[Salon] A lost pluralism can be seen in the history of U.S. synagogues



A lost pluralism can be seen in the history of U.S. synagogues

Worship spaces once celebrated — not just tolerated — are now being attacked.

October 5, 2025   The Washington Post
The Rodef Shalom synagogue in Pittsburgh, bearing a quote from Isaiah, shown in 2019. (Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
By

Austin Albanese is a writer based in Rochester, New York.

In October 1882, the Jewish community of Charlottesville, Virginia, laid the cornerstone for the city’s first synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel. It was not a private event. The Freemasons presided, joined by “a multitude of citizens,” as one newspaper put it. Civic leader Richard T.W. Duke Jr. praised Judaism’s moral teachings and called Jews “well worthy of emulation by their Christian brethren.”

When the congregation dedicated a new home in 1904, Christian clergy and choir members joined in the service.

But a little more than a century later, on Aug. 11, 2017, neo-Nazis with torches marched past that same synagogue during the Unite the Right rally, chanting “Jews will not replace us.” The next day, Beth Israel’s members evacuated during Shabbat after threats, including calls for arson.

The contrast could not be starker: A space long embraced as part of the city’s civic fabric had become a target of menace.

White nationalists rally at the University of Virginia after marching past Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville on Aug. 11, 2017. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

Charlottesville’s history is not unique. Across the United States, synagogue dedications in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were civic occasions that drew neighbors, clergy and officials. They demonstrated what pluralism looks like when it is not just tolerated but celebrated. Today, they remind us how fragile it can be.

Consider Atlanta. In 1877, the city’s first synagogue, the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, was dedicated with the help of Mayor Cicero Hammock, a Baptist minister, civic groups including the Masons and Odd Fellows, and a number of Christian donors. At the dedication service, the sanctuary overflowed with Jews and Christians alike. As Fulton County’s first non-Christian house of worship, the synagogue was embraced as a public milestone.

Decades later, in 1931, that same congregation — by then widely known as the Temple — dedicated its new Peachtree Street home with a three-day celebration and a radio broadcast. Above the entrance was inscribed, in Hebrew, a verse from Isaiah: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

That vision was tested in 1958, when white supremacists bombed the Temple in retaliation for Rabbi Jacob Rothschild’s support of civil rights. No one would be convicted of the crime. Yet Atlanta was not silent. Donations poured in, letters arrived from across the South, and the Atlanta Constitution published a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial condemning the violence.

Atlanta detectives examine damage to The Temple synagogue, formally the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, after white supremacists bombed it in October 1958.. (AP)

Or consider the multiple examples in Pittsburgh. When B’nai Israel dedicated its synagogue in 1880, the procession included Mayor Robert Liddell, who opened the doors. In 1907, Rodef Shalom dedicated its Fifth Avenue home with an English translation of that same verse from Isaiah carved into its facade. A year later, the sanctuary hosted a Thanksgiving service with 13 denominations represented. In 1965, a Presbyterian church awaiting a new building worshiped for more than four months at Beth El Congregation.

Yet it was in Pittsburgh that a gunman who had posted antisemitic screeds online opened fire at the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, and killed 11 congregants, ranging in age from 54 to 97.

Yeshiva High School students pray at a memorial in front of Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue on Oct. 29, 2018. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

The pattern was also echoed elsewhere. In 1876, when Dallas Jews dedicated Congregation Emanu-El, “the largest congregation ever assembled in our city” filled the pews, according to the Dallas Daily Herald. St. Matthew’s Cathedral next door silenced its bells in respect. Twenty-three years later, a new home was dedicated on Thanksgiving with the mayor and Christian ministers in attendance.

And in January 2022 in Colleyville, Texas, near Dallas, the nation was again reminded of the dangers of hate. An armed man held four hostages inside a synagogue for 11 hours. One hostage was released after negotiations with a rescue team, and the other three escaped on their own.

The parallels across these stories are sobering. Atlanta’s synagogue once overflowed with neighbors and was later bombed. Charlottesville’s Beth Israel began embraced by neighbors and later was threatened with destruction. Pittsburgh’s early synagogues opened before interfaith audiences and later witnessed the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Dallas once filled pews with Christians and Jews alike, while in Colleyville, Jews were later held at gunpoint.

Law enforcement teams outside Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, where hostages were held for 11 hours on Jan. 15, 2022. (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News/AP)

These histories are not nostalgia. They are urgent reminders. Synagogues across America began as civic milestones, where neighbors came together across faiths. Today’s rise in antisemitism shows how quickly welcome can give way to violence.

The lesson is sobering: Pluralism is not guaranteed, nor is it inherited. It must be chosen, defended and renewed in every generation.




This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail (Mailman edition) and MHonArc.