In June 1820 four of the eight Jewish families in Dorsten complained to the mayor, “...that the other families, led by Samson Nathan Eisendrath (1785-1857), no longer wanted to attend the services at the synagogue. They said that without any official authority Eisendrath had moved the synagogue to his own house and taken the Torah scroll, other “synagogue utensils” and money from the poor box. As a service could only take place, they said, when ten man were present and in order to “put Jewish matters right”, the people complaining demanded punishment for the renegades.

In 1808 two Jewish families were allowed to settle in Dorsten. For centuries Jews had been banned from the towns of Westphalia but this meant that a new Jewish community could now develop.

The “Dorsten Synagogue Dispute” of 1820 occupied the authorities intensively: The synagogue was a simple prayer room which the Jewish householders had established in 1809 in a private Christian house. There had obviously been conflicts for some time. On 29 June 1820 the mayor wrote to the regional rabbi Abraham Sutro in Münster: “Complaints and disputes among the local Jewish congregation do indeed occur frequently – but as much as I would like to obtain peace, I do not feel that I am in a position to judge the reason or lack of reason for these quarrels (…) as the Jewish congregation has its own laws with which I am not familiar and about which I have been informed by one side in one way and by the other side in another way.” (Pic.: Drawing of the Synagogue’s facade (1924))

Disputes and split
The regional rabbi first requested the mayor to “seriously call on the members of the said congregation to maintain strict law and order and to say that anyone person behaving in an unbecoming manner in the synagogue would be punished in accordance with the full rigour of the law.”
Disputes, which according to the mayor “mainly occur through non-compliance with private Jewish laws” had already lead to a split at Passover 1820. As “there had even been violence in the synagogue itself”, on 9 September 1820 he again asked the regional rabbi to arbitrate personally.
When he was officially questioned Samson Nathan Eisendrath, who in 1816 was appointed “Head of the Jewish Community” by the Royal Government of Münster, stated that he now wanted to bring an action against the complainants. Without the personal involvement of the regional rabbi conciliation no longer seemed possible. Samson Nathan made the necessary contribution towards the travel expenses which was to be divided up among the congregation later.
Sutro appears to have been in Dorsten in late autumn 1820 but he did not achieve anything. When Mayor Gahlen wanted to collect the contribution towards the travel expenses from the Jewish families, they refused “because the regional rabbi had not sufficiently settled the points at issue”.

Charter of the Jewish commmunity in Dorsten (1856)		Charter of the Jewish commmunity in Dorsten (1856)

© eisendrath-stories.net - all rights reserved