Besides the executive board, the teacher, preacher or cantor (and in former times also the kosher shepherd) was the most important person for the religious community. Salomon Abraham is the first teacher of the Lorsch community that is known by name, which had already existed for more than 100 years. The community paid a salary and provided an apartment with a garden. Many children were born here. In the second half of the 19th century it became increasingly difficult for the small Jewish rural communities to find teachers and preachers. Often only applicants from Eastern Europe, from Russia or from Habsburg Galicia applied for the small salary. Frequently, they brought family members with them, who settled here and married into the German communities. The Jaffés came from what is now Lithuania. Mendel Jaffé was the uncle of his two Lorsch-born successors, Abraham and Josef Jaffé. Pogroms in the Czarist empire and better opportunities for career advancement increased migration from East to West until after the First World War. One consequence was the deportation of repatriates by the Nazi state.