Baltimore Hebrew Congregation

Baltimore Hebrew Congregation is a synagogue and Jewish community in Baltimore. It is affiliated with the Reform Judaism movement.

Originally named Nidche Yisroel,[1] the synagogue was founded in 1830, and for the first fifteen years of its existence, services were held in a small room above a local grocery. It was originally an Orthodox synagogue, but became Reform officially in 1871. The pressure from the Congregation for modernization was such that its Orthodox first rabbi, Abraham Rice, resigned his position in 1849 over this question.

In 1845, the congregation moved to Lloyd Street under the new name, Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. The new synagogue was dedicated by the Rev. S. M. Isaacs of New York and the Rev. Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia, together with the ministers of the congregation, Abraham Rice and A. Ansell (Anshel).[1] That building, the Lloyd Street Synagogue, the third-oldest synagogue building in the United States, is now preserved as a museum. As the city of Baltimore and its Jewish population continued to grow, so too did the number of congregants, and thus also the size of its endowment. Thus, in 1891, the congregation moved to Madison Avenue, where it built a brand new building. This building, the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation Synagogue, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The congregation finally moved to Park Heights Avenue on the border of Baltimore City and Baltimore County, as the Jewish population fled to the countryside following the Second World War.