Faith, Family, and Orthodox Roots

Eli was born on April 29, 1929, in Baltimore to Louis and Ella Hanover,
a family with deep Orthodox roots that reached back to Romania and Russia.
In their home, Judaism was not just a label but a way of life—woven
into the food they ate, the language they spoke, and the rhythm of every week.

Shabbat was the heartbeat of the Hanover household. Candles were lit,
blessings were recited, and the table became a place where family gathered,
stories were told, and faith was passed from one generation to the next.
Holidays like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Pesach, and Sukkot did not simply
appear on the calendar; they brought with them preparation, prayer,
and a sense that time itself was holy.

Growing up in this setting, Eli learned early that being observant was not
only about ritual. It was about responsibility—to honor his parents,
to care for others, and to carry himself as a Jew in a world that did not
always welcome or understand his community.

Baltimore in the mid-20th century was home to a vibrant and growing Orthodox
Jewish community. Neighborhoods in East and Northwest Baltimore were filled
with synagogues, small Judaica shops, kosher butchers, and families like
the Hanovers who carried traditions from Europe into American streets and rowhouses.

Eli’s world included daily reminders of that community: men walking to shul
on Shabbat, children heading to Hebrew school, and elders who still spoke
Yiddish alongside English. The city’s Orthodox institutions—schools,
congregations, and community organizations—gave structure and support
to families trying to live according to halacha while working, raising children,
and navigating American life.

Within that world, rabbis, teachers, and community leaders played an important
role in shaping how families like Eli’s held onto their faith while facing
the pressures and possibilities of a new country.

One of the most visible religious leaders in Baltimore during Eli’s adult
years was Rabbi Jacob Aaron Max (1924–2011), a Modern
Orthodox rabbi whose life and work intersected with many families in the
community, including the Hanovers.

Born in Vienna in 1924, Rabbi Max moved to Baltimore with his parents,
Yehoshua and Clara, when he was a small child. He grew up in an Orthodox
home; his father was a shochet (ritual slaughterer). He studied
at the Talmudical Academy in East Baltimore, later serving there as
vice principal, and was ordained at Ner Israel Rabbinical College
in 1949 after earning a degree in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University.

In the early 1950s, Rabbi Max worked with Jewish residents of the Howard Park
area to establish the Liberty Jewish Center, a congregation
that eventually became Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah (MMAE) Hebrew
Congregation. For more than five decades he served as its spiritual
leader, guiding the community through moves from Northwest Baltimore to
Randallstown and later to Pikesville.

Over the years, Rabbi Max became known for officiating at countless weddings
and funerals, teaching adult-education classes, visiting hospital patients,
helping arrange kosher food in local institutions, and counseling individuals
and families. Many Baltimore Jews remember him as a warm, approachable rabbi
who tried to make Orthodox practice feel accessible while still rooted in
tradition.

For families like Eli’s, rabbis such as Jacob Max represented a bridge between
the Orthodox world of their parents and the American realities of work,
military service, and raising children in changing neighborhoods. While the
Hanovers had their own family customs and teachers, figures like Rabbi Max
helped anchor the broader religious landscape that surrounded them.

Any honest account of Rabbi Max’s role in Baltimore’s Orthodox life also has
to acknowledge the painful chapter that marked the end of his public career.
In 2009, at the age of 85, he was convicted in Baltimore County District Court
of a fourth-degree sexual offense and second-degree assault involving a former
co-worker at the Sol Levinson & Bros. funeral home. He received a suspended
one-year sentence and a year of unsupervised probation, and he did not appeal.

In the months that followed, Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah’s board voted to end
the congregation’s formal relationship with its longtime rabbi, and Rabbi Max
resigned from the Baltimore Board of Rabbis. For many in the community,
including those who had admired him, this created profound conflict: gratitude
for decades of pastoral care stood alongside anger, disappointment, and a deep
sense of betrayal.

When Rabbi Max died in August 2011, obituaries and community reflections
described him as both an influential religious leader and a figure whose legacy
would remain complicated. For the Hanover family, the focus on this site is
not to resolve that legacy, but to record that he was part of the religious
landscape surrounding Eli’s life and to recognize the broader Orthodox world
in which Eli’s faith was lived.

For Eli, Orthodox Judaism was not a title or a public performance. It was the
foundation beneath everyday decisions: how he treated co-workers on the docks
and in the boxing world, how he spoke to his children, how he handled money,
and how he responded when life became difficult.

The values he carried from his parents’ home and from the Baltimore Orthodox
community—belief in one God, the importance of Torah, the sanctity of
family, and the mitzvah of helping others—all showed up in small,
steady ways. Whether he was working long hours, organizing a boxing event,
or spending a rare quiet evening with his family, those values were never
far from view.

This page is meant as a tribute to that inner life: the faith that sustained
Eli through hardship, guided his sense of right and wrong, and continues to
echo in the traditions his children and grandchildren keep today.