The “whys” and “wherefores” of the anomalies noted are perhaps for all and forever lost in the mists of time – however the founding premise that “happiness, health and well being” are the congregation’s heartbeat has for 140 years strong endured and remained abiding.
While there is a sketchy anecdote of the presence of Jews in Pittsfield as early as 1815, authenticated records set the date at 1857, when some thirty-five Jewish families could be found among the city’s population of about 6,000-plus individuals.
New to America, these poor peddlers, tailors, and dry-goods merchants sought to quench two thirsts: one for freedom, one for the building of Jewish life.
1869 Signatories, Lippman Kelm & his wife Rosa
For a dozen years, observing Orthodox ritual as best as their new situation would allow, these largely German and “German Poland” immigrants worshipped in members’ homes sans formal organization. But, having grown in security, by 1869 two small rooms of the aforementioned home of Charles M. Wolf, the ‘to try to get a man to daven for a sum not to exceed thirty-five dollars.’ In this initiative, records indicate that Anshe Amunim met with intermittent success.
However, as for living within the Jewish precepts of charity and sociability the congregation was perhaps more successful, with records noting such as: “five dollars to a stranger to get to Boston;” a taking of turns caring for the sick; the communal paying of expenses to have the meeting rooms cleaned; the gathering of funds to buy prayer books; the production of playlets, musicales, group songfests, and tableaus; and the serving of bountiful refreshments.
Having come from a German environment, within which the seeds of Reform Judaism had been planted, as the 1870s waxed Orthodoxy began to be abandoned in favor of a form of Judaic practice that the members of the Society deemed as more appropriate to American life. On September 14, 1879, the Society’s records indicate that the coming High Holydays observances “should be conducted in Reform style,” in a new prayer tradition called Minhag Amerika.
With increasing membership and improving economic status, by the early 1880s the now firmly Reform congregation felt the urge for expansion: the Society moved to better rooms on the corner of North and Fenn Street; Adullam Lodge-B’nai B’rith was founded, drawing most of its membership from Anshe Amunim; and on March 1, 1882, the congregation 
hired G.E. Harfeld as its first resident pastor.
Evidently not a rabbi, Harfeld was nevertheless charged and challenged with a widely ambitious schedule as “chasan, teacher, and lecturer,” and, in the protocol-light yesteryear, was referred to as “Mister” and “Reverend,” and noted to be head of the “Sunday School.”
With his assigned duties soon evidencing themselves as a case of “too much too soon,” Harfeld was asked to resign only two months after his appointment… and Anshe Amunim would not engage another resident spiritual leader until 1927.
However, in the intervening years – with services facilitated by the laity, visiting rabbis, and students from Hebrew Union College – the congregation flourished: The Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society was founded in 1882; a regular tuition-funded “Sunday School” opened with fifty pupils in 1887; the first confirmation class was conducted in 1889; in 1900 the congregation moved to the Melville Building at the corner of North and Melville Streets; in 1904 the Society joined the Union of American Hebrew
Congregations; and in 1907 the Society incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts “for the purpose of the establishment and maintenance of the public worship of God in accordance with the principles and doctrines of the Hebrew faith.”
While it is notable that two women were among the eleven Society members signing the incorporation document, from its beginnings women had been a motivating force at Anshe Amunim, a fact now made “official” by a by-law that reads: “Women shall be admissible to full membership.”
In the early through mid-1920s, new lay leadership became active in Anshe Amunim’s affairs and along with their interest came change: the still growing congregation moved to larger quarters on North Street; Rabbi David H. Gross, transient rabbis, and lay spiritual leadership served the congregation in the initial years of the decade; Rabbi Stephen S. Wise 
secured senior students to come to Pittsfield from the new Jewish Institute of Religion until 1927; the confirmation class became a recurring offering; the congregational Seder took root; the term “Temple” replaced “Society;” the “Temple Aid Society” became the successor of the “The Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society;” and a Jewish Institute of Religion student named Harry Kaplan came to lead Temple Anshe Amunim.
The arrival of Kaplan and his wife, Rebecca, further stimulated congregational life at Temple Anshe Amunim. Major events took place in rapid succession: the congregation took an option on a former Advent Church at Fenn and Willis Street, thus finally having a building of its own; shortly ordained, Rabbi Kaplan, in 1927, became the congregation’s first permanent spiritual leader in forty-five years; in an invigorated atmosphere and a growing pride in Jewish traditions and personal identification, previously unaffiliated Jews were drawn to Anshe Amunim; members were more willing to contribute both funds and time, and as social events burgeoned new congregational structures arose – among them a Temple Men’s Club.
Kaplan, who would leave the congregation in 1935 to become director of the Hillel Foundation at Ohio State University, had brought a new vigor to Anshe Amunim, but would also be lauded and remembered for improving the understanding between Pittsfield’s Jews and Christians.
The departure of Kaplan brought the arrival of Rabbi Saul Habas who both continued many of the congregation’s recent initiatives and helped in the inauguration and support of new ones that saw the emphasis on music increase, the Temple Aid Society join the National Association of Temple Sisterhoods, and a growth of the Temple’s Men’s Club. However, leaving behind an active and energetic congregation and religious school, ill health forced Rabbi Habas’ resignation in the summer of 1943.
With the departure of Habas, Temple Anshe Amunim – described as an “unruly congregation” in a 1964 history – regrettably fell back on an old and this time none too productive template of temporary spiritual leadership, with 1943 to 1950 seeing periods of lay leadership as well as the sometimes very brief and less than consequential tenures of Rabbi William M. Kramer, Rabbi Maurice T. Galpert, Rabbi Benjamin Berfeld, and Rabbi Solomon E. Cherniak.
Arriving in March of 1950, the service of Rabbi Perry E. Nussbaum, though lasting only until July of 1954, would, nevertheless, leave one measure of significant impact – as during his time at Anshe Amunim, Nussbaum simulated the congregation to construct a $50,000 brick, 1,200 square-foot meeting house to adjoin the Fenn Steet Temple. The addition boasted a new auditorium, four classrooms, a stage, a library, a rabbi’s office, coatrooms, and a renovated kitchen.
If lack of continuity in spiritual leadership had often plagued Anshe Amunim’s past, the long-term cure arrived in September of 1954 in the person of Rabbi Harold I. Salzmann, who, as rabbi emeritus is in his fifty-sixth year of service to the congregation.
Over the decades Rabbi Salzmann’s accomplishments are as varied and numerous as the myriad of duties that can be defined as within rabbinical scope. But, without question, the most luminous star among Salzmann’s galaxy of achievements is the building, at 26 Broad Street, of the congregation’s current three-story worship site and social facility.
Dedicated in 1964 – and the first edifice erected in Pittsfield specifically to house a Jewish congregation – the building’s award-winning design is dedicated to the single idea: “the Unity of the Oneness of God” – and within its walls Jewish expressions somber, joyful, and intellectual abound. The latter exemplified by the renowned annual Hilda Vallin Feigenbaum Memorial Lecture series, which for forty-two years has brought leaders in government, literature, theology, and journalism to address the Berkshire Community.
Salzmann retired to emeritus life in 1983, and has in turn been followed in leadership at Anshe Amunim by Rabbi Alan Berg, Rabbi Dennis Ross, Spiritual Leader Barbara Cohen, interim Rabbi Samuel Seicol, Rabbi Mark Wieder, and, currently, Rabbi Joshua L Breindel.
Founded just four scant years after the end of the American Civil War, today, as Temple Anshe Amunim reflects back on its enviable faithful and fruitful longevity, the congregation looks ahead to the challenge of embracing an equally memorable dynamic future.
*Written by David F. Verzi, Berkshire Jewish Voice, May 2010
Amonium” was quickly noted as a pious but deficient attempt at Hebrew transliteration – this beginning however a slow and halting evolution to accept 
