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Cleveland's First Jewish Burial |
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| Alexander Kahnweiler • Friday, August 7, 1840 | ||
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Cleveland's First Jewish Burial |
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| Alexander Kahnweiler • Friday, August 7, 1840 | ||
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I know no better story from our early Jewish history than this tale of our first burial. It is worth rereading and retelling. The first published account of this event was 16 years later, on August 20, 1856 in The Israelite. Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise learned of it from Simson Thorman who had led the Israelitic Society. It is also mentioned in histories of our Jewish community by Lloyd Gartner and Alan Peskin. By using information in the deed to the Willet Street Cemetery this page is the first to reveal the tension on August 7, 1840 when our pioneers faced their greatest challenge. Here's the story. Arnold Berger |
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The line above in the Access Jewish Cleveland Cemetery Database shows who is buried in the first grave in our first Jewish cemetery. His given name was Alexander, a name given to Jewish boys since 329 BCE. (explanation). |
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Alexander |
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His surname was Kahnweiler, which identified him as a Cohen. Our searches, including old Willet Street Cemetery records at Mayfield Cemetery, have not found a document with his name. |
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The author and the original Kahnweiler
headstone |
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The burial of Alexander
Kahnweiler In the 1840s and 1850s many young Jewish men began their lives here working as peddlers. They hoped to save money, then open a small store, marry and raise a family. That was a dream that life in Europe did not support. It was a vision so compelling they would leave family and friends and come here to pursue it. On Thursday; August 6 or perhaps Friday, August 7, 1840, there were more than a few Jews here when a wagon arrived, its Christian driver asking where the Jews were. The wagon held the body of Alexander Kahnweiler. The driver explained that he had been found dead in their rural area. We know he was Jewish and thought you would wish to bury him in the custom of your people. The Jews who took charge of the body knew Alexander. He was a young man from Bavaria who worked as a peddler. saving to bring his wife here. Son of a rabbi and Shabbat-observant, he would not sell on Saturdays. Many of his customers respected their Sabbath and wouldn't buy on Sundays. Alexander would return to Cleveland on Friday afternoon, stay here Saturday and Sunday, then Monday morning, his pack loaded with goods, he would leave for a rural area where there were no stores. Alexander's friends, shocked and grieving, now began to worry. Not about how to bury him, for in those days there were no people to hire to perform a Jewish burial. As it had been in Bavaria, it would be a personal service by members of the community. They knew what to do. They also knew where they would bury him, for recently their Israelitic Society (modeled after the Israelitische Gemeinde many had known in Unsleben, Bavaria) had agreed to buy for their burial ground a one acre lot on Willet Street, a half mile west of the Cuyahoga River. They lived downtown in the Haymarket area where our baseball stadium stands today. The burial ground was two miles away ─ a 40-minute walk or only 20 minutes if you could drive, which meant you had a horse and carriage. Though Jewish tradition called for prompt burial, they could not do that until the cemetery land was legally theirs. The land owner, Josiah Barber, may have required full payment ($100, about $3,700 today) before he would go to the county office where land records were kept and had his deed of sale to the Israelitic Society recorded. The history texts say that the burial was soon after we acquired our burial ground. The deed tells a more exciting story. The first burial was not weeks or days after we had a burial ground. It was on the same day the burial ground became ours, August 7, 1840. The deed (see a copy on our pages) shows that Josiah Barber came to the county recorder on Public Square on Thursday, August 6 (probably in the afternoon) and that the deed was recorded on Friday August 7 (presumably in the morning). Now they could bury Alexander Kahnweiler before sundown that same day, Friday, August 7, 1840, when Shabbat and Tisha B'Av, the most tragic day of the Jewish year, would begin. That evening, with Alexander Kahnweiler now laid to rest in their Jewish burial ground, these pioneers could welcome Shabbat with the confidence of having done their religious duty and knowing they had given the highest form of charity: a gift with no expectation of thanks. This had been a day to remember. Many now thought of themselves as people of loving kindness. You ask how I can say that. Because the next year when those pioneers formed our first congregation they named it Anshe Chesed which means people of loving kindness. In this story of Cleveland's first Jewish burial are the dramatic elements of a play, cantata or short opera It is a tale that should be told and re-told. Perhaps some day a Jewish composer will enrich us with such a work. Arnold Berger
August 5, 2023 |
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The first
published report of the first burial In the August 20, 1858 issue of The Israelite (later called The American Israelite) editor Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise writes about his visit here. He includes Simson Thorman's memory of the first burial of 18 years earlier.
Rabbi Wise's account has the wrong date. It was on the 8th of Av. The 9th was Shabbat, when burials are not permitted. As for the surname, we believe Thorman said Kahnweiler, but Rabbi Wise heard or wrote Kanweiler, or perhaps the "h" was lost when the rabbi's notes were set in type. |
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Learn more:
The economic importance of
Jewish peddlers
Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise
Kahnweiler or Kanweiler?
The 1840 deed to the Willet
Street Cemetery |
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Credits:
Last revised July
30, 2025 |
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