Barnett A. Elzas
Barnett A. Elzas (1867–1936), spiritual leader of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim synagogue from 1894 to 1910, and a noted scholar of Charleston Jewish history, led a peripatetic life, before, after, and during his tenure in Charleston. Born in Eydkuhnen, Germany, Elzas was educated in London, and later in Toronto, where he first served as a rabbi. He then went to Sacramento, California, before moving to Charleston. While serving KKBE, he not only graduated from the Medical College of South Carolina, but he also published a series of pamphlets on Charleston’s history, Jewish cemeteries across South Carolina, Charleston’s particular Jewish history, and his magnum opus, The Jews of South Carolina (1905). Elzas wandered in the city, as well as in its history, living at 11 Water Street (1903), 35 Coming Street (1905), and other rented houses, before settling at the Charleston Hotel with his wife, Annie, for the last few years of his rabbinate. (The Charleston Hotel was demolished in 1960.)
Barnett Elzas (1867–1936)
Served as rabbi of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim synagogue from 1894 to 1910. This image appeared in volume two of Men of Mark in South Carolina: Ideals of American Life: A Collection of Biographies of Leading Men, published in 1908.
Letter from Charleston’s Mayor J. Adger Smyth to Rabbi Barnett Elzas, thanking him for sending a copy of The Jews of Charleston, 1903
The Jews of South Carolina
Title page from a limited edition of Rabbi Barnett Elzas’s book, The Jews of South Carolina.