Edward M. Baker

Edward Max Baker (August 18, 1875 – February 17, 1957) was a Jewish-American investment broker from Ohio.

Life Baker was born on August 18, 1875, in Erie, Pennsylvania, the son of German immigrants Isaac Baker and Bertha Einhorn. His father was a wholesale and retail clothing merchant. The maternal grandson of Rabbi David Einhorn, his uncles were Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch and Kaufmann Kohler.

Baker graduated from the Erie high school in 1893. He then went to the University of Chicago, where he was a participant in two intercollegiate debates, a prize winner in university debating circles, president of the University Debating Club, and an associate editor of the senior class publication Cap and Gown. He received an A.B. degree from there in 1898, and he graduated with honors and served as the class orator. He returned to Chicago a year after graduating to study and become a rabbi, taking theological courses with his uncle Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch as well as post-graduate courses on philosophy and sociology at the University of Chicago. He served as religious leader of Temple Israel in Chicago from February to June 1901.

Baker then went to Cleveland, Ohio when his brother-in-law Jacob Mayer died to take over Mayer's brokerage business. He was elected vice-president of the Cleveland Stock Exchange before the end of the year, and would later serve as its president for fifteen years. When the Cleveland office closed in 1941, he became resident manager of Bache & Co. He worked there for the rest of his life, up to the day before his death. He presided over the Cleveland Convention of the Union of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1927, and in 1939 he received the Charles Eisenman Award for distinguished service to the community. He was also vice-president of the National Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, a member of the American Jewish Committee, a director of the Joint Distribution Committee, and vice-president of the Cleveland branch of the Emergency Peace Campaign. He attended Temple Tifereth-Israel.