him
to leave the city, he was jDresented Avith a medal by the Jewish community of Baltimore. He settled in San Francisco, Avhere he founded the first Jewish congregation on the Pacific Coast. He died in 1883, in Louisville, Ky. Moritz Henry Weil and Louis Hamburger, of Baltimore, served in the Mexican
War. first
A
company composed
entirely of Jews was formed, with Levi Benjamin as does not seem to have engaged in active service. With the increase of Baltimore's Jewish population, the congregations grew
lieutenant, but
steadily.
A
became
cliazan
it
few years after the organization of the "Stadt Schule," Joseph Jacobs at first the prayers were doubtless read by different members, for ;
they were all familiar with the orthodox service. Eev. I. Moses was cantor from 1835 to 1844. The congregation changed its quarters frequently; in 1837 it purchased a three-story brick dwelling at the southeast corner of Harrison Street and Etna Lane. Three years later Abraham Eice became its rabbi.
Abraham Eice was born, in 1800, at Gogsheim, near Wiirzburg, Germany. As a young student he was placed in the care of Eabbi Abraham Bing ; later he studied under Eabbi Wolf Hamburger. When he came to America in 1840, Eice declared that it was his mission to re-establish orthodoxy in America. Upon his arrival in New York he was persuaded by friends to go to Newport to reopen the synagogue there^ in the hope of re-establishing the Jewish community. Unsuccessful, he returned to New York, where he met Aaron Weglein, a native of Eice's birthplace Tind president of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. Weglein offered him the leadership of his congregation, and Eice thus became the first rabbi in Baltimore, beginning his ministry on Eosli ha-Shanah of 1840. The congregation could pay him only a small salary, and he kept a little drygoods store, observing thus the rabbinical injunction not to use the Torah as a spade to dig with, and the command to follow a worldly vocation besides studying and teaching the law. Eice was known in Germany and throughout the United States as a learned Talmudist, and was recognized as an authority, questions involving matters of ritual being referred to him for decision. He was a cripple, and is said not to have been particularly eloquent in the pulpit. There are men and women still living, however, who are thrilled by his name, and it is due largely to him that Baltimore was and, to some extent, still is, a stronghold of conservative Judaism. His learning, his sincere piety, his loving and lovable character gave him an influence which has not yet disappeared.
Eice found in Baltimore a fruitful soil for his labors, for the community was almost a unit in its orthodoxy, anxious to conform with every detail of the biblical
and rabbinical law. Almost a unit, but not quite; for in 1842 a number of young men, influenced by the Hamlnirg Temple Movement, and stimulated in part by an expression of Bice's orthodoxy, formed themselves into the Har Sinai Verein, for the purReform; Har pQgg qÂŁ giving expression to reform doctrines. In October the Verein organized a congregation, the first in America established as a EeCongregation. form Congregation. Services were held on Rosh ha-Shanah of 1842 in a public hall at what is now the southeast corner of Baltimore Street and Post"A number of persons attended, some to take part in the services, Office Avenue. some out of curiosity." Their orthodox brethren refusing to lend them a scroll of the law, the members of the Verein had to content themselves with an ordinary copy of the Bible. Joseph Simpson and A. T. Wachman read the service from the Hamburg prayer book; hymns from the Hamburg hymn book were sung to the accompaniment of a parlor organ. The society met for some time on Saratoga Street near Gay then it occupied, for several years, a room in the dwelling of Moses Hutzler, at ;
11