![]() Dedication ceremonies for the newly constructed sanctuary building began on September 23, 1921. He emphasized Jewish content in his sermons, shying away from politics and other secular topics. Rabbi Schwartz himself planned many of the construction details for the sanctuary, including the pulpit, the pews, designs and themes for the stained glass windows, and the menorah. During construction of the second building, services were held in the community hall and the congregation was named Washington Boulevard Temple of B’nai Abraham Zion. Two days later, the cornerstone for the sanctuary building was laid. A building containing a community hall, the first ten Sunday School rooms, an office, and a rabbi’s study was completed and dedicated on November 12, 1920. There were only two teachers and Rabbi Schwartz considered the congregation to be somewhat “neglected.” With the community hall building to be constructed first, the congregation moved into temporary quarters in a nearby church.Ĭonstruction of the buildings progressed slowly with delays caused by labor problems, material shortages, and, even after the merger, insufficient funds. As the new building (really two buildings, the first to be built was to be used for a community hall, offices, and classrooms and the second for the sanctuary) was being built, the congregation had about 175 to 200 members and a very small Sunday School. But the problems eventually subsided thanks to the loving tenacity of Rabbi Schwartz and his wife Charlotte along with a group of dedicated and visionary leaders, who were determined to keep the congregation together. Given the tensions at the time, one might have predicted that the two factions would never work things out, leading to dissolution of the merged congregation. The Bohemians were in control numerically and financially and they demonstrated it and were proud of it,” Schwartz wrote in his autobiography. He learned that, “(t)he membership of the B’nai Abraham branch was entirely of Bohemian background, and that of Zion a mixture of East European and German. Instead, what he found was a heap of building materials on a vacant lot. When he arrived in Chicago, Rabbi Schwartz expected to find the new synagogue building in an advanced stage of construction. He did well at this “tryout” and promptly accepted an offer to become the Congregation’s rabbi. Rabbi Schwartz was asked to officiate at High Holy Days services. In the summer of 1920, Rabbi Samuel Schwartz was recommended to Henry Lurie, the congregation’s financial secretary and apparently its “voice,” seemingly a one-man selection committee. The first rabbi of the newly merged Congregation B’nai Abraham Zion was Max Merritt, but his relationship with the members was not a happy one and before construction of the new building started, he left to take a position in Montreal. The two congregations merged in 1919 marked by a celebratory service on April 25th. B’nai Abraham leaders may have seen the merger as an opportunity to raise the necessary funds for construction of the new building while saving money by operating one synagogue instead of two. The exact rationale underlying the merger proposal has been lost through time but it seems likely that B’nai Abraham planning ran into fund-raising realities. Just who first proposed the merger is unknown but B’nai Abraham member Charles Benesch was one of its foremost proponents. In the midst of planning, a merger of the two congregations was proposed. In 1918, B’nai Abraham purchased a lot at the corner of Washington Boulevard and Karlov Avenue and began making plans to erect a new synagogue on that site. At the time, Zion Congregation and B’nai Abraham Congregation were the only two synagogues west of the Chicago River.įor almost fifty years, B’nai Abraham and Zion, both with growing memberships and influenced by the inexorable movement of their members west, made several roughly parallel moves into larger and larger buildings on the West Side. The transformation from an Orthodox to a Reform congregation was underway at least by early 1878 when the synagogue purchased a small organ from another congregation. B’nai Abraham was formed from ad hoc minyans that in the beginning gathered in various rented halls and churches. ![]() Zion was one of only two synagogues in Chicago to escape the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Zion initially held services in a rented Baptist Church until its first building was erected on Des Plaines Street between Madison and Washington Streets. Oak Park Temple began its history as the product of a merger between two congregations on Chicago’s West Side: Zion Congregation, founded in 1864 by Rabbi Bernhard Felsenthal, an immigrant and leader in the burgeoning Reform movement in the U.S., and B’nai Abraham Congregation, originally an Orthodox shul on the southwest side established in 1873.
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