for humans to build one, but only to build gates to heaven in which they could erect ladders for the angels of good deeds to ascend. “Happy then that you have not called this the church of God,” he told his listeners, “but the congregation of the Sons of Benevolence. It is only one of the gates to heaven.”7
In his reference to the Judaism of Deuteronomy, typical of Reform belief, Browne indicated his rejection of laws later added by rabbinic tradition. As the synagogue’s design and the ceremonies surrounding its dedication were deliberately planned to reflect the melding of Jewish distinctiveness with American custom and environment, so did the rabbis gear their sermons to express unique aspects of Judaism while addressing the commonalty of Judaism with Christianity. All of it was a conscious effort to make their upwardly mobile congregants feel good about themselves and gain ever greater acceptance within society.
The congregation was not disappointed. The following day, the Atlanta Constitution reported the sermon as “a profound and admirable discourse, full of original ideas and characterized by a broad liberality which Christian churches would do well to imitate.” Such use of hyperbole by reviewers was standard in the newspapers of that era. So was the effort on the part of rabbis to preach ecumenism. This required keeping a delicate balance between one’s own belief and accepting the validity of others.8
Browne may well have equated the gates of heaven with the Gate City of the South, for Atlanta, impressed from the start by his oratorical skill and long list of academic degrees, quickly opened its arms to him and his family. He followed three other rabbis who briefly served the Atlanta congregation, each sharing some of his attributes. They typified the range of backgrounds and experience that rabbis then brought to the American hinterland.
David Burgheim, who came to Atlanta as its first rabbi in 1869, was like Browne in that he was a scholar, linguist, and avid student of early Christianity. He opened a secular school, the English German Academy, which historians believed to have been the immediate predecessor of the Atlanta Public Schools. During this period before the wide-scale advent of public education, many rabbis organized English-German-Hebrew academies—a reflection of the tripartite identity of their community—to supplement their pulpit incomes.
Burghein came to Atlanta from Nashville, and returned there after one year leaving Benjamin Aaron Bonnheim, whom he had hired to run his school, to serve as rabbi. Bonnheim remained for two more years, after which he moved to various cities, including Baltimore where he served as superintendent and resident physician at the Hebrew Hospital and Asylum. Like Browne, he had studied medicine and received his degree after coming to America.
Atlanta’s next rabbi was Lithuanian-born Henry Gersoni, a linguist, orator, author, and at times the editor of a newspaper. He allegedly converted to Catholicism in Europe but recanted after coming to America. Later denounced by Wise for his “venomous sarcasm” and opposition to the UAHC, Gersoni was best remembered in Atlanta for his admirable social qualities and cantorial skills. He too, like his predecessors, departed after two years.9
Although lack of funds had been a primary factor in Gersoni’s departure, Browne was not discouraged by the meagre offer of $1500 a year as compared to the $2500 that he had earned elsewhere. He and Sophie liked the South, she had close relatives in Atlanta, and the young couple longed for a permanent home. They settled first in temporary quarters at 46 East Hunter Street, uncomfortably close to the noise and soot of the railroad terminal, but satisfactory for the time being. After only three months, they announced their intention to remain in Atlanta and began planning a house of their own at 182 Forsyth Street, a lot next to the Temple which the congregation had purchased for a parsonage. It was a comfortable distance from the railroad and on the “Haas block,” so-called because several branches of that prominent family built their homes there. Among them were Sophie’s cousins, newlyweds Aaron and Frances (Fannie) Rich Haas.10
The Haas family was well established in Atlanta, Jacob having been the city’s first Jewish resident when he arrived in1844. His brother Herman came later with his wife and children, one of whom was Aaron. Their story bespeaks the comfortable position that Jews enjoyed in the general community, one that easily transferred to the Brownes.
Aaron Haas, long one of Atlanta’s most respected citizens, had emigrated from Europe as a child with his mother, sister of Sophie’s father, Moses Weil. They lived with the Weils in Evansville for two years while Aaron’s father, Herman, who had preceded them to America in order to earn money to bring them over, continued peddling until he could afford to take them south to Atlanta where his brother Jacob had arranged a partnership for him in a dry goods store. Soon Herman moved his family to Newnan, Georgia, some forty miles south, where he opened a wholesale grocery business. He later returned to Atlanta, went to Philadelphia to be within a larger Jewish community, and returned again to Atlanta after the Civil War. His son Aaron remained in Atlanta and gained fame as a twice captured war hero who ran the Union blockade to sell Southern cotton, the Confederates’ only source of income.
Aaron subsequently served as an alderman and in 1875 as the city’s first mayor pro tempore. He taught Sunday school in his bachelor quarters—a single room above his office—was among the founders of the congregation in 1867, and represented it at the UAHC convention in Philadelphia the summer of 1877. That same summer he married Fannie Rich, sister of the men whose dry goods business became Rich’s, the South’s largest department store. He currently headed the Gate City Lodge of B’nai B’rith, into which he promptly enrolled his cousin, the new rabbi.11
Browne, permanently settled, serving a young, vibrant and growing congregation, seemingly had all factors in place to make his impact on American Judaism. One of his first actions at the Temple was to reorganize its religious school, dividing it into four classes that met both on Saturdays and Sundays. The faculty consisted of himself, two other men and three women, one of whom was Sophie, fulfilling a role often expected of the rabbi’s wife. Of their thirty-eight students, fourteen were in high school. A large proportion of these were girls, which surprised Browne because it was unusual in those days for girls to continue their education to that level. He publicly commended the congregation for this commitment to learning.
As he had done in Evansville, Browne encouraged the formation of a “Young Israel’s Literary Association.” He also conducted a private, afternoon Hebrew school for boys at the synagogue, which the board had suggested as a means of supplementing his salary. He abandoned it after one year because of difficulty collecting tuition, after which the congregation continued it under board direction, supported by special dues.12
When Browne arrived the congregation had already initiated the ceremony of confirmation for girls and boys together at age fourteen, a custom early adopted by Reform as a recognition of gender equality in affirming Judaism when adolescents come of age. It still retained bar mitzvah for boys, as did most Reform congregations at that time, but also like the majority of others, discontinued the ceremony in the 1890s due to the influence of rabbis trained in radical Reform. The Temple reinstated bar mitzvah and added bat mitzvah for girls in 1973. As the Atlanta Constitution explained:
The Israelites of Atlanta, have never divided upon the question of orthodoxy and reformation. They are extremists on neither side. While many of the prayers and customs, if not applicable to the present age and the present conditions of the descendants of Jacob, are omitted... , they do not go as far in ignoring ancient traditional usages as do the extreme reformers in many other places.... 13
This statement expressed Browne’s beliefs. He led the congregation into mild reforms but rejected the more radical ones that were later instituted by his successor, David Marx. In Atlanta, as in most other cities, the changes developed gradually, instituted according to the wishes of the congregation’s leaders-- rabbi, president or both. Such positions and the opinions of those who held them in most communities underwent frequent reversals until the 1890s when rabbis trained in Reform at the Hebrew Union College became available. By 1877, the Temple had already enhanced its services with organ music and a mixed choir
