Beginnings
The history of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim is a heritage in which all American Jews can take pride. It is a story of faith, devotion, and perseverance in the American tradition of freedom of worship.
Charleston was established in 1670, and the earliest known reference to a Jew in the English settlement is a description dated 1695. Soon thereafter other Jews followed, attracted by the civil and religious liberty of South Carolina and the ample economic opportunity of the colony. These pioneers were sufficiently numerous by 1749 to organize the present congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (Holy Congregational House of God) and, fifteen years later, to establish the now historic Coming Street cemetery, the oldest surviving Jewish burial ground in the South.
K.K. Beth Elohim is the fourth oldest Jewish congregation in the continental United States (after New York, Newport and Savannah). At first, prayers were recited in private quarters and from 1775, in an improvised synagogue adjacent to the modern temple grounds. In 1792 construction of the largest and most impressive synagogue in the United States was commenced. It was dedicated two years later; a member of the visiting Lafayette's entourage is reported to have described the building as "spacious and elegant." This handsome, cupolated Georgian synagogue was destroyed in the great Charleston fire of 1838 and replaced in 1840 on the same Hasell Street site by the present imposing structure. The colonnaded temple, dedicated in early 1841 with splendid ceremony, is often described as one of the country's finest examples of Greek Revival architecture. On this occasion, KKBE's Reverend Gustavus Poznanski was moved to say "This synagogue is our Temple, this city our Jerusalem, and this happy land our Palestine."
Photo by Jack Alterman Photo by Warren Lieb
Today KKBE is the second oldest synagogue In the United States and the oldest in continuous use.
It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1980.
Birthplace of Reform
Beth Elohim is acknowledged as the birthplace of Reform Judaism in the United States. In 1824, a sizeable group of congregants, 47 in number, petitioned the Adjunta (the trustees) of the synagogue to change the Sephardic Orthodox liturgy. The petition, which asked abridgement of the Hebrew ritual, English translation of the prayers, and a sermon in English, was denied. The disappointed liberal members thereupon resigned from the congregation and organized "The Reformed Society of Israelites". The society, influenced by the ideas of the Hamburg Reform congregation, the leading modernist community in Europe, lasted only nine years, but many of its practices and principles have become part of today's Reform Judaism The Progressives rejoined the old congregation, and while the present temple was being built in 1840, an organ was installed. With the first service in the new temple a liberalized ritual was introduced and aside from being the first synagogue in America to include instrumental music In worship, Beth Elohim became in 1841 the first Reform congregation in the United States. It was one of the founding synagogues of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873 and has remained firmly and proudly committed to Reform Judaism to this day.
Leadership
For almost two and a half centuries members of Beth Elohim have been eminent leaders in the city, state and country. Among notable early congregants were Moses Lindo, who before the Revolution helped to develop the cultivation of Indigo (then South Carolina's second crop) and Joseph Levy, veteran of the Cherokee War of 1760-61 and probably the first Jewish military officer in America. Almost two dozen men of Beth Elohim served in the War of Independence, among them the brilliant young Francis Salvador, who as delegate to the South Carolina Provincial Congresses of 1775 and 1776, was one of the first Jews to serve in an American legislature. Killed shortly after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Salvador was also the first Jew known to die in the Revolutionary War.
Members of the congregation founded Charleston's Hebrew Benevolent Society in 1784, the nation's oldest Jewish charitable organization, and in 1801 established the Hebrew Orphan Society, also the country's oldest. Both are still active. In 1838 the second oldest Jewish Sunday school in the United States was organized, The blind poetess Penina Moise was a famous early superintendent
Other congregants pioneered in steamship navigation, introduced illuminating gas to American cities, and numbered four of the eleven founders of the country's Supreme Council of Scottish Rite Masonry.
In 1790 President George Washington responded to the congratulations of K.K. Beth Elohim by writing, "The affectionate expressions of your address again excite my gratitude, and receive my warmest acknowledgment... May the same temporal and eternal blessing which you implore for me, rest upon your Congregation…"
Related Information
Click here to read an interesting article with a more general overview of Charleston Jewry.
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