Congregation Sherith Israel (Nashville, Tennessee)

Congregation Sherith Israel occupies a campus at 3600 West End Avenue in Nashville. Its current website describes it as a century-old Orthodox synagogue, while its About Us page identifies the congregation as a Modern Orthodox community committed to Torah, tradition, the State of Israel, and an open, welcoming communal life.[1][2]

The congregation combines regular religious services with education, social events, community service, kosher supervision, an eruv, and programs for children and adults. A 2024 JNS profile identified it as Nashville's only Orthodox synagogue, a distinction that also draws tourists and business travelers seeking Orthodox services while visiting the city.[3]

The congregation's history traces its roots to Hungarian Jewish immigrants who, by 1887, had held religious services in Nashville for seventeen years and maintained a cemetery. It says the group petitioned Nashville's Chancery Court that year and was chartered as the Ungarischer Unterstetzung Verein of Nashville, also called the Hungarian Benevolent Society of Nashville.[4] The Jewish Virtual Library gives a different charter date, stating that the Hungarian Benevolent Society was chartered in 1871 and later evolved into Sherith Israel.[6] The sources agree that the society was the congregation's institutional predecessor but do not reconcile the two charter dates.

The society also established a Jewish cemetery presence in Nashville. JewishGen states in one passage that it purchased cemetery land in the early 1870s and elsewhere dates the purchase to 1876. Part of the property was sold in 1876 to Adath Israel, the predecessor of West End Synagogue.[7] A privately owned parcel was excluded from the sale and served as a burial ground for the Loveman-Mills and Rich-Martin families for almost a century; through a family agreement, it became part of The Temple Cemetery in 1971.[7]

In 1904, some members of the Hungarian Benevolent Society broke away to form Congregation Sherith Israel. Its charter was issued on July 26, 1905, when Sherith Israel was Nashville's only Orthodox congregation, and the congregation observed the charter's centennial in 2005.[4] Its first president was Emanuel Weiss, and its first rabbi was H. Saltzman, who served without compensation until his death in 1928.[4]

The congregation initially met in a house next to the Ryman Auditorium. In 1920, the original structure was razed and replaced by the Fifth Avenue Shul, where the Torah was read from the center of the synagogue, as it is in the present sanctuary.[4]

For decades, Sherith Israel occupied a building that shared a wall with the Ryman Auditorium, the venue celebrated as the "Mother Church of Country Music."[5] The synagogue's facade was architecturally similar to the Ryman's, and the proximity of the two structures made confusion between them plausible. In the postwar period, Opry fans commonly brought picnic baskets and refreshments before concession stands ended the practice, and some reportedly gathered at Sherith Israel after mistaking it for the Opry entrance.[5]

One version of the story places an incident in 1946, when Yom Kippur fell on the Jewish Sabbath and afternoon services coincided with Opry audiences assembling nearby.[5] In other versions, ticket holders carrying food and soft drinks entered the synagogue while the congregation was fasting. The visitors were invited in but asked to leave their refreshments outside, and the men were given yarmulkes.[5]

A recollection attributed to Gerald Peiser in a 1998 interview describes a man in overalls who entered during a solemn fast-day service, sat beside Peiser and other male congregants, used a nearby spittoon, and remained briefly before realizing that he was not attending an Opry performance.[5] Cantor Aaron Abramson reportedly welcomed the visitor and asked what he thought of the service. According to Peiser, the man replied: "It was very nice, but I was expecting Roy Acuff!"[5] The source cautions that the stories have differing versions and may be apocryphal.

The approved sources disagree on the timing of Sherith Israel's departure from downtown. Harris places the move away from the Ryman-adjacent site before 1948, while the congregation's history dates its relocation to West End Avenue to 1949.[5][4] The former Fifth Avenue Shul site is now the Central Parking lot.[5]

A 1982 report in the Library of Congress's Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools in America Project collection documents a Nashville congregation named Khal Kodesh Adath Israel, glossed as "Congregation Assembly of Israel," and states that the name remains part of West End Synagogue's full title.[8] The report concerns West End Synagogue rather than Sherith Israel. Other approved sources separately identify the Hungarian Benevolent Society as the institutional predecessor of Sherith Israel, indicating that the two congregations are distinct despite connections to Nashville's nineteenth-century Hungarian Jewish community.[6][7]

Sherith Israel's origin dates reflect several different milestones: religious services traced to 1870, conflicting dates of 1871 and 1887 for the Hungarian Benevolent Society's charter, the formation of Sherith Israel by a breakaway group in 1904, and the issuance of its formal charter on July 26, 1905.[6][3] These dates represent different stages of institutional development rather than a single consistently defined founding date.

Rabbi Abraham Chill became Sherith Israel's first paid rabbi in 1938 and served until he entered the military in 1941. Three rabbis led the congregation between 1942 and 1949.[4] Rabbi Zalman Posner joined in 1949 and served for fifty-three years, becoming one of the congregation's most formative leaders. Academic author Stacy Harris identified him as Sherith Israel's spiritual leader and included him among several Nashville community members interviewed for a study published in Southern Jewish History.[5][4] Posner became Rabbi Emeritus in 2002 and died in 2014.[4]

Rabbi Michael Merdinger served from 2002 to 2005.[4] Rabbi Saul Strosberg, a graduate of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, joined as spiritual leader in August 2005.[3][4] When he first interviewed for the position, typical Shabbat-morning attendance stood at sixty to seventy people. He described the congregation as declining at the time, with few children and poor finances, but said its existing members believed it had strong foundations and was open to growth.[3]

Cantor George Lieberman joined in 1996, teaching Hebrew and Haftorah reading, leading services, and offering Shabbat classes. He retired in 2019 but continued to teach.[4] Dov Rosenblatt joined as Shaliach Tzibur in 2021, expanding the congregation's musical offerings and children's programming.[4]

In a May 2024 profile, JNS reported that Shabbat attendance had nearly doubled from the levels Strosberg encountered in 2005, reaching between 125 and 150 adults and children on a typical week. Most stayed for a weekly communal lunch that he introduced, and the congregation had approximately 200 membership units.[3] Strosberg attributed part of the growth to Nashville's broader expansion and to a deliberate emphasis on hospitality.

Tourists and business travelers come to Sherith Israel because it is Nashville's only Orthodox synagogue. Strosberg gives visitors the synagogue's entry code and his personal cell-phone number. A visitor saying Kaddish may lead services using his own prayer custom, or nusach. Strosberg described this openness as le'chatchilah—intended from the outset—rather than b'dieved, an accommodation made only when necessary.[3]

Sherith Israel's official materials describe it as a Modern Orthodox community with participatory services featuring Divrei Torah, singing, communal kiddushes, education, social events, and community service.[1] Its homepage describes the membership as a cross-section of Jewish life, including both Shabbat-observant and non-observant Jews, experienced Hebrew readers and beginners, longtime Nashville families, and first-generation Americans from Europe, Russia, Iran, Morocco, and Israel.[2]

The Nashville Eruv was established in 2006, a year after Strosberg joined Sherith Israel, and was later expanded to include more Shabbat-observant families. It permits Jewish residents and visitors to carry certain objects outside their homes on Shabbat and Yom Kippur.[9] Strosberg also oversees kosher certification for Nashville eateries.[3]

JNS quoted Strosberg describing Sherith Israel's continuing immigration story. Its early membership consisted of immigrants, while the community described in 2024 included immigrants from Iran and the former Soviet Union as well as people who had relocated to Tennessee from other parts of the United States.[3]

Rabbi Posner founded Akiva School in 1954; the K–6 Jewish day school now operates on the Gordon Jewish Community Center campus.[4] JNS reported in May 2024 that, under principal Rabba Daniella Pressner—Strosberg's wife—enrollment had grown from fewer than sixty students roughly twenty years earlier to a projected 112 students for fall 2024, the school's seventieth-anniversary year.[3] Pressner described her work alongside Strosberg as a partnership in serving Nashville's Jewish community.[3]

Strosberg also founded a Jewish middle-school program serving both Jewish and non-Jewish students, with about thirty students at the time of the 2024 report.[3] When Jewish students attend prayer or religious-studies sessions, non-Jewish students participate in programs called Spiritual Start and A Soulful World, the latter addressing world religions and moral questions. Strosberg also founded Kehilla High School, which debuted in 2022 and was projected to have eighteen students in fall 2024.[3]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Strosberg placed a freezer stocked with ice cream in the synagogue parking lot. It was open at all times to Jews and non-Jews, adults and children, with community members sponsoring the treats.[3] In 2024, he estimated that the congregation had distributed approximately 40,000 to 50,000 ice-cream bars and popsicles over the preceding four years. Christian clergy in Nashville referred to the project as the synagogue's "ice-cream ministry."[3]

Following the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, Strosberg developed Promise Sessions, a Nashville initiative inspired by a program he encountered in Boca Raton, Florida.[3] The project brought Israeli musicians who had served in the Israel Defense Forces to Nashville to record music and perform, while also providing trauma counseling. Actress Patty Heaton partnered on the project and connected Strosberg with a producer at Blackbird Studio. The first group of three Israeli soldiers had recorded music by the publication of the JNS report in May 2024.[3]

The congregation's history dates its relocation to the present West End Avenue site to 1949. A new sanctuary was built adjoining a three-story mansion that housed the synagogue kitchen, a small chapel, the rabbi's office, and classrooms converted from upstairs bedrooms.[4] The mansion was demolished in 1962, when the congregation constructed the portion of its complex containing offices, a chapel, Liff Auditorium, and the original Akiva School space.[4]

The sanctuary's most distinctive interior features are twelve stained-glass windows, each fifteen feet tall, set along the north and south walls.[4] Israeli architect Arie Lynn designed them around subjects including the Jewish holidays, Shabbat, ritual objects, the Holocaust, the twelve tribes of Israel, the State of Israel, and Jerusalem. The congregation says Lynn concealed his name within each window's design as a personal signature.[4]

In 2005, Sherith Israel undertook renovations to the sanctuary, Liff Auditorium, entrances, mikveh, and kitchens. That year, the congregation also elected its first woman president.[4]