Agudath Israel Etz Ahayem

Agudath Israel Etz Ahayem’s religious activities include Torah study and Jewish ritual observance, with participation open to people of all ages, sexes, and life experiences.[1] A census of Jewish supplementary schools for the 2006–2007 school year lists a Conservative school under the spelling “Agudath Israel Etz Achayim” at 3525 Cloverdale Road, Montgomery, Alabama 36111.[5]

Current listings use “Agudath Israel – Etz Ahayem,” while the school census uses “Agudath Israel Etz Achayim.”[1][5] The 1962 history treated Etz Ahayem and Agudath Israel Synagogue as separate sister congregations, and a later community history also uses “Etz Chaim” in one account of the merger; the sources do not fully establish when the combined name came into use or whether every spelling reflects the same formal name.[2][3]

The earlier Etz Ahayem community’s history centers on Mediterranean immigration, Ladino-language religious and communal life, and the construction of successive places of worship.[2] That history summarized the community’s self-understanding with the line, “The story of the Spanish Jew in Montgomery is the story of his Temple—Etz Ahayem.”[2]

Public Sephardic Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services were being held in Montgomery by 1908 at the Orthodox Community Center on Monroe Street.[2] Simon Franco, a spiritual reader and hazan, conducted those services.[2] Early in the twentieth century, Sephardic immigrants from the Ottoman Empire settled in Montgomery and Atlanta, bringing Ladino, distinctive liturgy, foods, and customs, and establishing congregations and voluntary self-help societies.[6]

On July 27, 1912, about 30 remaining members of Montgomery’s Sephardic community founded a Spanish-speaking Jewish congregation under a charter written in Ladino.[2] Solomon Rousso, Simon R. Franco, and Samuel “Sam” Beton led the founding group, which named the congregation Etz-Ahayem, meaning “Tree of Life.”[2] Most of its founders came from Rhodes.[3] The congregation incorporated on July 11, 1916, with Solomon Rousso as president, Eli Capilouto as vice president, Shalom Traves as secretary, and B. R. Franco as treasurer.[2] Its minutes and records remained in Ladino until a switch to English in the early 1930s.[2]

In 1918, the congregation acquired an old house at 450 Sayre Street and converted it into a house of worship and community center.[2] With 21 dues-paying members in 1926, it decided to rebuild on that site.[2] A $27,500 construction contract was awarded to Anderson Lumber Company in April 1927, and the new building was completed before that year’s High Holidays.[2] Members helped finance the project by raffling a 1927 Nash automobile; the winner, Simanto Franco, subsequently donated the car to the congregation.[2]

As the congregation outgrew its Sayre Street building, it contracted in 1954 to purchase two acres at Augusta and LeBron Streets.[2] The purchase was completed in 1957 for $13,000, followed by a groundbreaking in 1961 and dedication of the new building on May 27, 1962.[2] The building fund raised $59,600.[2] At the dedication, Temple Beth’Or and Agudath Israel Synagogue each received a key to the new Etz Ahayem building and an invitation to use it.[2]

During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rabbi Solomon Acrish publicly supported the boycott and denounced segregation.[4] Threats to firebomb the synagogue and violence against the rabbi eventually forced him to reduce the intensity of his public statements.[4]

Etz Ahayem’s congregation dwindled by the 1990s and is reported to have merged with Agudath Israel in May 2001, although the same community-history page elsewhere calls the Sephardic congregation “Etz Chaim,” leaving the precise historical naming unclear.[3] A 2007 historical study separately mentions a recent merger of Sephardic and Ashkenazic congregations in Montgomery.[6]

In 2020, Rabbi Scott Kramer led an online Selichot gathering attended by about 50 congregants from Montgomery, Auburn, Dothan, and Mobile.[7] People disrupted the gathering by sharing Holocaust-related images and shouting antisemitic abuse.[7] The disruption lasted about ten minutes before the call was ended, and the harassers returned after Kramer restarted it.[7]

Surviving records of Temple Etz Ahayem span 1886–1969 and occupy 0.4 linear feet in the American Jewish Archives.[8] The collection contains correspondence, minutes, a constitution, bylaws, other materials, and minutes of the Temple Etz Ahayem Sisterhood; Murray J. Berger of Montgomery donated it.[8]

The early Etz Ahayem community included immigrants from Rhodes, Greece, Turkey, and nearby regions.[2]

The congregation’s history records 21 dues-paying members in 1926 and 72 members at the time of the 1962 building dedication.[2] A reproduced 1954 newspaper column described 70 Spanish-speaking Jewish families in Montgomery and identified Etz Ahayem as their congregation.[2] These figures refer to different measures—individual congregational membership and families in the wider community—rather than a single continuous membership count.[2]

Early immigrants from Turkey and Rhodes worked in fruit vending, butchering, retail, grocery work, tailoring, hatmaking, and shoemaking.[9] By 1962, the congregational history described members working in professions as well as real estate, building, wholesale and retail business, and banking.[2]

Ladino served both as a language of communal administration and as a feature of Etz Ahayem’s Sephardic identity.[2][9] Historical customs included congregational singing of melodies associated with Persian and Mediterranean regions and a wedding practice in which the groom’s father wrapped the couple in a prayer shawl.[2] These practices belong to accounts of the historical community rather than a description of the synagogue’s present-day observance.[2]

Food traditions connected Montgomery’s Sephardic families with their Mediterranean origins while incorporating Southern dishes.[9] Regina Piha Capilouto, born in Montgomery in 1920 to parents and grandparents from Rhodes, remembered stuffed grape leaves and rice with tomato sauce from her childhood.[9] Her recollections of Passover foods included fried chicken, turnip greens, fish with Creole sauce, and baklava.[9] Longtime community member Miriam Cohen recalled: “You know, when I cook pink rice, my son says, ‘This is Jewish soul food!’ It is, you know.”[9]

In a commentary on the congregation’s ties to Rhodes, Michael Freund recounts that nearly every family in the congregation lost relatives when the Nazis deported the Jews of Rhodes to Auschwitz in 1944.[10] He also recounts the survival of a Torah scroll hidden on Rhodes before the deportations that eventually reached Montgomery.[10]

Montgomery’s Greenwood Cemetery has separate Sephardic and Conservative sections, associated respectively with Etz Ahayem and Agudath Israel.[3] Extensive archives relating to the community’s cemeteries were also available at Beth Or.[3]