Abraham Rice

Who was Abraham Rice?

Abraham Joseph Rice was the first ordained rabbi to serve in a rabbinical position in the United States.

Rice was born in 1800 or 1802 at Gochsheim, near Würzburg, Bavaria. An injury in infancy left him with a limp. He studied at the Würzburg yeshivah, and was ordained by Rabbi Abraham Bing. He later continued his studies at the yeshivah of Rabbi Wolf Hamburger in Fürth, and then headed a small yeshivah in Zell. In the 1830s he married Rosalie Leucht, and in 1840 they immigrated to the United States. After a brief attempt at reviving the Jewish community in Newport, Rhode Island, he accepted an appointment as the first rabbi of Congregation Nidche Israel in Baltimore.

Rice usually delivered his sermons in German, later occasionally in English, and insisted on retaining all the traditional piyyutim in the prayers. His constant battle against assimilation and lax observance of shabbat and kashrut brought him into conflict with many of his congregants. When he decreed that Sabbath-breakers should not be called to the Torah, there was such resistance that he had to back down; but he insisted that while they could be called up, nobody should answer "amen" to the blessings they recited. After an 1842 incident in which he objected to Masonic rites held at a Jewish funeral, some members left the congregation and founded the Har Sinai Verein, the first lasting Reform congregation in the United States.