In 1847, the elderly Mrs. Dila Kohn emigrated from Germany with her three sons and daughter. She refused to eat meat not ritually slaughtered by a shochet and thereby spurred the establishment of Chicago's first synagogue. Her son Abraham traveled to New York in search of a rabbi and met Reverend Ignatz Kunreuther, one of only three ordained rabbis in the country. On October 3, 1847, twenty men convened at 155 Lake Street above the dry goods store Rosenfeld & Rosenberg and formed Kehillat Anshe Maariv, Congregation of the Men of the West, with Kunreuther serving as rabbi, reader, and shochet.