Elzas, Barnett Abraham
ELZAS, BARNETT ABRAHAM
ELZAS, BARNETT ABRAHAM (1867–1939), U.S. Reform rabbi and historian. Elzas was born in Germany, the son of a Hebrew teacher, and moved with his parents to Holland and then to London where he was educated at Jews' College and the University of London. In 1890 he went to America and served congregations in Toronto, Canada and Sacramento, California, being eventually appointed to the pulpit of Congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina (1894). Elzas became keenly interested in local Jewish history and made an exhaustive study of records of Charleston Jewry and of the older smaller communities of the state. After writing a number of studies on the subject, he produced the comprehensive Jews of South Carolina: From Earliest Times to the Present Day (1905), which still ranks as one of the best historical studies of an American Jewish community. While in Charleston, Elzas also qualified at the Medical College of South Carolina (1900), although he never practiced. In 1910 he moved to New York City where he ministered to the Hebrew Congregation of the Deaf and served as Jewish chaplain to the City Department of Correction and the State Mental Hygiene Department. He also served as president of the New York Board of Rabbis. In 1912 Elzas became rabbi of Beth Miriam Congregation, Long Branch, n.j.
bibliography:
Bloch, in: ccary, 47 (1937), 225–9; C. Reznikoff and U.Z. Engelman, The Jews of Charleston (1950), index.
[Thomas J. Tobias]