Church Mystery Reveals Hidden Local Jewish History

Several years ago, I was sitting at a traffic light in East Baltimore, on my way to cover a story, when I was stopped dead in my tracks by an odd sight. It was a dilapidated, padlocked building that appeared to be a former church. At the crest of the structure’s red-brick facade was an inlaid Star of David with what looked like a dollar sign embedded in the middle.

Being a curious type, I parked my car in front of the building in a not-so-scenic stretch of South Caroline Street. I got out and examined the building. A Jewish star with a dollar sign? Was this some kind of anti-Semitic statement?

I peered through the windows of the building, located near Lombard Middle School and the First Apostolic Faith Institutional Church. Everything inside was falling apart. Debris, shards of broken glass, and errant weeds surrounded the building.

“It’s been vacant since I’ve been here,” Frank Wells, a passerby who lived in the neighborhood, told me.

Then I noticed the cornerstone, dated 1925 and bearing a quote in Hebrew from Psalms (chapter 118, verse 22): “The stone which the builders refused has become the headstone of the corner.” There was another inscribed quote in the cornerstone, this one from the Christian Bible (Matthew 21:42).

I scratched my head. Quotes from Jewish and Christian sources? My compulsive personality traits kicked in — I needed to know what the deal was with this “mystery building.”

Immediately, I contacted the fine folks at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, but they were unaware of the structure. I called my friend Gilbert Sandler, the great historian of all things Baltimore and Jewish. Gil was stumped, something that rarely happens. I contacted his pal and fellow local history buff Efrem Potts, who hypothesized that the building was once a house of worship for a Messianic Jewish group.

I turned to a pair of local Messianic leaders, Barry Rubin and Irv Horseman, both of whom said they were unfamiliar with the structure. In the end, I issued an appeal to readers, asking for assistance on unmasking the building’s history. One respondent was Nathan Goldberg, a Pikesville resident who grew up in East Baltimore.

“I know that building was never, ever a shul,” insisted Goldberg, 90. “They were missionaries, trying to convert Jews. You know — Jews for Jesus. We were told to keep away.”

Goldberg and other readers, including local architectural historian Fred B. Shoken, helped put all of the pieces together. The structure was the onetime home of the Salem Hebrew Lutheran Mission, a Messianic group founded by Henry Einspruch in 1923.

Einspruch was a Jew who converted to Christianity in his native Poland, came to this country and founded what became Lederer Messianic Jewish Communications, the world’s largest publisher of Hebrew-Christian materials. Einspruch was best known as author of “The Yiddish New Testament.”

Like many Jews, I considered Messianic Judaism a fairly modern phenomenon. But Hebrew-Christian missionaries were trying to reach souls even in the early 20th century, preaching to Jewish immigrants living in America’s teeming urban centers.

“People think it’s new,” said Dr. Deborah R. Weiner, then the JMM’s research historian, “but the idea of Christians doing missionary work in Jewish communities goes way back.”

And as far as that unusual Star of David with the dollar sign? That was no dollar sign or anti-Jewish slur but a monogram of the Greek letters iota eta sigma (IHS), a contracted version of Jesus’ name. You’ll see that symbol on Christian gravestones and in depictions of the crucifixion.

In 1972, Lederer sold the building to a non-denominational church group called the Little Tabernacle, which remained there until 1996. Today, the building still stands, a remnant of a little-known chapter in Baltimore Jewish history.