Baltimore Heritage

Baltimore’s Jewish community arose through several distinct waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. There’s no better place to investigate this legacy than the Reservoir Hill/Bolton Hill district, where Jews from three different immigration waves intermingled in the years before World War II: “fresh off the boat” refugees from Nazism, Russian and Polish immigrants who arrived between the 1880s and 1920s, and descendants of Central European Jews who came in the mid-19th century. This walking tour will reveal surprising facets of Baltimore Jewish history by focusing on interactions within this diverse Jewish population. The tour, led by historian Deborah Weiner, will highlight the district’s synagogues as well as the homes of Jews who played a significant role in the Jewish community and in Baltimore more generally.