B'nai Jacob Synagogue

The B'nai Jacob Synagogue was formally established in 1897 or maybe as early as 1894 when the following charter members-Abraham Frankel, Abraham Boiarsky, Fishel Boiarsky, Sol Cohen, Wolf Beckenstein, Jacob Gluck, Isaac Pimpstein, Louis Frank, Julius Nearman, Israel Cohen, A.P. Silverstein, Louis Ruffner, Isaac Padlifsky, Solomon Hark, Max Slotnick... , Jacob Polen, and Ben Melman organized to form a congregation for worship in accordance with Jewish traditional practice. For the preceding ten years occasional services were held, at first in private homes and later in a rented hall on Kanawha and Summers Street, by the few orthodox Jews who had migrated to Charleston from Eastern European communities. The first Cantor and teacher of Hebrew employed by the congregation was the Rev. Samuel Friedman who served from 1895 to 1930. By 1908 the congregation, numbering some sixty odd members, had outgrown its limited quarters on Washington and Court Streets. In that year it purchased the vacated State Street Methodist Church on State and Court Streets. This new facility provided for expanded religious, educational and social activities. It served the congregation for the next forty-two years, when the congregation grew to some four hundred members. The first ordained Rabbi of the congregation was Nachman Heller who served from 1904 to 1912. He was succeeded in turn by Rabbi Leon Spitz, M. Kasplander, Sol Weinreb, Jack Friedman, followed by Rabbi Samuel Cooper, who passed away January 2, 2006, from 1932 to 1981. Rabbi Cooper was succeeded by Rabbi Chaim Landau who served from 1981-1986, followed by our present Rabbi, Victor Urecki who took over the pulpit in 1986. Other religious functionaries who served the Congregation over the years were Rebbe Philip Cohen, I.J. Rubin, Rev. N. Silverman, Rev. Alter Freedman, Kalman Shore , who served from 1919 until his death in 1954, Cantors Oschry, David Wolfe and the late Paul Reiss who held his post from 1949 until his death in 1968. Rabbi Cooper was assisted by Rev. Benjamin ...Read More