Washington Hebrew Congregation history

President Franklin Pierce signed "An Act for the Benefit of the Hebrew Congregation in the city of Washington" on June 2, 1856.

In 1861 the Washington Hebrew Congregation established the city's first Jewish school, an all-day program that compensated for the lack of public schooling in the District of Columbia.

11 (1862) expelling Jews "as a class" from Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky on charges of war profiteering.

The congregation grew steadily in membership and in influence; in 1863 it moved to the site of a former Methodist church, which had been used by the government as a hospital during the Civil War.

Washingtonians organized the first Washington lodge of B'nai B'rith (the Elijah Lodge) in 1864.

When organ music was added to our worship services in 1869, some members left to form an Orthodox congregation.

By 1870, with a new public school system in place, the Jewish elementary school closed.

In 1876, Adas Israel dedicates its first synagogue building, with President Ulysses S. Grant in attendance, at the corner of 6th and G Streets, NW.

When the Board merged with the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1878, Wolf served as chairman of the UAHC's Board of Delegates of Civil and Religious Rights for over 30 years.

By 1880, many of Washington's 1,500 Jews were second-generation Americans, including shopkeepers, clerks, established merchants, and a smattering of professionals.

In the early 20th century, enough families lived in the Seventh Street neighborhood to support three synagogues within as many city blocks: Washington Hebrew Congregation, Adas Israel Congregation, and Ohev Sholom Congregation (1886), the first congregation in Washington founded by Russian Jews.

Over the years, Adas Israel outgrows its home and eventually decides to build a larger synagogue in 1899.

Rabbi Abram Simon came to our Congregation in 1904 and dedicated his life to scholarship and community activity.

By 1905, the First Washington Hebrew Congregation was the only Reform congregation in the District of Columbia, with a membership of 350, and a religious school attended by 200 children.

Since 1908, the building had always been occupied; despite the constant use, the architects found that it was in remarkably good condition.

In 1910, Orthodox Russian immigrants founded Kesher Israel Congregation, which remains on the same site today.

A group of young men who had formed the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA; 1911) organized activities for arriving government workers and the first servicemen's club in the United States.

The YMHA and the Young Women's Hebrew Association (1913) hosted dances, Sabbath services, and recreational opportunities for the thousands of Jewish servicemen and servicewomen posted in Washington during the war.

The arrival of new immigrants increased Washington's Jewish community to 10,000 by 1920.

After the war, national and local leaders raised money to build an impressive Jewish Community Center (JCC) on Sixteenth Street (1926), one mile from the White House.

A local Jewish newspaper, the National Jewish Ledger (now Washington Jewish Week), began publication in 1930.

In 1938, 4,000 protesters packed the Daughters of the American Revolution's (DAR) Constitution Hall to pressure the British government to open Palestine to Jewish immigration.

In 1941 alone, the JCC room registry helped find housing for 4,000 Jews in local boarding houses, some of which catered to Jewish residents with kosher-style meals.

When it opened in 1944, Hebrew Academy (Orthodox) became the first day school in the Washington area in nearly a century.

To accommodate its growing membership, Adas Israel acquires a piece of land in 1945 at Connecticut Avenue and Porter Street for a new sanctuary—a more convenient location for many of its congregants who have moved into northwest Washington and the Maryland suburbs.

The local United Jewish Appeal met its first million-dollar campaign in 1946 to help meet the overwhelming economic and social needs of Jewish immigrants in Palestine.

In 1947, Washington Jews tapped personal connections in the embassies and the White House to influence the UN vote on the partition of Palestine.

As David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the independence of Israel in Jerusalem on May 14, 1948, an exuberant crowd of Washington Jews gathered at the Jewish Agency building on Massachusetts Avenue NW. They danced and sang as the new flag was raised.

Upon hearing of the planned renovations, Stanley Warsaw z"l brought Zuckerman an album with photos from Warsaw’s 1949 wedding ceremony in the building.

Turner Memorial A.M.E. Church purchases the original synagogue in 1951.

By the 1930s and ’40s, many members had established themselves financially and professionally. It was not until 1952 that a site was chosen for our present building on Macomb Street.

By 1956, half of the area's 81,000 Jews lived outside the city limits.

In the summer of 1966, a group of young Jewish activists urged the synagogue's rabbi, Rabbi Norman Gerstenfeld, to denounce a white Jewish landlord named Allie Freed for engaging in racist housing practices against African-Americans.

In 1969, the Jewish Community Center, the Hebrew Home for the Aged, and the Jewish Social Services Agency (later joined by the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) and the Jewish Community Council) relocated to a centralized campus of Jewish institutional life in Rockville, Maryland.

He also nurtured a growing connection between our Congregation and the State of Israel and presided over the construction of the Julia Bindeman Suburban Center in Potomac, Maryland in 1976.

In 1979, Turner Memorial builds a four-story, multipurpose center on an adjacent property to provide additional accommodations for church and community-related services.

Rabbi Joseph P. Weinberg became the fifth senior rabbi in 1986.

Rabbi M. Bruce Lustig became senior rabbi in 1999.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, the first Jewish candidate for vice president (2000), is a member of Kesher Israel Congregation in Georgetown.

By 2002, most of Turner Memorial’s growing congregation had moved to Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Jews make up 6% of all Washington metro-area residents, and the number of Jews in the area has grown 37% since 2003.

In 2005, 83% of greater Washington's 215,000 Jews lived in the Maryland and Northern Virginia suburbs.

Not Your Bubbe’s Sisterhood (NYBS), designed to foster connections among the creative, urban, intellectual contingent of DC women in their 20s and 30s, launches in June 2009.

Men’s Room, a program series for men in their 20s and 30s, holds its first event, The Art of Whiskey: A Tasting with Copper Fox Distillery, in December 2011.

It is one of the largest Reform congregations in the United States, with 2,781 members reported on the Union for Reform Judaism database as of 2012.