Adas Israel Congregation (Washington, D.C.)

Adas Israel Congregation is located at 2850 Quebec Street NW and has occupied its present site since 1951.[1][2] It practices egalitarian Conservative Judaism and combines tradition with innovation, offering worship opportunities ranging from intimate services to classical services featuring its historic pipe organ.[3][2] Its programs include an early learning center, an inclusive religious school, adult education, and a library and media center.[3] The diversity of these activities and worship communities underlies its description as a "congregation of congregations."[2]

The synagogue belongs to the Anti-Defamation League's Kulanu network of congregations working against antisemitism.[4] A 2014 report counted 1,420 households, while a December 2024 report said the congregation had more than 5,000 individual members.[5][6]

On December 31, 1869, nearly forty members of Washington Hebrew Congregation—the city's first Jewish congregation—officially withdrew to form Adas Israel Hebrew Congregation, Washington's second congregation.[7] Its founders were European immigrants who sought "to maintain traditional Jewish observances in the context of the modern American community," initially holding services in a small loft above a carriage factory near the U.S. Capitol.[2] Changes in liturgy and the introduction of a melodeon, an organ-like keyboard instrument, at Washington Hebrew Congregation helped prompt the separation.[8]

The congregation's first permanent house of worship was dedicated in 1876 at Sixth and G Streets NW, becoming the first building constructed as a synagogue in the District of Columbia.[9] President Ulysses S. Grant and other federal and civic officials attended the dedication, and a surviving receipt acknowledges Grant's ten-dollar contribution.[9] The 1907 American Jewish Year Book listed Adas Israel at Sixth and I Streets NW, recorded its organization in 1869, and reported 160 members, daily Hebrew services, and a religious school with 65 pupils in three classes.[10]

Adas Israel ceased using the original building as a synagogue in 1907 and moved to larger quarters at Sixth and I Streets NW.[9][11] The former synagogue subsequently housed several Christian churches. In 1969, to make way for Washington's subway system, the structure was relocated from Sixth and G Streets NW to Third and G Streets NW.[9] Public Law 91-68 authorized the District of Columbia commissioner to lease the former synagogue and adjacent District property to the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington for use as a Jewish historical museum.[12]

After a temporary relocation connected with the Capitol Crossing project, the building was ceremonially moved in January 2019 to its permanent site at Third and F Streets NW following the recitation of the Jewish traveler's prayer.[13][14] Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the 1876 synagogue now forms the centerpiece of the Capital Jewish Museum, which opened in 2023.[8][14]

A later home used by Adas Israel served as a church for half a century after the congregation left it, before being restored and reopened as the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue, a downtown community gathering place.[8] In the early twentieth century, the Seventh Street neighborhood contained enough Jewish life to support Washington Hebrew Congregation, Adas Israel, and Ohev Sholom Congregation within three city blocks.[8]

In the late 1960s, as Jewish residents and institutions increasingly moved from Washington neighborhoods to the suburbs, Adas Israel nearly left its Quebec Avenue NW site. Some donors objected because they had only recently contributed to its construction. Within several years, the congregation was thriving again, aided in part by the opening of a Metro station near its entrance.[8]

An educational survey for the 1972–73 school year documented a decline in enrollment from 618 students in 1961–62 to 332 in 1972–73, a drop of 46.3 percent. The steepest losses occurred in the primary grades, and the survey attributed the trend primarily to demographic factors, including an aging congregation and a lower birthrate, rather than to students transferring to other Jewish educational settings.[15] It recommended exploring intercongregational or community-school arrangements while maintaining standards for students seeking Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremonies at Adas Israel.[15]

The congregation has hosted several sitting U.S. presidents and other prominent public figures. President Barack Obama delivered remarks at Adas Israel on May 22, 2015, for Jewish American Heritage Month and said Grant's attendance at the 1876 dedication made him "the first sitting President in history to attend a synagogue service."[16] Grant's visit carried added symbolic weight because his 1862 General Order No. 11 had expelled Jews "as a class" from parts of the South on accusations of war profiteering.[8]

Obama's address marked only the fourth occasion on which a sitting U.S. president had spoken from the pulpit of an American synagogue, following William Howard Taft at Rodef Shalom in 1909, Dwight D. Eisenhower at Washington Hebrew Congregation in 1955, and Ronald Reagan at Temple Hillel in 1984.[17] It was also the first observance of Jewish American Heritage Month held inside an American synagogue.[17]

The congregation reports that it has hosted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Robert F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Albert Gore.[2] An official White House account also identifies Adas Israel as the first synagogue to host King, although it provides no date or further details about his visit.[18]

Adas Israel has repeatedly served as a venue for major communal and interfaith events. In January 2015, more than 700 people gathered there for a solidarity program organized by the American Jewish Committee to memorialize the 17 people murdered in the Paris terrorist attacks. France's ambassador to the United States, Gérard Araud, and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough addressed the gathering, which also included representatives of Muslim and French communities.[19]

The congregation has hosted civil-society programming on contentious questions within the Jewish community. An ADL-sponsored panel at Adas Israel, part of the "Across the Divide" series co-presented with IPF and CSC, brought together journalists and activists to discuss generational divisions over Israel. Participants included Daniella Greenbaum Davis of Spectator, Yair Rosenberg of Tablet, and Jill Jacobs of Truah, with Amir Tibon of Haaretz moderating.[20]

In 2006, congregant Donald Saltz donated $5 million to Adas Israel in honor of his late wife, Mozelle. The gift was described as the largest contribution in the congregation's 140-year history and one of the largest individual donations to a U.S. house of worship in years.[21] It was to be made in annual installments and added to an existing $10 million endowment.[21] Mozelle Saltz had worked in the offices of B'nai B'rith and was among those taken hostage by a Muslim group in 1977.[21]

Rabbi Avis Dimond Miller marked her eighteenth anniversary as a rabbi at Adas Israel in 2002. During her tenure, she developed programs for young adults and families, helped build the congregation's social-action agenda, and organized its Bikkur Holim committee for visiting the sick.[22] Rabbi Gil Steinlauf joined Adas Israel as senior rabbi in August 2008. He was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1998 and had studied at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem and the University of Judaism.[23] A 2014 report highlighted his efforts to engage both more traditional and more progressive congregants.[5]

The congregation's website states that its main sanctuary was constructed in 1931 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[3] The renewed Charles E. Smith Sanctuary retains its grand volume while incorporating extended balconies, a low maple-wood bimah, a Jerusalem-stone ark, and ramps providing access to the seating and bimah.[24]

A spacious lobby serves as a central gathering place and includes a Jerusalem-stone wall bearing a Torah inscription connected to the congregation's name.[24] Visible through glass walls from the lobby, the Dr. Avraham Biran Beit Midrash serves as a space for learning and prayer, with daily morning and evening minyanim held in its Kogod Chapel area. The Gewirz Beit Am, formerly Gewirz Hall, was transformed from a social hall occasionally used for worship into a dedicated worship space that can also accommodate social events.[24]

The congregation owns and maintains a historic cemetery at 1400 Alabama Avenue SE in Washington, D.C.[25] A 1907 directory also records an Adas Israel Hebrew Cemetery on Hamilton Road in Congress Heights, incorporated in December 1869 and then owned by the congregation.[10]

The Library of Congress exhibition and its Historic American Buildings Survey data pages both give June 9, 1876, as the dedication date of the original synagogue.[9][11] The Jewish Standard instead gives 1874, while the early-twentieth-century Jewish Encyclopedia gives 1873.[26][27]

The best-supported founding date is 1869: an American Jewish Archives review specifies December 31, 1869, and the 1907 American Jewish Year Book also records the congregation as organized in 1869.[7][10] The Jewish Encyclopedia instead says 35 members left Washington Hebrew Congregation in 1870, while the congregation's cemetery page opens with "Founded in 1870" without clarifying whether the date refers to the cemetery or the congregation.[25][27]

Separate sources support two of the congregation's comparative claims. An official White House account identifies Adas Israel as the first synagogue to host Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.[18] Ynet in 2014 and the Congressional Record in 2010 described it as Washington's largest Conservative synagogue, although those descriptions are historical rather than current size assessments.[5][23] The claim that Adas Israel was the first U.S. synagogue addressed by the Dalai Lama remains based on the congregation's own publication.[2]