The TETIEVER AHAVATH ACHIM ANSHE SFARD congregation (1909-59), incorporated in Sept. 1910, was founded out of the Tetiever Social & Benevolent Society. Around 1900 a small group of Russian Jews from Tetiev established the Tetiever Verein, later known as the Tetiever Social & Benevolent Society. In 1909 members joined with other Tetiever Jews to form the Tetiever Ahavath Achim Anshe Sfard Congregation, under the leadership of Louis Goldberg, Jacob Weinman, and Kolman Kasner, among others. The Benevolent Society became an affiliate of the congregation. Congregants met for religious services in members' homes until 1911, when a house was purchased at E. 40th near Woodland. In 1914 a synagogue was erected on the property and the congregation worshipped there until 1927, when a new synagogue was dedicated on Linn Dr. in Glenville.
Rabbi Mordecai Landa was the congregation's first full-time religious leader (1931-53). The congregation's several active affiliate groups included: the Tetiever Ladies Aid Society & Young Women's Relief Society, which assisted new immigrants from Tetiev; the Tetiever Ladies Auxiliary, a fundraising group; and the United Tetiever Service Organization, which kept in contact with those Tetievers in the armed forces during World War II.
Faced with the migration of Jews into the eastern suburbs, in 1954 the congregation purchased property on Warrensville Center Rd. and sold the Linn property. Services were held in a house on the site until a new building was completed in 1957. Two years later, the congregation merged with the KINSMAN JEWISH CENTER and Congregation N'vai Zedek to form the WARRENSVILLE CENTER SYNAGOGUE. Frank Tavens (Tavensky), president of the Tetiever Congregation (1940-59) and the son of Abraham Tavensky, one of its founders, helped effect the merger.
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Tetiever Ahavath Achim Anshe Sfard Congregation Records, WRHS.
See also RELIGION; JEWS AND JUDAISM; RUSSIANS.