history of the Jews in Cincinnati

The history of the Jews in Cincinnati occupies a prominent place in the development of Jewish secular and religious life in the United States. Cincinnati is not only the oldest Jewish community west of the Allegheny Mountains but has also been an institutional center of American Reform Judaism for more than a century. The Israelite, the oldest American Jewish newspaper still (2019) being published, began publication in Cincinnati in 1854. 19th century Arrival of British Jews The first known Jew to settle in Cincinnati was Joseph Jonas, an English emigrant who arrived in the city via Philadelphia in 1817. Jonas, a young man, decided to leave his home in Exeter, England, with the avowed intention of settling in Cincinnati. Friends in Philadelphia originally endeavored to dissuade him from going to a place so isolated from all association with his coreligionists. However, Jonas reassured them that he would succeed. For the first two years, he was the only Jew in the Midwestern town. In 1819, Jonas was joined by three others, Lewis Cohen of London, Barnet Levi of Liverpool, and Jonas Levy of Exeter. On the High Holidays in the autumn of 1819, these four men, together with David Israel Johnson of Brookville, Indiana (a frontier trading-station), conducted the first Jewish service west of the Appalachians. Similar services were held for the next three years. Newcomers continued to arrive, the early settlers being mostly Jews from England.