At the Lloyd Street Synagogue, just off Lombard Street’s Corned Beef Row, they’re scraping and digging and excavating deep into Baltimore City’s past. Down there, says Avi Decter. He points to a mikveh, the ritual bath for Jewish brides. It sits there, several feet below basement level and deep into the 19th century.
This is the oldest synagogue in Maryland, and the third-oldest still standing in America. It’s the first major congregation the Jews of Baltimore ever had, but it’s more than that. First it was a synagogue, later a church, then a synagogue again. Only in America. Now it’s a kind of museum.
Thousands visit each year. They visit for a little history, a little inspiration — and, just to make it perfect, maybe a stop at Attman’s for a hot dog on Lombard Street. This past year, about 7,000 of the visitors were children from public and private schools statewide, of all religions, who find a religious shrine and place to learn about the history of American immigration.
“Like the mikveh,” says Decter, executive director of the Jewish Museum in Maryland, next door to the synagogue. “The Jewish kids get it, but so do the gentile kids, who know about baptizing. So a connection is made across religious cultures.”
Through good times and bad, the synagogue’s been there. Consecrated in 1845 in the wake of heavy German-Jewish immigration here, it was the first Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. As the first generation of the city’s Jews moved northwest, the building was sold in 1888 to a Lithuanian Roman Catholic Congregation and for 15 years became the Church of St. John the Baptist, until a new church was built at Saratoga and Paca streets.
Sold again, the building became the Shomrei Mishmeres Congregation for the next half-century, until the Jewish Historical Society of Maryland bought it in 1963 and spruced it up.
So now it’s time for a little more renovating. The state kicked in $440,000, the City of Baltimore another $440,000, and the Save America’s Treasures Program $123,000. Who among us doesn’t need a little million-dollar touch-up every half-century or so?
“The only indoor archaeology lab in town,” says Decter, peering deep below the basement level, near the mikveh, where old underground pipes have been uncovered. These go back to the 1850s. The thought is stunning, so long ago, and there was already pretty sophisticated plumbing.
Decter says renovations should be finished by the winter of 2009. There’s scaffolding all around the building, but daily tours continue.
“And notice the history,” he says. “A synagogue, a church, and a synagogue again. In America, Jews and Christians have inherited each other’s buildings. That never happened in Europe. It’s an American phenomenon, and a direct function of immigration.” He walks from the mikveh — actually, there’s a row of them — to a basement oven that was used, in another lifetime, for making matzoh, the unleavened bread eaten at Passover.
“First these German-speaking Jews have the building, then the Lithuanians arrive,” says Decter, “and they become one of the first ethnic parishes. Another American invention: Stay with your landsman.” In the original Yiddish, it’s pronounced “lontsmon,” and generally refers to a fellow countrymen of any religion. “Someone,” says Decter, “who speaks the same language, other than English.”
For Decter, the renovations have taken on the feeling of a love affair. It’s religion, it’s history, it’s sociology, it’s immigration, it’s America.
And it brings him back to an earlier point: Through good times and bad, the Lloyd Street Synagogue’s been here.
“There were a lot of years,” says Decter, “when this neighborhood was pretty rough. Times when you could do drug buys right on the corner, and you took your life in your hands certain times. But, in all those years, not a single act of vandalism, not a single graffiti at the synagogue.
“I take that as a symbol of respect that a community can have for its own history. And now we have this redeveloped neighborhood, with 330 new housing units, and the synagogue’s a cornerstone, an anchor, a symbol of stability.”
And it’s a piece of history. It’s part of the city’s Heritage Walk, along with the shot tower, and Flag Museum, African-American Museum, Carroll Mansion, Little Italy, all bunched close together and part of the same mosaic.
“And they learn about history and immigration and spiritual and social needs,” says Decter.
It’s an old synagogue that’s being restored. But it helps renew life across a whole section of town, and a cross-section of cultures.
