Jewish Traces

South Bend, now famous as the home of Mayor Pete Buttigieg, has one of the more unusual former synagogues, now a baseball team’s gift shop, and the only historic synagogue inside a baseball stadium.

Jews began settling in South Bend in the late 1840s and ’50s, and by 1878, the town had 125 Jewish residents. The Hebrew Orthodox congregation, the town’s first religious organization, was incorporated in 1887, and they built this synagogue in 1901, designed by local architects Freyemuth and Maurer. It was first used for the High Holidays that year. Immigration from Russia and Poland increased the Jewish population to 1,200 by 1912. By the middle of the century, the town had six synagogues, along with many Jewish businesses. But, as with many small towns in the latter half of the century, the young people moved away and membership declined. The congregation switched affiliations in the 1980s, briefly becoming the B’nai Yisrael Reconstructionist Congregation, and the last services were held in 1990. The last two members, David Piser, president of the Michiana Jewish Historical Society, and his uncle, Mendel, tried to preserve the building but ultimately had to close it.

The building was donated to the Indiana Landmarks Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to finding new uses for old buildings, which renovated it, and then sold it in 2005 to be a private residence. Either ownership reverted to Indiana Landmarks when the buyer couldn’t provide more renovations, or the city bought it back as part of a urban development project--accounts differ. Plans to repurpose it as a museum or move it were thwarted by the recession in 2007-8, and it remained vacant until 2012. After consulting with local rabbis, Andrew Berlin, new Jewish owner of the South Bend Silver Hawks (a Class A minor league team, then linked to the Arizona Diamondbacks), bought the building, which since 1986 sat at the edge of the ballpark fence, and renovated it for $1 million, including $40,000 on the brass chandelier. In September 2014, the team signed an agreement with the Chicago Cubs and changed their name to the South Bend Cubs. The building is now part of the Four Winds Field stadium and operates as the team’s gift shop. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

Big Idea Company, a Mishawaka-based marketing and public relations firm, received a regional Emmy award in 2013 for “Outstanding Achievement for Public Affairs Programming” for a four-minute film documenting the history of the "Ballpark Synagogue.”

As in most cities in the US, the first synagogues were built in the downtown area. LA was no different. The first recorded Jew, Jacob Frankfort, arrived in 1841, and there were eight by 1850 when California became a state. The first rabbi, Joseph Newmark, held the first Shabbat services and helped found the  Hebrew Benevolent Society — the first chartered charity organization in Los Angeles, now Jewish Family Service — in 1854. The first cemetery was founded in 1855 near what’s now Dodger Stadium (the bodies were later moved to East LA in 1910), and the first congregation in 1862. The Reform Congregation B’nai B’rith met in rented halls before dedicating their first building in 1873 on what’s now Broadway between 2nd and 3rd Streets. They later built a new building at 9th and Hope in 1896. B’nai B’rith’s Rabbi M.G. Solomon left the congregation in 1899 to join a new Orthodox congregation, which, after merging with another congregation, built the city’s first Orthodox synagogue in 1902 on Olive Street near Temple St.. (All three of those buildings have long since been demolished.) By 1900, the city had 2500 Jews, clustering around Temple St. and Bunker Hill.

As the city grew geographically and in population, Jews moved to the city and followed its expansion to new neighborhoods. The first Conservative congregation, Congregation Sinai, was founded in 1906 and built their first building to the west in 1909 (more on that next time). Boyle Heights is famous as being the largest Jewish hub west of Chicago as Jews moved there in the 1920s (more on that later, too). But a largely forgotten cluster of synagogues was built by the community who moved south of downtown in the 1910s and ’20s, and it’s those I’ll focus on in this post.

The influx of Eastern European Jews in the first decade of the 1900s led to the founding and expansion of social welfare agencies and congregations. Chasidic immigrants built what is either the fourth or fifth synagogue building in the city, Agudath Achim Anshe Sfard, in 1909 (I can’t tell if it predates Sinai, as mentioned above) on 21st St. just off Central Ave. The building was sold in 1945 to an African American church when the congregation moved to a larger building in Mid-City. It was then sold to a Hispanic church in 2005. (I would love to write a longer post about this amazing building! I took a ton of photos.)

B’nai Amunah Congregation established a synagogue in 1914 at Broadway and 40th, then moved to 42nd and Grand in 1921. They remained until at least 1942. The 110 freeway was constructed blocks away in the mid-1950s, which prompted many families to leave, though the Jews were largely leaving this area already. I know almost nothing about this congregation or the building. It has since become home to a sequence of Hispanic churches.

Talmud Torah Tifereth Jacob began in 1922 with fifty families, possibly as two separate congregations, rented space at first, and in 1925 purchased a building at the corner of 59th Street and Brentwood in the southern part of the city. After two years, the old building was replaced by a new and larger one, which served 1500 families. The congregation moved west to Ladera Heights (and ultimately to Manhattan Beach in 1977), and sold the building to the Evening Star Missionary Baptist Church in 1952.

This one was a doozy to find. It appears from building records that Congregation Etz Chayim physically moved their building from Santa Barbara Ave. (now MLK) and Avalon to 4315 McKinley Ave in 1923. It may previously have been Cong. Pahol Zedek, though that’s an educated guess. Turns out the streets and addresses here were renumbered around 1939, 4315 becoming 4361 when 43rd St. jumped a block, so this one escaped me for a while! The Church of Christ bought it in 1945, and the congregation merged with Rodef Sholom in Mid-City. The Church of Christ moved out in 1953 when they outgrew the building, and it’s now the Washington Memorial Church of Christ Holiness.

Sephardi Jews also began to move to the area in the 1920s and ’30s.  Congregation Talmud Torah of Peace and Progress Organization bought the property at Hoover and 55th by 1930, and built a new building as the Sephardic Hebrew Center in 1935. The building sold in 1958 to the Second African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church of Los Angeles when the congregation moved to Ladera Heights. Tiferet Israel held services in homes, halls and theaters, but finally dedicated their synagogue at the corner of Santa Barbara (now MLK) and La Salle Avenues in 1932 and remained until 1970 when they moved to Westwood. The two would later merge in 1993.

Tiferet Israel seems to have been the last active synagogue in South LA by the time it moved. Moving east, I know nothing about Huntington Park Hebrew Congregation/B'nai Yehuda, built in 1937, beyond that it appears to have changed hands in 1986-7, or even if the Seventh Day Adventist church it became is still active. (Any information is appreciated!) Temple B’Nai Emet in Montebello and Temple Ner Tamid in Downey even farther east and south, may be the last synagogues to carry this legacy. However, with the revitalization of Downtown LA, there are now two Chabad locations in the area, the one at Broadway and 7th just blocks away from the first Jewish settlement.

The Orthodox Northeast Portland Congregation Tifereth Israel was founded in a former house in the Alberta neighborhood, serving a community largely of Russian and Ukrainian Jews. In 1914, they bought this 1907 building, known as the Alberta Shul, off a then gravel road. The congregation eventually expanded to include up to 100 families, outgrowing the modest building and moved into the former Redeemer Lutheran Church at NE 15th and Wygant in 1952 (now Kings Temple Christian Church).

Tifereth Israel put the building up for sale, and Mount Sinai Community Church, an African-American congregation, attempted to buy the building. However, many residents in the largely white neighborhood tried to block the sale, and Tifereth Israel's realtor, Frank L. McGuire withdrew from the deal. The congregation wrote a letter to McGuire, forcing him to go through with the sale:

At the time said agreement was entered into, this congregation had no knowledge of the purchasers other than their name and that they were a Christian congregation. Later it developed that the members of Mount Sinai Congregation are Negroes and pressures have been put upon us to back out of the deal for no other reason than that the purchasers, though Christian, are also Negro.

We regard such pressures as being violative of the principles of Americanism, of Judaism, of Christianity and of common decency…Man has no dearer right than the privilege of worshiping God in his own way. To deprive any group of people of the right to meet and to worship merely because God chose to make them a part of the colored majority of mankind is repulsive to Americans who love their country and the great principles of democracy which distinguish our land from the totalitarian states wherein liberty and religion are destroyed.

In welcoming our colored brethren to our old synagogue of blessed memory, we are mindful of the quotation from Hebrew scripture, “Have we not all one Father; hath not One God created us?” We hope that they also will find God within its walls and that He will answer their prayers and ours that He teach us “to love one another.” In the event you refuse to close the sale, we desire to be released from our listing agreement so that we may ourselves consummate the moral agreement we have entered into.

Despite further petitions by neighbors, the sale went through. A series of small churches followed, and in 1980 the building was sold to a new owner who continued to rent the building to small congregations, mostly African American church groups, for the next thirty years. Frequent turnover became a nuisance and the building fell vacant and was used for storage.

Tifereth Israel served the east side until the congregation folded in 1986 and merged into Congregation Shaarie Torah in northwest Portland. While the focus of Portland's Jewish institutions has long been the more prosperous west side, new efforts to engage east Portland's Jews have bloomed in the last two decades, concurrent with the greater revival of the east side that has brought new development and residents. Alberta Street, two blocks north of the shul, was transformed in the 1990s from a dilapidated stretch of storefronts plagued with crime to a thriving row of boutiques, restaurants, and galleries. 

Shortly after the last church moved out, the Alberta Shul building became home in 2010 to Xhurch, a performance and art venue, named as to reference its home as an ex-church. Many of the events held at Xhurch play on religious themes and motifs, like NTVTY. (Matt Henderson, founder of Xhurch, actually created a website similar to this one focused on former churches!) Also in 2010, fellow religious architecture lover Samuel Gruber wrote a post highlighting the story of the Alberta Shul. 

When the property was placed up for sale in 2016, members of Portland’s Jewish community learned of its availability—and its history—and in 2017, a coalition of Jewish leaders, organizers, community members and business people began to organize an effort to purchase and restore the building. They envisioned a community space for Jewish events as well as the neighborhood at large. Their purchase proposal was in competition with developers interested in tearing it down and redeveloping the site, but the owner was intrigued with the restoration project and entered into a contract with the coalition for purchase. High costs for the building's purchase and for expected much-needed repairs led to the abandonment of the purchase plan in 2018, and the Alberta Shul Coalition is now focusing on creating Jewish spaces on the east side. The building was lightly damaged in Portland's fifth-ever tornado on July 1, 2019. The building remains as Xhurch, though a for sale sign planted on the front lawn portends an uncertain future. Uncredited photos by me. See more archival photos in this fundraising video.

Back in January 2019, I was thrilled to witness as the original home of DC’s Adas Israel Congregation was driven a block and a half to its new home where it will become part of the forthcoming Capital Jewish Museum. This was actually the third time the building had moved. Dedicated in 1876 with President Ulysses S. Grant in attendance, it was sold in 1908 when the growing congregation moved to their new home at Sixth and I Streets. It was home to a succession of churches over the next few decades, and later housed a bicycle shop and a grocery store, among other retail businesses. When construction of the Metro headquarters would have led to it being demolished, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington saved the building and moved it three city blocks to 3rd and G Streets where it became the Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum. It was moved again in 2016, this time just 60 ft. At the ceremony for the 2019 move, Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton joked she hoped this would be the last move. Here’s a video about the building made for the 2016 move.

This idea of saving a building by moving it is an interesting angle to Jewish traces. Occasionally a community will move their building when it makes sense, like First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland did way back in 1896. (An unfortunate example is Congregation Ahavath Achim in Portland, Oregon, which was damaged during its move in 1962.) B’nai Moshe in Los Angeles even moved in 1957 to prevent the building from becoming a church. But what makes a physical building that is no longer in use so valuable as to justify the expense of bringing it somewhere else? What does that say about how we celebrate the past?

Also moved to be a museum, the Montefiore Institute was built in 1913 or 1916 in Sibbald, Alberta, just west of the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. It served the Montefiore colony of Jewish immigrants who had settled in Alberta in 1910, one a number of pioneer colonies in the US and Canada. Severe drought led to the community disbanding in the 1920s and the building was sold and moved to Hanna, Alberta in the 1940 where it was a private home into the 2000s. It was tracked down, restored, and moved to the Heritage Park Historical Village in Calgary at a cost of over a million dollars in 2008, where it is now known as “The Little Synagogue on the Prairie,” where its mission is “the education and enjoyment of the park’s visitors, in order to build bridges of understanding among people of all cultures and religions.” 

Sometimes the building retains its original function. Possibly the first move of this kind for a synagogue was the San Leandro Hebrew Congregation in the Bay Area south of Oakland, also known as the Little Shul. The congregation was organized in 1881 and built the building in 1889, but by 1947 the renamed Temple Beth Sholom had outgrown it and built a new building. It was purchased by First Baptist Church in 1952, and then sold to the Judah Magnes Museum of Berkeley, who rented it out for church services. In 1970, Temple Beth Sholom purchased the building back and moved it to behind their new building, where it is again used for services and other functions. It may be the oldest standing synagogue building in the East Bay.

With a similar name and a similar story, we go to Texas. Built in 1883, repaired after a fire in 1893, the B’nai Abraham Synagogue served the community of Brenham, Texas and was the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the state. As its membership dwindled, as was true in many small towns in the South, regular services were last held in the 1960s. Leon Toubin, then 87, and his wife Mimi were the buildings only remaining caretakers in 2015. Meanwhile the Jewish community in Austin was growing. And so, in August 2015, the building was divided into thirds and driven 90 miles to Austin’s Dell Jewish Community Campus, where it now serves as the sanctuary for Congregation Tiferet Israel.

Madison, Wisconsin’s first synagogue, Gates of Heaven, was dedicated in 1863. The active congregation shrank quickly in the 1870s as families left the area, and by 1879 was renting the building to the Unitarian Society. They continued to rent the building to churches and other groups before selling it in 1916, after which it was a funeral home, a tearoom, a wartime storage facility during World War II, a church, a dental office, and ultimately the office of then Congressman Robert Kastenmeier. In 1970 plans were drafted by new owners Fiore Coal and Oil Company to sell it for commercial development, which would have had it replaced with an office building. Members of nearby Beth El Temple started the Gates of Heaven Synagogue Preservation Fund to buy, move, and restore the building. In 1971, the building was driven across the isthmus to James Madison Park, where it is now owned by the Madison Parks Department and is rented out for special events and weddings. Beth El Temple holds High Holiday services there as well.

The first Jewsh congregation in San Diego, Adath Yeshurun, formally incorporated as Beth Israel in 1887. They built a redwood building in 1889 at at Second Avenue and Beech Street. By 1923 they had outgrown the building and built a new one at 3rd Avenue and Laurel Street in Bankers Hill. The old building was sold and used as a bank and for other purposes before the Fraternal Spiritualist Church bought it in 1938. With downtown growing up around it by the 1970s, it was scheduled for demolition. A historic designation in 1973 delayed demolition, and Beth Israel's Rabbi Joel Goor and Beth Israel president Jim Milch, among others in the congregation, worked to purchase the building for $10,000 and preserve it. Beth Israel gave the building to San Diego County as an example of 19th-century religious architecture, with the condition that the county would move it to Heritage Park and restore the exterior. The structure was cut in half, moved, and reassembled. After a $450,000 restoration, it was rededicated in 1989 for its 100th anniversary. The County Department of Parks and Recreation rents the building for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other events. (After moving to a third building in 2001, Beth Israel's second building was also saved from development by historic designation and was sold to another congregation, Ohr Shalom.)

Info and images (and for more info and images): 

Adas Israel: WAMU 2016 and 2019, Curbed (2016 move), DCist (2016) Reuters (2019-spot me in the background of some of the photos), WTOP (2019), Washingtonian. First photo is mine.

San Leandro: Patch

Little Synagogue: Jewish Calgary, Calgary Herald and, Calgary Sun, Little Synagogue

B’nai Abraham: Banner-Press, JNS, Shalom Austin (with a few videos about the building and the move), KWHI, Tiferet Israel

Gates of Heaven: Madison 365, Madison.com, Wisconsin State Journal

The Congregationalists who controlled the state government initially prohibited Jews from having their own places of worship. As their control waned in the 1840s, Jews from Germany and Austria began to establish a community in Hartford, settling in what’s now the Front Street District of downtown. In 1843, Jews in Hartford established Congregation Beth Israel and, along with the Jews of New Haven, successfully petitioned to have the same rights as their Christian neighbors. 

Beth Israel, which had been meeting in private homes and other local buildings, bought the First Baptist Church building in 1856, which became the first synagogue in Hartford, and met there until the building was damaged by fire in 1875. In 1876, they built their own building on Charter Oak Ave. Originally an Orthodox congregation, they soon shifted to Reform and were one of the founding members of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1877. (Read more about Beth Israel in this post.) Formed in 1884 as the Association of Brothers, Children of Israel, Ados Israel provided Orthodox services after Beth Israel joined the Reform movement as Eastern European Jews moved to the city in large numbers. 

Originally clustered around downtown, the Jewish community began to move north and west as the city grew, first to the Clay-Arsenal neighborhood, building synagogues to house congregations Beth Hamedrash Hagadol, Ateres Israel, Emanuel, Tiferes Israel, and Chevry Lomday Mishnayes in the 1920s. As the community continued to grow and become more affluent, they built new synagogues in North Albany (Emanuel II and Agudas Achim), and in the 1940s and 1950s in the North End (Kneset Israel) and Blue Hills (Teferes Israel II, Tikvoh Chadoshoh, Beth Sholom). 

But the community was already moving even farther west. Beth Israel had already moved in 1936 just across the border of West Hartford. The rest of the congregations followed (Agudas Achim II), with nearly all leaving in the 1960s. Fewer Jews in the old neighborhood precipitated a number of mergers before those congregations too moved west (United Synagogues of Greater Hartford). By the time Young Israel of Hartford was built in Blue Hill in 1962 it lasted less than seven years before moving to West Hartford. Ados Israel was the last shul to close in Hartford when it held its last service in 1986.

Other congregations moved or were founded even farther north and west in Bloomfield in the 1950s and 1960s (Beth Hillel, Tiferes Israel III), and Windsor (Beth Ahm), and south in New Britain (B’Nai Israel) and Newington (B’nai Sholom). Other communities were founded in towns to the east (Beth Shalom in Manchester and B’nai Israel in Vernon). But communities are never static. Some outlying communities have contracted. Tiferes Israel, by then in Bloomfield, merged and closed in 1993. The aforementioned eastern Beth Shalom and B’nai Israel merged in 2009. June 2018 saw the closings of Beth Hillel in Bloomfield and Beth Ahm in Windsor as both merged into other congregations. West Hartford itself was not immune to changes. United Synagogues of Greater Hartford sold their building and moved to a small house next door in 1994. Agudas Achim closed in 2018 and the building is now for sale (as of April 2019). Jewish communities have been growing in Avon and Farmington, and as with communities in other parts of the country, new congregations are founded with different religious practices, and synagogue attendance is waning in certain communities. 

Most of these buildings still display their Jewish history. Of the old synagogues in Hartford, the vast majority are now churches serving their Hispanic and African American communities. While some have added crosses and undertaken some renovations, cornerstones and Stars of David betray the buildings’ origins. The only indication that Emanuel II and Kneset Israel are not synagogues are the signs on the front lawn. Beth Israel is now the Charter Oak Cultural Center. Young Israel and United Synagogues are now schools. Newington’s B’nai Sholom is now Vallabhdham Temple, a Hindu Temple. See descriptions and photos of all of the buildings mentioned here on the map in the Hartford Spotlight.

Five German families settling in Grand Rapids founded the Benevolent and Burial Society in 1857 and occupied two rented structures for two decades, later adopting the name Temple Emanuel. In 1881, the congregation hired local architect David S. Hopkins to design a new building. The membership remained largely German until Eastern European Jews began to move into the Grand Rapids area. Adopting the Pittsburgh Platform, it became the fifth Reform congregation in the US. In 1926, the building installed a Tiffany glass window depicting the biblical story of Ruth and Boaz. 

By 1948 the congregation planned to move and hired California architect Eric Mendelsohn to design a new building two miles east on East Fulton in a more suburban area. Mendelson had fled Germany during Hitler's rise to power, and was then teaching at Berkeley and specializing in synagogue design. His vision was for a much larger, open, and more adaptable space for the growing community. They broke ground in January 1951, finishing in November 1953. The famous window was moved and incorporated into the new building. Meanwhile, Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church had begun sharing use of the Temple in 1949. The congregation dedicated their new building in 1954 and moved in and sold the old building to the church. The church occupied the space until 1976 when they too outgrew the building and moved east. It seems to have subsequently been used by other small churches and as a theater.

The building was extensively remodeled after an investment group purchased it and turned it into an office building, losing much of its recognizable historic structure. In 1994, they leased the space to the Heritage Clinic for Women, an abortion clinic. The investment group put the building up for sale in 1999 but apparently could not find a buyer. Pro-life activists formed an anti-abortion organization called LIFE International and managed to buy the building in 2003 to use as their headquarters. They quickly kicked out the Heritage Clinic, who moved two blocks away to another facility. As of 2019 they remain in the building. The structure still stands as the oldest synagogue building in Michigan.

Following the Utah War in 1857 and the removal of Brigham Young as governor of the Utah Territory, the non-Mormon presence in Utah, including Jews, began to grow. With their increased freedom to worship, Yom Kippur services were first held in a private home in 1864 and in at the Masonic Hall in 1865. Jews and non-Mormons also used Independence Hall for worship services. Congregation B’nai Israel was established in 1873, and by 1876 the community numbered 40 families. The congregation built their first synagogue, along with a brick schoolhouse, on the corner of First West and Third South Streets in 1883. Originally an Orthodox congregation, Rabbi Leon Strauss introduced Reform services and the synagogue joined the Union of American Hebrew Congregations the same year. Those who rejected the change left to form their own Orthodox congregation, Congregation Montefiore, in 1885 and built a new synagogue building nearby in 1903.

In 1889, the remainder of the B’nai Israel congregation sold the synagogue building and began work on a new synagogue building. As many of the congregants were first- or second-generation German immigrants, they wanted to model the synagogue after Berlin’s Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, though the plans changed somewhat during construction. They brought architect Philip Meyer from Germany, whose uncles, Frederick and Samuel Auerbach, were the founders of Salt Lake City’s famed department store, Auerbach’s. Meyer was supervised by Henry Monheim, one of the first “gentile” (non-Mormon) architects in Salt Lake City, who allegedly altered Meyer’s designs to a Romanesque revival building. The cornerstone was laid in 1890 and the building was dedicated in 1891. The impressive building was a testament to Jewish wealth and importance in the city. (Meyer later went back to Germany where he was an architect for the Prussian state, before perishing in a concentration camp.)

In 1970, Congregation B’nai Israel and Congregation Montefiore, which by then had become Conservative, began the process of combining. They merged to become Congregation Kol Ami in 1972, with a new, larger building 6 miles southeast of the two respective congregations’ buildings, closer to where the Jews had moved over the years. Kol Ami is now a member of both the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Union for Reform Judaism. The building became a restaurant, then another, and then sat vacant while becoming home to a homeless encampment. Office furniture and design company Henriksen/Butler bought it in 1987 and invested substantial resources renovating and shoring up the historic architectural features. They refreshed the space again in 2015, which is now a contemporary showroom. Take a virtual tour here.

Info and photos via Utah History Encyclopedia, Jewish Museum of the American West, Clio, Waymarking, Hadassah, National Register of Historic Places, Utah Style and Design, Henriksen/Butler, City Home Collective

Russian and Polish immigrants to Kansas City formed Congregation Keneseth Israel in 1878. They built a synagogue near what’s now the Spirit Center in 1902. As an Orthodox synagogue, 15 families broke away to form Congregation Beth Sholom, a Conservative community, in 1915. They met at 31st and Charlotte in the former Linwood Christian Church and in 1919 bought a large house at Linwood and Highland to meet in. Meanwhile, Keneseth Israel purchased a plot at 3400 the Paseo for a new grand synagogue. Unfortunately, the congregation did not have the funds to complete the planned Grecian temple design after completing the basement, and the two congregations rejoined in 1924 as the  Keneseth Israel-Beth Sholom congregation. Construction of a new Byzanto-Romanesque design by architects Greenebaum, Hardy and Schumacher began in 1926 and was completed in 1927. The 1,200 seat building won the Kansas City Architectural League’s gold medal for “the most beautiful building, best suited to its purpose” in 1928. While the 500 member families assumed the $400,000 construction debt, almost half withdrew as a result of the Great Depression. They were finally able to pay off the debt by 1941.

After World War II, the Jewish community followed other Kansas City residents out of the urban core of the city. The renamed Beth Shalom bought land ten miles southwest in 1955 for a new synagogue at Wornall and Bannister, and sold the building to Christ Temple Pentecostal Church in 1969. The congregation took the ark and dedication windows with them to the new building, since demolished in 2014. The congregation moved farther south yet again 2013 to Overland Park, following the migration of the Jewish community.

Christ Temple Pentecostal Church kept the Old Testament iconography and interior decoration. Founded in 1938, they were looking for a larger building to house their growing community at the time they bought Beth Sholom. In 1999, the two communities joined forces to save the ornate domes that had begun to leak in 1970. With help from the Kansas City nonprofit Friends of Sacred Structures, they were able to preserve the domes rather than be forced to remove them. Christ Temple Church was renamed Victorious Life Church in 2007 and remains in the building to the present day.

Temple Beth Israel, also known as the Charter Oak Synagogue, was the first purpose-built synagogue in Connecticut. The Congregationalists who controlled the state government initially prohibited Jews from having their own places of worship. As their control waned in the 1840s, Jews from Germany and Austria began to establish a community in Hartford, settling in what’s now the Front Street District of downtown. In 1843, Jews in Hartford established Congregation Beth Israel and, along with the Jews of New Haven, successfully petitioned to have the same rights as their Christian neighbors.  

Beth Israel, which had been meeting in private homes and other local buildings, bought the First Baptist Church building in 1856, which became the first synagogue in Hartford, and met there until the building was damaged by fire in 1875. In 1876, they built their own building on Charter Oak Ave. This new building was designed by George Keller, a leading Hartford architect, at a cost of $35,567, and could seat 600 people. Originally an Orthodox congregation, they soon shifted to Reform and were one of the founding members of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1877. 

As many Jews began to move to the suburbs, the congregation moved to West Hartford in 1935. Over the 20th century, other Hartford Jews would follow their lead: out of the thirteen synagogues that once existed in Hartford, none remain. The building was sold to the Calvary Temple congregation, who occupied it until 1974, when they too moved to West Hartford. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 on account of its history and architecture. Despite that, the building sat vacant and faced demolition by the city until Jewish groups organized as the Charter Oak Temple Restoration Association to preserve it. They “wanted to reaffirm Jewish engagement in Hartford while serving a multi-ethnic urban neighborhood that would become a vital part of the downtown revival.” It was restored in the 1990s and now houses the Charter Oak Cultural Center, a multicultural arts center. The original pews and sanctuary remain.

A new wave of Jewish immigrants came to San Francisco from Eastern Europe in 1880 to 1910, most of them from Russia, Poland, and Romania. They tended to be Orthodox, unlike the largely Reform Jews who founded Temple Emanu-El and Temple Sherith Israel in the years after the Gold Rush. These new immigrants established B'nai David in the Mission District near 16th and Mission Streets. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire, the community built this unassuming building in 1908. Stucco and tile over a wood frame, the building typifies what has been called "recessive protective architecture."

Part of the building's historic significance was its mikvah, or ritual bath. This mikvah was the first one in northern California; Orthodox Jews came from as far as Nevada to use it.

The congregation started to decline in the 1930s as members dispersed. Services continued until 1978 when the congregation officially closed. The mikvah was moved to Menorah Square, a Jewish retirement home in Pacific Heights. It was designated a historic landmark in 1980. The building was sold, the interior was revamped, and in 1981 it was converted to apartments.

Congregation Shaarey Tphiloh was founded in 1904 and for many years was located at 145 Newbury St. in the Old Port. It moved in 1954 to the Noyes Street building in Oakdale (also know as the Noyes Street Shul), a modern structure with sweeping interior beams and simple bronze decorations. At that time the congregation numbered a “few hundred” families. Membership in the Modern Orthodox community, the oldest Modern Orthodox congregation north of Boston, dwindled over the years, with 30 member families and regular weekly attendance down to 20-25 people. In 2016, the congregation made the decision to move to a more affordable space due to the expense of maintaining the 62 year old building. They had been unable to afford a new rabbi since the previous rabbi left in 2014. 

The building was sold to Portland Community Squash, a nonprofit organization that teaches the indoor racket sport, mentors local students and runs leagues.  They built four squash courts where the sanctuary once was, which are the only public regulation courts in the city, and use the classrooms for its educational programs. The congregation has been meeting at Temple Beth-El, a Conservative synagogue a few blocks away.

In 2009, neighbors and the community rallied to support the synagogue after an exterior welcoming sign was vandalized with a swastika.

Built in 1891-2 in a Byzantine-Moorish style for $12,000, Gemiluth Chassed (also spelled Gemiluth Chessed) is the oldest surviving synagogue in Mississippi and the only known example of that architectural style in the State.

The Port Gibson Jewish community was established in the 1840s by immigrants from German states and Alsace-Lorraine. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Jews gained both affluence and acceptance as they worked with their fellow Port Gibsonians to rebuild the local economy. Congregation Gemiluth Chassed was founded by 22 members in 1859 and met at the Odd Fellows Hall and Masons’ Lodge. They founded a Jewish cemetery and a school in 1870-1, making them less reliant on the Jewish community in Natchez nearly 50 miles away. Port Gibson was once home to fifty to sixty Jewish families in the early 20th century, most of whom worked as merchants and cotton brokers. Several buildings located in the downtown area bear the names of Jewish merchants, like H. Frishman-Red Goose Shoes, now Mississippi: Cultural Crossroads, a community center mostly serving the town's predominantly black youth.

The Jewish community dwindled in the first decades of the 20 century as the younger generations moved to larger cities like Memphis or New Orleans. The boll weevil also rapidly destroyed the Port Gibson cotton economy, and many residents moved to larger urban centers to pursue non-agricultural careers, further shrinking both the town and the Jewish community. In 1905, an estimated 171 Jews lived in Port Gibson; by 1937, only 44 Jews remained. The last services were conducted in the synagogue in 1978, and the congregation closed in 1986. They donated the deed, their Torah and artifacts to the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in Utica, Mississippi. It was scheduled to be demolished for a parking lot for the adjacent gas station but was bought in 1987 by a Christian couple, Bill and Martha Lum. It was designated a Mississippi landmark in 1995. It appears that it has been used by a Messianic congregation since at least 2008.

This incarnation of the building, also called the Jefferson Street Schul (and Ahavas Sholom), was designed by A. E. Minks and Sons in 1903 at a cost of $28,000, though it is likely an enlargement of an earlier religious structure from the mid to late 19th century. As the Jews moved out of the city's East Side, it was sold to Saints Home Church of God in 1960, and later to Greater New Hope Church of God in Christ. This historic structure was designated a local landmark by the City's Preservation Board in 1997. The building had been empty since 2005 and by 2012, it was slated for demolition. By that point it was the oldest synagogue building still standing in Buffalo. Despite a “Save My Shul” campaign, and demonstrators chaining themselves to pillars, it was demolished in October 2014. It was the oldest standing synagogue building in Buffalo.

Built by Aroner & Somers architects for $100,000 in 1913, it was among the grandest synagogues along Douglas and Independence boulevards in what was a well-to-do, predominantly Jewish area. The congregation had formed in 1875 and had outgrown their previous building near the University of Illinois at Chicago (since demolished). Seating 3,500, it was the largest synagogue at the time in Chicago, then the second largest Jewish community in the US. As Jews left the neighborhood and it became more African-American, most synagogues in the area were sold to churches in the 1950s. Anshe Kenesseth Israel merged with Torah Synagogue and moved to 2357 E 75th St in South Shore in 1954, and again from there in the 1970s.

Friendship Baptist Church bought the building in 1962. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on the front steps of the church in 1966 during his fair housing campaign. Friendship Baptist Church moved to a new building in 1982. Shepherd’s Temple Missionary Baptist Church moved in thereafter and occupied the site until 1997 when they were no longer able to afford the huge and aged building. The building was left vacant where it succumbed to looters and the elements. After a failed campaign by preservationists, it was demolished in 2012. In its place is now an empty lot.