In 2025, our congregation celebrated the 178th anniversary of our congregation and on December 14, rededicated our 101-year-old sanctuary in a beautiful and heartfelt celebration of its physical and spiritual attributes. Underlying all of this has been the idea that KAM Isaiah Israel has a long history that is worthy of note and honor. But what is that history? How did the congregation come to be and how has it developed and changed over time?
In 1997-98, during the celebration of the congregation’s sesquicentennial, an eight-member History Committee wrote a decade-by-decade history of KAMII, publishing one chapter roughly each month. The Committee relied extensively on the congregational archives, which include a huge written record of the congregation’s activities over time.
Especially crucial to the History Committee’s efforts were the weekly bulletins of KAM, Isaiah-Israel, and KAMII. They graphically told the story of congregational growth and change. And for the history of our congregation during the second half of the twentieth century, the Committee had the most important resource of all: congregants and rabbis who were willing to be interviewed about what they had experienced during their time in the congregation.
The result was a history in 16 chapters. As the three members of the History Committee from 1997-98 who are still active in the congregation, we believe that the story that our committee told almost 30 years ago has stood the test of time and is worth reading again or, for many current congregants, for the first time. Our congregation does, indeed, have a fascinating, rich, and meaningful history that is well worth learning.
Our effort nearly 30 years ago was certainly not perfect. We grimace every time we look at the typos that we missed. Substantively, there are points at which we wonder if we might have emphasized something more or less than we did, but as with any written history, this one reflects the time in which it was written.
So we start with the aptly named Chapter 1, “In the Beginning.” It depicts the Kohn brothers’ successful campaign in 1847 to convert a Jewish burial society into a congregation which could hire a shochet so that their mother would have kosher meat. It describes the formation of B’nai Sholom in 1852 as an offshoot of KAM, which 72 years later would reconnect and evolve into Isaiah Israel congregation. Chapter 1 also recounts the arrival at KAM of its inaugural scholar-in-residence, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise. And the chapter closes with the intriguing story of our first major foray into social justice.
Jerry Meites, Joan Pomaranc, and Mark Mandle