Rabbi Jacob S. Raisin | Jane Lazarus Raisin
For much of the nineteenth century, the building that faced Wragg Mall here at the corner of Meeting Street was the home of generations of the interlinked Hart and Lazarus families. In 1917, Jane Hart Lazarus married Jacob Raisin, who was elected rabbi of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in 1915. When he first moved to Charleston, Raisin stayed at the YMCA; after his marriage, he lived here, in his wife’s ancestral home, for several years.
Born in what is now Belarus, Jacob Salmon Raisin (1878–1945) emigrated circa 1892, studied in New York, and was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1900. Before coming to Charleston, he served congregations in Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, and New York. A learned and scholarly man, a Hebraist, and the author of several books and many articles and essays on topics ranging from Abraham Lincoln to the Haskalah Movement (Jewish Enlightenment), to the Be Kind to Animals initiative promoted by Charlestonian Henry Lewith, he retired from KKBE in 1944 but remained Rabbi Emeritus until his death two years later. Raisin was an early Zionist—unusual for Reform rabbis at the time. He served several congregations in small towns around the state, and was also a member of various civic organizations, including the Charleston County Board of School Commissioners, Salvation Army, Chamber of Commerce, Charleston Community Chest, and Jewish Welfare Board.
Jane Lazarus Raisin (1887–1963) was equally involved with civic and Jewish affairs. In 1915, she joined the Charleston Section of the National Council of Jewish Women, later serving as its president. She was on the staff of KKBE’s Sabbath school and volunteered with the Free Kindergarten Association for forty-eight years, serving two terms as president. She promoted child welfare and the education and acculturation of new immigrants. She was an active member of the Rebecca Motte Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, helped found the Charleston chapter of Hadassah, and served as its first president in 1921.
The site of the Lazarus-Raisin home is now part of the Courtenay Middle School.
For more information on the Lazarus family and Rabbi Jacob Raisin, see the Lazarus and Hirsch families papers and the Rabbi Jacob S. Raisin papers, Special Collections, College of Charleston. For a related collection, see the Willard N. Hirsch papers, also housed in Special Collections, College of Charleston.
Jane Lazarus Raisin (1887–1963)
Rabbi Jacob S. Raisin (1878–1945)
