Volume 51, No. 14
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CHESTERLAND NEWS Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Your Community Newspaper Since 1967
Area’s First Messianic Jewish Synagogue Comes to Chester Township By Diane Ryder editor@geaugamapleleaf.com Just like the people of Moses, wandering in the desert for 40 years on their way to the Promised Land, a congregation of Messianic Jews in Northeast Ohio has been four decades without a synagogue to call home. Until now. Just as Joshua lead his flock across the Jordan River into Canaan, Rabbi Eric David Lakatos will be leading a procession Dec. 1 as his flock brings their Torah from rented facilities in Lyndhurst to their newly constructed Ark at Tikvat Israel (Hebrew for “Hope of Israel”) in Chester Township. The congregation — one of an estimated 400 Messianic Jewish groups in the United States, Isreal and worldwide, and the only one on the east side of Cleveland — follows Jewish traditions, but worships Jesus, or Yeshua in Hebrew, as the Messiah. See Synagogue • Page 2
DIANE RYDER/KMG
Jeff Roberts, left, media director for the Tikvat Yisrael Messianic Synagogue, and sound and video director Rick Bihary pose with a display at their new location in Chester Township..
Baptist Church Launches Bicentennial Celebration By Diane Ryder editor@geaugamapleleaf.com Where are Mulberry Road’s mulberry trees? Is there an actual Chesterland? And what is the connection between Chester Township and the City of Hudson? Those questions, and many more, fueled a program on local history Nov. 10 at Chesterland Baptist Church to kick off its 200th birthday next year. Lifelong church member Garland Likins gave a brief history of the historic white-framed church, followed by a talk from historian Sylvia Wiggins, of the Chester Township Historical Society, dressed in period costume. During the earliest days of the Connecticut Western Reserve, when the State of Ohio was only two years old, missionary Thomas Robbins walked from New England
to the forested wilderness of the new territory to minister to the earliest settlers of the area. It was a time called “The Great Awakening,” when churches began to flourish across America. By 1819, seven pioneers of what is now called Chester Township met to form a Baptist congregation called the Baptist Church in Christ in Chester. They included Nancy and James Gillmore, and Lebbeus and Nancy Norton, who had arrived in the Western Reserve in 1812 from Massachusetts. That small congregation flourished as the area grew and is now the Chesterland Baptist Church, 12670 Chillicothe Road, just north of Mayfield Road. The current building dates back to 1870, Likins said. Wiggins told the audience of about 60 people the first settler of the township was Justice Miner See Bicentennial • Page 5
DIANE RYDER/KMG
Local historian Sylvia Wiggins shows a reproduction quilt similar to one made by a Chester Township pioneer.