Congregation Beth Israel Abraham Voliner - 19th and 20th Centuries

19th and 20th Centuries

Congregation Beth Israel Abraham Voliner (also Congregation Beth Israel Abraham & Voliner or Congregation Beth Israel Abraham and Voliner or BIAV) was established in Kansas City, Missouri as the Tefereth Israel (or Tiferes Israel ) (Hebrew for "Splendor of Israel") Congregation in 1894. It grew out of a prayer group called Etz Chaim (Hebrew for "Tree of Life"), which began gathering for minyans (prayer quorums) in 1890. In 1905, it moved to a building at Admiral Boulevard and Tracy, and later merged with Beth Abraham and Beth Hamedrash Hagadol congregations. In 1918, the rabbi was S.M. Bayarksy. The congregation moved to a building at 83rd and Holmes in 1959, and in 1960 merged with Voliner Anshei Sefard, when it took on its current name.

As Kansas City's Orthodox community moved from Missouri to Kansas, Beth Israel Abraham Voliner followed. In 1987 it opened a branch in Overland Park, and in 1994 it moved to its current location there at 9900 Antioch Road, the former Overland Park Baptist Temple. The move attracted younger families, "and more Bar and Bat Mitzvahs were held in 1999 than in the entire previous decade."

Morey Schwartz served as the congregation's rabbi from 1991 until 2000, when he and his family moved to Israel. In the summer of 1997 he set up Kansas City's first kollel, a post-graduate institute for advanced studies of the Talmud and of rabbinic literature for Jewish men; it closed in 2005 due to a lack of funds.