies, and regions of origin. Inevitably, these synagogues competed with one another for members and for status. As a result, they had a new interest in minimizing dissent and keeping members satisfied. Indeed, more than anybody realized at the time, the synagogue pluralism that began at B’nai Jeshurun changed the balance of power between synagogues and their members. Before, when there was but one synagogue in every community, it could take members for granted and discipline them; they had little option but to obey. Now, American Jews did have an option; in fact, synagogues needed members more than members needed any particular synagogue. This led to the rapid demise of the whole system of disciplining congregants with fines and sanctions. Congregations became much more concerned with attracting members than with keeping them in line.

One final implication of synagogue pluralism: it brought to an end the intimate coupling of synagogue and community. In every major American Jewish community, the synagogue-community was replaced by a community of synagogues. No one synagogue was able any more to represent the community as a whole. In fact, synagogues came increasingly to represent diversity in American Jewish life—they symbolized and promoted fragmentation. To bind the Jewish community together and carry out functions that the now privatized and functionally delimited synagogues could no longer handle required new community-wide organizations capable of transcending religious differences. Charitable organizations like the Hebrew Benevolent Society and fraternal organizations like B’nai B’rith soon moved in to fill the void. Before long, the structure of the American Jewish community mirrored in organization the federalist pattern of the nation as a whole, balanced precariously between unity and diversity.

So it was that the rebellion at B’nai Jeshurun 200 years ago helped to produce a religious revolution that overthrew the synagogue-community and replaced a monolithic Judaism with one that was much more democratic, free, diverse, and competitive. American Judaism, as we know it, was shaped by this remarkable revolution. That is one reason why B’nai Jeshurun’s founding 200 years ago is so historically important.

More innovations were to come. As the premier Ashkenazi congregation in New York City, B’nai Jeshurun revolutionized American Judaism again in 1849, when it brought over from England a distinguished scholar and rabbi, Dr. Morris J. Raphall (1798-1868), to serve as its “Rabbi and Preacher.” For its first quarter-century or so, the congregation had relied upon unordained ministers and laymen for leadership. If more complex questions of Jewish law arose, the trustees called upon England’s Chief Rabbi, Solomon Hirschell (1762-1842), for answers. As America’s Jewish population grew and began to approach 50,000, Hirschell in his last years advised B’nai Jeshurun to appoint a rabbi “in the light of whose learning and virtue the Kehilloth of America could walk.” Raphall, who had himself been Hirschell’s assistant and then a rabbi in Birmingham, England, was selected and promised a high salary and life tenure. Of course, Raphall was not America’s first rabbi—that was R. Abraham Rice of Baltimore¸ who had arrived nine years earlier. Other rabbis, mostly Reformers, immigrated from Germany. But Raphall, with his impressive British English, was by far the most important Orthodox exemplar of the new rabbinic ideal that, thanks to B’nai Jeshurun, became prevalent in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century: the rabbi-doctor, dressed formally in canonicals, who possessed both an earned university degree (in Raphall’s case a PhD from the University of Erlangen) and formal rabbinic ordination.17

The best rabbi-doctors—and Raphall was indeed one of the best—excelled in the priestly, prophetic, and pastoral aspects of their positions, just like their Protestant counterparts: people like Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn. They became local celebrities, “princes of the pulpit.” Their demeanor, their posture, their elocution—all commanded attention. They knew how to dress and how to comport themselves. They delivered elegant English-language sermons, impressing non-Jews as well as Jews, women and men alike. Their resounding voices filled large halls. Newspapers regularly quoted them. Politicians befriended and engaged them. Congregants basked in their reflected glory.18

Rabbi-Doctor Morris Raphall quickly won the appreciation of Christians for his learning and preaching, and became a celebrity, a glamor rabbi. He delivered well-attended English-language lectures around the country. He also became the first Jew ever invited to deliver a prayer before the United States Congress—which elicited controversy—and he courageously delivered his prayer (in 1860) in full rabbinic garb, piously bedecked in a white tallit and a large velvet yarmulke. His prayer even included words of Hebrew, including the traditional priestly blessing.

Just under a year later, on the very eve of the Civil War, Rabbi Raphall undercut his reputation with what became his best-remembered address: “The Bible View of Slavery.” Speaking at the request of the American Society for Promoting National Unity, on the Fast Day called by President James Buchanan to prevent Civil War, he described slaveholding as “no sin,” and declared that slave property was “expressly placed under the protection of the Ten Commandments.” He was a Bible literalist. Several Jewish leaders publicly disagreed with him, and history has judged Raphall unkindly. It should be remembered, however, that when war came, Raphall publicly supported Lincoln and the Union. His son and son-in-law both fought in the Union army, and his son tragically lost an arm in the Battle of Gettysburg. By the time the Civil War ended, Raphall was an old man. His health had gravely declined and his wife had died, so he retired. He died, in 1868, and was greatly honored.19

He was not forgotten. Henceforward when the leading Jewish congregations across the United States had vacancies, they sought rabbi-doctors (like Raphall) with both ordination and university degrees. That was part of the allure of Rabbi-Doctor Gustav Gottheil, elected to the pulpit of Temple Emanu-El in New York in 1873. Major congregations also assumed that their own rabbis, not a rabbi living abroad, would interpret Jewish law for them. And they expected their rabbi to also be an English-language orator who could impress Jews and Gentiles alike. In this way, B’nai Jeshurun had once again reshaped American Judaism. It created a new model of rabbinic leadership in the United States.

The third precedent set at B’nai Jeshurun came at a moment when the congregation was not enjoying model rabbinic leadership. Following Rabbi Raphall’s passing, members divided over a whole series of proposed changes: some aesthetic, some liturgical, some related to the place of women (could they sing in the choir, could they sit next to their husbands?), and some designed simply to make services shorter. The early 1870s, like the early twenty-first century, witnessed a decline in religion across the United States, and this proved especially evident in synagogues. Often, native-born members clashed with those raised abroad; younger members disagreed with veteran ones.

Rabbi Israel Goldstein, who served as B’nai Jeshurun’s longtime rabbi from 1918-1960 and wrote a history of the congregation, researched this turbulent period from primary sources available to him. He stressed the uncertainty of the congregation, the inner struggle between competing values that pulled members simultaneously in two directions—toward tradition and toward change. “The Congregation’s decisions were made and unmade. . . ,” he recounted. “Many of the members threatened to resign if the changes were not introduced. Others threatened to resign if the changes were introduced. Questions were repeatedly resubmitted and reconsidered, and the sentiment shifted as each faction in turn gained ascendancy.”20

The most contentious issue of all involved synagogue seating: should the congregation introduce mixed family pews characteristic of Reform temples, or should women and men be separated in prayer as heretofore? Synagogues of all kinds in the United States debated this issue for more than a century; it was a central flashpoint in American Jewish religious life.21

At B’nai Jeshurun, after a long process, members on May 16, 1875 voted 55-30 in favor of mixed pews; it became one of the first traditional synagogues to do so. But that did not end the matter. Instead, two days later, a highly distinguished second-generation member and former president of the congregation named Israel J. Salomon22 went to court and secured a legal injunction against what he called “promiscuous seating,” declaring it not only immodest, but also an infringement of his rights as a pew owner, as well as a violation of the synagogue’s mandate to worship “according to the rites, customs and usages of the German and Polish Jews.” The subsequent trial before Judge Richard Larremore attracted a great deal of attention even in the secular press, and drew affidavits from America’s most distinguished rabbis concerning whether mixed seating violated Jewish law. Unsurprisingly, they disagreed. What makes the case so important in retrospect are the legal precedents set by the case, several of which govern religious institutions in New York State and beyond to this day.

First, Judge Larremore ruled that the purchase of a church or synagogue pew is what lawyers call an easement, subject to rules and regulations that can be changed; it is not the same as buying private property (like a chair) that an individual completely controls. Second, he absolutely refused to decide the question of whether mixed seating violated the “rites, customs and usages of the German and Polish Jews.” That, he said, “properly belongs to the judicature of the church,” not of the state. Secular courts, he ruled, should not adjudicate complex matters of religious law. Finally, he declared that, under New York State law, trustees did indeed have the power to change synagogue practice, especially when the majority of members approved that change. Trustees govern independent synagogues and churches, he ruled, not Jewish or canon law.23

Larremore’s well-publicized but not universally applauded decision freed B’nai Jeshurun (and by extension all independent synagogues and churches in the United States) to pursue their own destinies. It guaranteed them, as Rev. Dr. Gustav Gottheil of Temple Emanu-El noted at the time, “congregational autonomy.” Henceforward, neither dissenting pew-holders nor outsiders with different ideas could stand in the way of a binding vote by members and trustees.24

The 1875 decision also demonstrated that fifty years after the founding of B’nai Jeshurun, and on the eve of the centennial of American independence, Judaism in America had become distinctive—different in character from Judaism in Europe and beyond. The free market in Judaism that emerged when the synagogue-community in New York gave way to a community of competing synagogues; the new style of rabbi, armed with both ordination and a secular university degree that B’nai Jeshurun pioneered and others soon emulated; and the independence from courts, governments, and debates over Jewish law that B’nai Jeshurun won from Judge Larremore—all this made it possible for American synagogues to experiment and innovate. The spirit of freedom that characterized post-Revolutionary America came to characterize American Judaism as well.

Jonathan D. Sarna, PhD is University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History Emeritus at Brandeis University. He is also Chief Historian of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, PA; Chair of the Academic Advisory & Editorial Board of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH; and Past President of the Association for Jewish Studies.

  1. 1 Based on a lecture delivered at the 200th anniversary of Cong. B’nai Jeshurun, New York, New York, February 6, 2025.

  2. 2 Adam Jortner, A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2024); Jacob Rader Marcus, United States Jewry 1776–1985 (Wayne State University Press, 1989) I:46–77; Samuel Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots: The Jews in the American Revolution (Greenwood, 1975); for the recently discovered Mordecai Sheftall story, see https://www.raabcollection.com/blog/sheftall–archive.

  3. 3 Jonathan D. Sarna, "The Impact of the American Revolution on the American Jew," Modern Judaism 1 (1981): 149–160; Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Democratization of American Judaism,” Coming to Terms with America: Essays on Jewish History, Religion, and Culture (Jewish Publication Society, 2021), 28–40; Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History, 2nd ed. (Yale University Press, 2019), 31–61.

  4. 4 Jacob R. Marcus, The Handsome Young Priest in the Black Gown: The Personal World of Gershom Seixas (American Jewish Archives, 1970); Thomas Kessner, “Gershom Mendes Seixas: His Religious ‘Calling’, Outlook and Competence,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 58, no. 4 (1969): 445–471; David de Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone (Columbia University Press, 1952), 345–375.

  5. 5 “On Wearing of the Tallith, 1825” in Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, The Jews of the United States 1790–1840: A Documentary History (Columbia University Press, 1963), II: 533–534.

  6. 6 Sarna, American Judaism, 12–20.

  7. 7 Sarna, Coming to Terms with America, 29–32; Edwin Wolf 2nd and Maxwell Whiteman, The History of the Jews of Philadelphia from Colonial Times to the Age of Jackson (Jewish Publication Society, 1956), 237.

  8. 8 Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale University Press, 1989), 6, 64.

  9. 9 Sarna, American Judaism, 52–53; Edward Davis, The History of Rodeph Shalom Congregation, Philadelphia, 1802–1926 (Edward Stern, 1926), 11–14; Jacob R. Marcus, United States Jewry 1776–1985, 4 vols. (Wayne State University Press, 1989–1993), I: 222–223, 238.

  10. 10 “Division in the New York Community, 1825,” in Blau & Baron, Documentary History, 549–545; Hyman B. Grinstein, The Rise of the Jewish Community of New York (Jewish Publication Society, 1945), 40–49. The standard history of B’nai Jeshurun is Israel Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York: B’nai Jeshurun, 1825–1925 (Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, 1930); see also Moshe Davis, “The Synagogue in American Judaism: A Study of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, New York City,” Two Generations in Perspective: Notable Events and Trends, 1896–1956, ed. Harry Schneiderman (Monde Publishers, 1957), 210–235.

  11. 11 “Constitution of Chevra Chinuck Nearim, 1825" (partial excerpt), Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, Jews of the United States 1790-1840: A Documentary History, vol. 2 (Columbia University Press, 1963), 542–544.

  12. 12 Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York, 51–55; David and Tamar De Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World: Portrait of Shearith Israel 1654–1954 (Columbia University Press, 1955), 436–438.

  13. 13 Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York, 56; https://bj.org/aug–26–1826–the–synagogues–first–building–was–a–church/.

  14. 14 Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York, 55–56.

  15. 15 Sarna, American Judaism, 57.

  16. 16 Sarna, American Judaism, 59–60.

  17. 17 Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York, 96, 110–153; Zev Eleff, Who Rules the Synagogue? Religious Authority and the Formation of American Judaism (Oxford University Press, 2016), 90–102; Sarna, American Judaism, 95–96; Bertram W. Korn, Eventful Years and Experiences: Studies in Nineteenth Century American Jewish History (American Jewish Archives, 1954), 40–42, 99–108.

  18. 18 On this theme, see Jonathan D. Sarna, “The American Rabbinate on the Cusp of Change: Gustav Gottheil’s Seventieth Birthday Dinner in 1897,” Yearning to Breathe Free: Jews in Gilded Age America, eds. Adam Mendelsohn and Jonathan D. Sarna (Princeton University Library, 2022), 444–446.

  19. 19 Morris J. Raphall, Bible View of Slavery. A Discourse….(Rudd & Carleton, 1861), online at https://www.loc.gov/item/11011703/; Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell, Lincoln and the Jews: A History (NYU Press, 2025), 55–59, 74–75.

  20. 20 Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York, 153–158 (quote from p. 157).

  21. 21 Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Debate Over Mixed Seating in the American Synagogue,” in The American Synagogue, ed. Jack Wertheimer, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), 363–394.

  22. 22 Salomon had been involved in an earlier 1844 lawsuit involving voting rights within the congregation; see Leo Hershkowitz, “‘Those Ignorant Immigrants’ and the B’nai Jeshurun Schism,” American Jewish History 70 (December 1980): 168–179.

  23. 23 Solomon v. Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, New York Court of Common Pleas, 1875; 48 Howard’s Practice 263 (1875); New York Times (July 10, 1875), 2; Jewish Messenger (July 16, 1875), 4–5. Zev Eleff found documents on the case in the New York County Clerk Archives; see his Who Rules the Synagogue, 274n78.

  24. 24 The Jewish World (London), August 6, 1875, 5; Gustav Gottheil in Jewish Messenger (August 6, 1875), 4.