In memory of Mr. Merril Lehman a"h we are posting an article that his son, Robert Lehman wrote in the Where What When in 2011.

Our family recently celebrated the 95th birthday of my father, Mr. Merrill B. Lehman; the 90th birthday of my mother, Mrs. Nanette Lehman; and my parents’ 70th wedding anniversary. This triple family simcha provides an opportunity to reflect on the path of Orthodox Judaism in America over the past 175 years and, particularly, the perseverance of Orthodox Judaism in Baltimore.

My family’s history in America started nearly 175 years ago with the migration of my great-great-great-grandparents, the Bergman and Gundersheimer families, on my father’s side, and the Sycle and Bear families, on my mother’s side, to Richmond, Virginia, from Bavaria, in the early 1830s. They were part of a wave of emigration from Germany in the wake of riots and oppressive edicts – one famous edict decreed that only one son of Jewish families could marry – that reversed many of the advances in civil rights, citizenship, equal treatment, and economic opportunities that the Jews had recently attained as a result of Napoleon’s Emancipation.

In Richmond, the first Jewish immigrants were Sefardic and settled in the city in the late 1700s. The first shul was Sefardic. The German Jews who came after them formed their own shul, and soon became the dominant community. The Sefardic and German synagogues merged in the early 19th century to become Beth Ahaba Congregation, now known as Temple Beth Ahaba. The nusach of this new congregation was the German Ashkenaz rite.