More Tiffany from Richmond.
More Tiffany from Richmond. This time, it's just one window. What's unique is that it is in a synagogue. This is Congregation Beth Ahabah. They trace their founding to 1789, originally as Beth Shalome, which was Sephardic. Eventually, they became a German Reform congregation as Beth Ahabah in 1841.
The window shows Mt. SInai erupting. Clearly artistic license, as Mt. Sinai is not a volcano, but it does make for a beautiful and intense window. The synagogue is a lovely neoclassical building. Richmond was clearly very into neoclassical architecture at one time. The docent also noted that the synagogue has a Holocaust Torah which was rescued from the Nazis and restored after WWII.
While it's clear from their museum that they had some interaction with the Confederacy, not avoidable in Richmond I would think, when I asked they said that mostly they just tried to keep a low profile at the time. Interestingly, when I looked up more info there's a suggestion that it's just a fact that any prominent white families would very likely have had household servants at that time, and in Richmond that meant slaves. There's also documented history that this would have included Jewish families.
There seemed to be no specific problems for the Jewish community in RIchmond from the time of their founding until the Confederacy started losing. Then some people started blaming the Jewish community and suggesting they were traitors and the usual anti-semitism. I didn't find any information on whether anyone acted on the anti-semitism.
Also, the only Jewish military cemetery in the US is in Richmond. It was an area set aside as a section of the Jewish cemetery under the auspices of the Hebrew Ladies’ Memorial Association in 1866 for Jewish Confederate veterans. The cemetery was/is founded by and under the care of Beth Shalome and Beth Ahabah. The HLMA also apparently took care of Memorial Day observances at least through 1930.
So it's probably safe to say that it's complicated.
The window shows Mt. SInai erupting. Clearly artistic license, as Mt. Sinai is not a volcano, but it does make for a beautiful and intense window. The synagogue is a lovely neoclassical building. Richmond was clearly very into neoclassical architecture at one time. The docent also noted that the synagogue has a Holocaust Torah which was rescued from the Nazis and restored after WWII.
While it's clear from their museum that they had some interaction with the Confederacy, not avoidable in Richmond I would think, when I asked they said that mostly they just tried to keep a low profile at the time. Interestingly, when I looked up more info there's a suggestion that it's just a fact that any prominent white families would very likely have had household servants at that time, and in Richmond that meant slaves. There's also documented history that this would have included Jewish families.
There seemed to be no specific problems for the Jewish community in RIchmond from the time of their founding until the Confederacy started losing. Then some people started blaming the Jewish community and suggesting they were traitors and the usual anti-semitism. I didn't find any information on whether anyone acted on the anti-semitism.
Also, the only Jewish military cemetery in the US is in Richmond. It was an area set aside as a section of the Jewish cemetery under the auspices of the Hebrew Ladies’ Memorial Association in 1866 for Jewish Confederate veterans. The cemetery was/is founded by and under the care of Beth Shalome and Beth Ahabah. The HLMA also apparently took care of Memorial Day observances at least through 1930.
So it's probably safe to say that it's complicated.
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