The first Jew who is known to have settled in Cleveland, O., was a Bavarian, Simson Thorman, who came there in 1837. He was soon joined by Aaron Leventrite and by others of his countrymen, and the thriving city, which had then about 6,000 inhabitants, soon had twenty Jews, who organized the Israelitish Society in 1839. In 1842 there was a split, and the seceding part formed the Anshe Chesed Society; but four years later these two again united and formed the Anshe Chesed congregation, the oldest existing congregation in Cleveland. The first services were held in a hall on South Water street and Vineyard lane, with Thorman as president and Isaac Hoffman as minister or reader. A burial ground was purchased in 1840. New dissensions arose in 1848 in the rapidly increasing community and resulted in the withdrawal of a number of members, who in 1850 formed the Congregation Tifereth Israel, which from the beginning represented the reform element. Isidor Kalish (b. in Krotoschin, Prussia, 1816; d. in Newark, N. J., 1886) was its first rabbi until 1855, and he was followed by Wolf Fassbinder, Jacob Cohen, G. M. Cohen, Jacob Mayer, Aaron Hahn and the present incumbent, Moses J. Gries (b. in Newark, 1868), who assumed his position in 1892. The rabbis of the older congregation were: Fuld, 1850; E. Hertzman, 1860–61; G. M. Cohen, 1861–66; Nathan, 1866–67; Gustave M. Cohen, 1867–75; Moritz Tintner (b. in Austerlitz, Austria, 1828; d. in New York, May 11, 1910), 1875–76; and M. Machol (b. in Kolmar-in-Posen, 1845) since 1876.