Congregation Rodeph Shalom of Philadelphia, founded in 1795, is the oldest Ashkenazic synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. It is noted historically for its leadership of the Reform Judaism among American Hebrew congregations, for its spiritual influence upon international Jewry, and for its unique 1927 Moorish Revival building on North Broad Street, on the National Register of Historic Places for many decades.
Origins and early history
Founded informally as a minyan of ten worshipers in 1795 by Jews from Germany, Holland, and Poland, Rodeph Shalom adopted its first Articles of Association in 1802, and in 1812 was the first synagogue in Pennsylvania to receive a corporate charter. Its records were kept in Yiddish until 1810 and in German until 1830, and it was known mainly as the congregation of recent immigrants until 1840. The congregation differentiated itself from Congregation Mikveh Israel mainly by offering Philadelphia Jews of northern European origin membership at reduced rates and, in cases of hardship, gratis. Welfare provisions were prominent features of Rodeph Shalom's constitution; rabbis were permitted to extend aid of up to five dollars to any sick or poor person, for example. But there was a price for these amenities: absence from Friday evening or Saturday morning services was punishable by fine, excused only by sickness or travel out of town.
Services were held during the congregation's first seven decades in a variety of locations: initially in a building on Margaretta Street before Second; after 1820 at 1 Bread (Moravian) Street; by 1830 at 7 Pear Alley (Chancellor Street); and until 1840 at 15 Vine Street and at Fifth and Cherry. Relatively late in its history, then, the congregation finally built its first building in 1866, a Moorish Revival sanctuary on North Broad Street designed by Philadelphia architect Frank Furness.
Lay readers conducted services at Rodeph Shalom during its first decades. Mayer Ullmann, co-writer of the congregation's first by-laws in 1810 that made no provision for a paid leader, or hazzan, was the first appointed baal tefilla, or leader of services. He was joined in 1818 by Abraham Levy, who conducted Sabbath and holiday services. The first formally appointed hazzan of Rodeph Shalom was Charleston, South Carolina, native Rabbi Jacob Lippman, who was forced to supplement his annual salary of $30 for part-time service by keeping a second-hand clothing store on South Street.
Of course in this era, the number of Philadelphia Jews was relatively small. In 1822, only 225 foreign-born, mostly Ashkenazic Jews resided in Philadelphia and were outnumbered by those born in America. Recent immigrants did not outnumber native-born Jewish Philadelphians until 1830, but these Jews, far fewer than one thousand in the burgeoning town, assimilated so handily to life in America that they presented few problems to either their adopted city or to their Jewish neighbors.
Becoming Reform: Marcus Jastrow
The Reverend Isaac Leeser, chosen by Congregation Mikveh Israel in 1829 as its hazzan, began to preach in English in 1831, inviting other Hebrew congregations to share his vision of Jewish ecumenism and beginning a period of institutional adaptation to the changing physical, educational, and economic circumstances of modern Jews in America and around the world that would lead directly to the rise of the Reform movement. Leeser founded the first Jewish Sunday school in 1838 and the Occident and American Jewish Advocate, a monthly international Jewish periodical, in 1868.
A new brand of Jewish spiritual leader, the ordained rabbi with a university doctorate of divinity bearing the title "Reverend Doctor", arrived on the Rodeph Shalom scene in 1853, when the congregation was the first in the city to hire one of the new breed, Rabbi Bernard L. Illoway, as rabbi, preacher, and Sunday school principal. Illoway worked alongside the Rev. Jacob Frankel, who had joined the staff in 1849, but later departed in 1862 following his appointment as the first official Jewish chaplain in the US Army, in part through the efforts of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites.