500 Block of Main Street
Site of Trager Family Residence
Russian immigrant Abraham Isaac Trager (1809-1913) moved to Columbia around 1861, where he was a patriarch of the Jewish community for almost forty years. He established a farm at this location, where he grew plants used during religious holidays and provided hospitality to fellow Jews and travelers of all faiths. Trager regularly officiated Jewish weddings and bar mitzvahs, the ceremony marking a 13-year-old Jewish boy's acceptance of religious responsibility. A founder of the Tree of Life Congregation, he helped raise funds to erect the first synagogue built in Columbia since before the Civil War. Trager died in 1913 at age 104.
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Abraham Trager. Reprinted fromThe Tree of Life: Fifty Years of Congregational Life at the Tree of Life Synagogue, Columbia, S.C by Helen Kohn Hennig.
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Announcement for the Jewish New Year celebrations, with services led by Abraham Trager and Philip Epstin (1836-1921), who would later become the first president of the Tree of Life Congregation. Reprinted from The State, September 23, 1892.
