Constitution announced:
The Jewish Synagogue has just called Dr. E. B. M. Browne, who lectured here last season, and is well remembered by our citizens, to take charge of the church. Dr. Browne is a gentleman of fine culture, of strong vigorous mental constitution, and of blameless character. He will prove to be a proper head of the large and influential Jewish population in this city. He will take charge of the church about the 1st of September. The church building, a handsome and commodious one, will be finished by the time Dr. Browne comes to take charge. As is usual with this thrifty and clear-headed people, the church will be paid for when it is finished.
As we shall see, the closing statement was slightly inaccurate.
Congregation and Community
Browne arrived in Atlanta on the heels of an incident in which the New York banker Joseph Seligman and his family had been refused accommodations at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York. This incident was the first widely publicized act of discrimination against Jews at a luxury resort hotel, and marked the rise of what John Higham characterizes as an era of social and intellectual antisemitism. The story filled long front-page columns in the Atlanta Constitution, where a progressive young reporter, Henry W. Grady, soon became editor and partial owner, and by the mid-1880s the foremost spokesman for the New South creed. Grady brought the city forward to what promoters later characterized as “a city too busy to hate.” Whether he and Browne ever met is unknown, but Grady’s beneficial influence was quickly felt especially by the local Jewish community unnerved by the new expression of antisemitism in New York.1
Atlanta’s Jews then numbered 525 within a total population of 35,000. About half of the Jews belonged to the ten-year-old Gemilath Chesed Kehillah Kodesh, or Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, subsequently known as The Temple. This small but highly visible Jewish population drew a disproportionate amount of positive public interest. As the Atlanta Constitution opined in 1870, “Among her most orderly, enterprising and public-spirited citizens, the Israelites of Atlanta may be justly classed. Some of them are ranked among our oldest and most respected business men. In our cosmopolitan city, but little of that general prejudice against Jews is ever demonstrated.”2
In 1875, reporting on the cornerstone laying ceremony for the city’s first synagogue at the corner of Forsyth and Garnett Street, the Atlanta Daily News had proclaimed:
...nothing is so indicative of a city’s prosperity as to see an influx of Jews who come with the intention of living with you, and especially as they buy property and build among you, because they are a thrifty and progressive people who never fail to build up a town they settle in; and again because they make good citizens, pay their obligations promptly, never refuse to pay their taxes and are law-abiding... The solemnity and good order which prevails during the worship in their synagogue is worthy of imitation by many of us Gentile Christians.3
After Browne’s election, work resumed on the synagogue. The community—Jews and gentiles alike—gathered for its dedication on Friday, August 31, 1877. The elegant Moorish- style brick and stone structure boasted doors and bima (pulpit platform) of heavy walnut, jewel-like stained glass windows, plush carpets, and eight chandeliers that were “very handsome and of the latest patent.” Pillars of galvanized iron “in perfect imitation of red marble” upheld its interior arches along the sides of the sanctuary and bore inscriptions from the Psalms in gold leaf. No specified balcony for the women existed because the congregation had already introduced family seating. A gallery was provided for the choir directly above the entrance.4
Newspapers described the dedication as “one of the most impressive scenes that ever occurred in Atlanta.” Due to widespread interest in the building the congregation had sent invitations to some three hundred dignitaries and others who were not members. Fully an hour before festivities were scheduled to begin, a standing room only crowd braved the exhausting heat of the late summer afternoon which, according to reports, had been made tolerable indoors by good ventilation. The ceremony, standard for such occasions, began at 3:45 PM with a fifteen minute musical prelude performed by a string band. At four o’clock the procession began, led by President Levi Cohen, in formal attire, alongside the new rabbi. Browne wore a billowing black academic robe, white stock tie, narrow knee-length tallit (prayer shawl, in this case abbreviated symbolic version) and six-inch high cushion shaped hat, traditional among English rabbis.
According to custom, the board of trustees and the building committee immediately followed them, after which two of the oldest men in the congregation carried the Torahs. Then marched fifteen young girls dressed in white, their leader bearing a velvet cushion upon which rested the key to the building.
When all had ascended the bima and the key presented to building committee chairman Joseph T. Eichberg the choir sang an appropriate selection, after which Eichberg handed the key to Cohen. In accepting Cohen reviewed the congregation’s history, including the fact that only fifty-five members could afford to contribute to the building, which left a small debt that would soon be paid. He also thanked the many Christians who had contributed, as well as the ladies of the congregation who by sponsoring a fair had raised $3000 and purchased carpeting for the synagogue.
Following Cohen’s acceptance, Eichberg opened the ark and the organ emitted solemn chords while the elders set the sacred scrolls in their places within the ark. Browne read a relevant portion from Scripture after which the choir sang the hymn “Praise the Lord.” Only then did Browne deliver his dedicatory sermon and begin the regular Friday evening service.5
Browne based his sermon on Genesis 28:17, the passage in which Jacob awakens from his dream and exclaims, “How awe inspiring is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and that is the gate of heaven.” With the stated intention of defining modern Judaism and how it differs from Christianity, Browne developed a theme that he had used years before, in Quincy, Illinois, emphasizing the importance that Reform placed on rationality and ecumenism. He argued that all religions have three stages: the mythical or legendary, which reflects people’s initial attempts to understand creation and is conscientiously followed by future generations; the theological, beginning with the establishment of a group as spiritual guide to think and pray for others; and the third—which he did not name—when individual reason motivates people to think for themselves. According to the Reform rabbi, this final stage differentiates Judaism from Christianity by the tenet that reason is the only mediator between God and man universally. “The sooner a religion discards the belief in a mediating prophet,” he said:
the sooner it abandons the idea of its own superiority above its neighbours in its own conception, and in the eyes of God, the nearer we are to truth; the less we maintain that our church is the only “house of God,” the more it will become the dwelling of our Lord. Judaism, I mean pure Judaism, the Judaism of Deuteronomy, is an exception to the rule of passing these stages. We have no theological system. True, we had for the time being priests and prophets, but they were the teachers of our people and nothing else.6
In a lengthy, lyrical metaphor about nature, Browne spoke of watching “the wild play of the billows breaking their fury against the rocky cliff,” and asked rhetorically if it were nothing more than “the sport of chance.” He followed with another question, tracing billows to tide, tide to storms, storms to the rotation of the earth and influences of the moon, then to the planets, comets and fixed stars, finally declaring that all “are only so many steps in the ladder which will bring you, by virtue of those angelic messengers of reason, in communion with God... returning again to you in the very same steps, bringing along the godly blessings of satisfaction to the inquiring soul....”
Browne concluded with a return to his text, recalling the rabbinic tradition that every good deed became an angel and declaring that Jacob’s angels on the ladder were his own good deeds ascending to heaven and returning to him. Everyone has such a ladder near at hand, Browne said, admonishing his listeners to look for them in Nature, “the great and only ‘house of God.’” Since
