Solomon Schindler

(1842 - 1915)

Solomon Schindler arrived in New York from Germany in 1871 and supported his family by selling shoelaces before becoming the rabbi of a synagogue in Hoboken, New Jersey. He later moved to Boston and lectured on socialism, immigration, and education at the Temple Adath Israel, where, seeking to keep Judaism “abreast with the time and to win for it the respect of the Gentile world,” he worked to purge traditional Jewish mysticism and ritualism from the congregation. After resigning from the pulpit in 1894, he recanted his previous radicalism in a sermon titled “Mistakes I Made.”