Early History
Beth Hamedrash Hagadol was founded by Eastern European Jews in 1852 as Beth Hamedrash (literally "House of Study", but used colloquially in Yiddish as the term for a synagogue). The founding rabbi, Abraham Joseph Ash, was born in Siemiatycze (then in Congress Poland) in 1813 or 1821. He immigrated to New York City in 1851 or 1852. The first Eastern European Orthodox rabbi to serve in the United States, Ash "rejected the reformist tendencies of the German Jewish congregations" there. He soon organized a minyan (prayer quorum) of like-minded Polish Jews, and by 1852 began conducting services. Though the membership consisted mostly of Polish Jews, it also included "Lithuanians, two Germans, and an Englishman." For the first six years of the congregation's existence, Ash was not paid for his work as rabbi and instead earned a living as a peddler.
The congregation moved frequently in its early years: in 1852 it was located at 83 Bayard Street, then at Elm and Canal, and from 1853 to 1856 in a hall at Pearl between Chatham and Centre Streets. In 1856, with the assistance of the philanthropist Sampson Simson and wealthy Sephardi Jews who sympathized with the traditionalism of the congregation's members, the congregation purchased a Welsh chapel on Allen Street. The synagogue, which had "a good Hebrew library", was a place both of prayer and study, included a rabbinic family court, and, according to historian and long-time member Judah David Eisenstein, "rapidly became the most important center for Orthodox Jewish guidance in the country."
Synagogue dues were collected by the shamash (the equivalent of a sexton or beadle), who augmented his salary by working as a glazier and running a small food concession stand in the vestibule. There mourners who came to recite kaddish could purchase a piece of sponge cake and small glass of brandy for ten cents (today $
{Inflation} - Amount must not have "." prefix: .1. 2.60).
Beth Hamedrash was the prototypical American synagogue for early immigrant Eastern European Jews, who began entering the United States in large numbers only in the 1870s. They found the synagogues of the German Jewish immigrants who preceded them to be unfamiliar, both religiously and culturally. Russian Jews in particular had been more excluded from Russian society than were German Jews from German society, for both linguistic and social reasons. Unlike German Jews, the Jews who founded Beth Hamedrash viewed both religion and the synagogue as central to their lives. They attempted to re-create in Beth Hamedrash the kind of synagogue they had belonged to in Europe.
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