Aaron Haas

Temple Members

(1847 - 1912)

As a member of one of Atlanta’s founding Jewish families, Aaron Haas helped build the social and economic landscape of the city. During the Civil War, he sold cotton to finance the Confederacy, and during Reconstruction he moved from wholesale grocery to partial ownership of the Union (Street) Rail Line and Haas and Dodd insurance company. Haas was an early member of The Temple and vice president of the Young Men’s Literary Association (the forerunner to the Atlanta Public Library system).

Haas’ influence expanded well beyond the Jewish community, and he won election to the city council in 1874 and became a trustee of the city’s water works. In 1875, he became the city’s first mayor pro tem. Haas helped establish the Hebrew Relief Society and the Piedmont Driving Club, an organization that would later ban Jews from the membership rolls. Eric Goldstein, associate professor of history and director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University, once said of Haas, “He’s kind of a symbol of this era when Jews were integrating and taking a larger role in city and civic life, and then all of the sudden by the 1890s, they were excluded.”