Archives West Finding Aid

Recordings and transcript of an oral history interview with Azaria Scharhon conducted by Adina Russak on June 22, 1993. The accession also includes a chronology of the Congregation Ahavath Achim (ca. 1960).

The bulk of the information is about the informant's father, Rev. Morris Scharhon. He describes Morris Scharhon's coming to America as a teenager; his employment; his marriage, and his relations to Rev. David Behar. Scharhon also discusses the start of the synagogue Congregation Ahavath Achim and the Talmud Torah that Scharhon started in his own home after his break with Ezra Bessaroth. He became leader of Ahavath Achim until he left to become chazen at Sephardic Bikur Holim. Later he became a shochet. His children opened a store at 22nd and Yesler, and he was the shochet. He had a family of twelve children and died only four months after his wife, when both were in their fifties.