The purpose of this website is to create a place for readers interested in the career and thinking of Rabbi Moses Jacob Gries. While leading ministries in Chattanooga (1889-1892) and Cleveland (1892-1917), Gries played a key part in the gradual transformation of Classical Reform Judaism into what he often called an American Reformed Judaism.
In addition to sermons and addresses, the website includes biographies, an evaluation of his thinking, newspaper clippings, letters, and photographs. For context, the site also includes excerpts from works on the evolution of Reform Judaism and on practices instituted by Rabbi Gries at The Temple in Cleveland.
Most of the material on the website is drawn from the MS-53 Moses J. Gries collection at the American Jewish Archive in Cincinnati (americanjewisharchives.org). AJA is the principal repository for Gries papers and for research on them. Additional material comes from holdings of the Gries family as well as from the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (huc.edu); the Maltz Museum in Cleveland (maltzmuseum.org); the Jewish archives of the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland (WRHS.org); the Central Conference of American Rabbis in New York (ccarnet.org), and Temple Tiffereth Israel Nur Tamid in Cleveland (tintcleveland.org).
