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6 | JAN. 11—JAN.24,2013 | www.ReporterNewspapers.net
Synagogue the ‘mother ship’
for local Jewish programs
BV JOE EARLE
joeearle@reporternewspapers. net
Bobby Ezor remembers why he
joined the Ahavath Achim Synagogue
34 years ago.
“They offered us a free membership
if we married there,” the Buckhead law
yer recalled. “We’ve been
members ever since.”
This month, Ezor re
pays his debt. He has as
sembled a documentary
film, titled “Reunion, Re
newal, Ruach,” that will
serve as the centerpiece of
a celebration of the Buck-
head-based congregation’s
125th anniversary and its
contributions to metro At
lanta and its Jewish com
munity.
“I’ve been here for a rel
atively short time,” Ezor
said over lunch at a Buckhead
shop recently, “but I came
to realize this place has
touched this community
in more ways than you can
imagine.”
The congregation,
known to many simply
by its initials, “A.A,” once
was among the largest Jew
ish congregations in the
country, members say, and
it still claims more than
1,000 families on its rolls.
A.A.’s sanctuary, located at
Peachtree Battle Avenue
and Northside Drive, seats
3,000.
But it traces its 19th-century begin
nings to a small group of Eastern Eu
ropean emigrants who settled in Atlan
ta in the 1880s. They didn’t fit in with
the German families who established
the city’s first synagogue, The Tem
ple, in the 1860s, so they started their
own synagogue, said Doris Goldstein,
a member of the Ahavath
Achim since 1963 and au
thor of “From Generation
to Generation,” a histo
ry of the synagogue pub
lished for its centennial.
“You had this estab
lished Jewish commu
nity of 400 to 500 peo
ple. These were people
who assimilated to a cer
tain extent,” Goldstein
said. “Then along comes
an influx of these funny
looking people with long
beards and black coats.
They spoke Yiddish That’s how
A.A got started.”
A handful of men orga
nized the new synagogue,
the city’s second, in 1887,
she said. Ahavath Achim,
the name they chose for
it, translates as “love of
brothers” or “brotherly
love,” she said.
“Of the original 18
members, only six had
permanent addresses and
were listed in the 1888
edition of the city direc
tory,” she wrote in a book
published to coincide with
A.A.’s 120th anniversary. The rest, she
said, probably lived in rented rooms
or with family members. “These East
ern European Jews wanted to replicate
Bobby Ezor
sandwich
Doris Goldstein
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