Temple Israel (Minneapolis)

Temple Israel serves an urban Reform Jewish community that includes interfaith families.[1] Its community extends across the Twin Cities and beyond.[4] Its activities include worship, religious schooling, adult education, camping, and community service, while its history includes sustained cooperation with neighboring Christian congregations.[3] The congregation participates in the Kulanu: Synagogues in Action Against Antisemitism network.[5]

The congregation’s current website gives its address as 2323 Fremont Avenue South, Minneapolis.[1] Historical directories identify it at 2324 Emerson Avenue South, an address also used in a census of Jewish supplementary schools for 2006–2007.[6][7] The present synagogue opened on the site of an earlier congregational community house at Emerson Avenue and 24th Street.[3]

In 1958, the synagogue stood at the eastern boundary of the Kenwood–Cedar Lake area and was the area’s only Jewish institution, somewhat removed from the places where most local Jewish residents lived.[8] Its institutional history connects the movement of congregational facilities with the movement of Minneapolis residents into neighborhoods between Lyndale and Humboldt Avenues and between 26th Street and Franklin Avenue.[3]

About a dozen Jewish families rented a Minneapolis hall for worship in 1876 and engaged the Reverend Mr. Schreiber as minister; the Jewish Encyclopedia says the congregation was permanently organized and incorporated in 1878.[9] Historical directories are inconsistent, listing 1877 or 1881 as its organization year.[10][11] Its founders were German Jews living south of downtown near the city’s chain of lakes, and Reform Judaism was being practiced in the congregation by the 1880s.[12] Minneapolis Jewish communal life developed independently from that of St. Paul, with a burial society established in 1876 and a B’nai B’rith lodge in 1877 preceding the congregation’s organization.[13]

The congregation’s 23 founding members held Friday services in a rented hall at Nicollet and Washington Avenues, while Sunday school classes met in the president’s home.[3] Their congregation was named Shaarai Tov, “The Gates of Goodness,” before adopting the name Temple Israel in 1920.[3] Its first synagogue, built around 1880 at Fifth Street and Marquette Avenue, was a small Moorish-style wooden building.[3] The structure stood on leased ground in what was then the center of the business district.[9]

The Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society, established in 1877, became the Shaarai Tov Sisterhood.[3] Its responsibilities included caring for the sick, preparing the dead for burial, and assisting immigrants and poor Jews.[3] Cultural and social events and fundraising for the synagogue became additional parts of its work.[3]

In 1888 the congregation moved its wooden synagogue to Tenth Street and Fifth Avenue South.[3] After the building burned in 1902, the congregation, still numbering fewer than 100 families, built a stone synagogue on the same site for $18,000; the new synagogue was dedicated in 1903.[3][9] Early rabbinic leadership included Henry Iliowizi, who served eight years, S. Marks, who served two, and A. Friedman, who served seven.[9]

Early religious changes included worship without head coverings for either congregants or the rabbi, the introduction of an English-Hebrew prayer book, and Confirmation at age 16 in place of Bar Mitzvah at 13.[3] These practices formed part of the congregation’s development as a Reform institution.[3][12]

Samuel N. Deinard became rabbi in 1901 at an annual salary of $2,000.[3] Born in Lithuania and raised in Palestine, he combined leadership of a Reform congregation with connections to other parts of Jewish religious life.[3][12] He attended Orthodox synagogue services on the second day of Jewish holidays and preached in Yiddish.[12]

Deinard encouraged attendance at Friday services by sending members postcards and bringing friends, while his scholarly sermons and Americanized services attracted listeners.[3] He promoted support for Jewish pioneers settling in Palestine, founded the Twin Cities weekly American Jewish World, and mediated between Orthodox Eastern European newcomers and German Jews and earlier Minneapolis settlers.[3] His community-unifying influence, together with Jewish exclusion from civic power, has been offered as a possible explanation for the coalescence of German and Eastern European Jews around a strong network of communal institutions.[12]

By 1907, Shaarai Tov had 125 member families and 100 students in its Sunday school and Hebrew classes.[3] A contemporary directory recorded Sabbath and holiday services, morning and evening, in Hebrew and English, as well as a religious school with six classes, six teachers, and 100 pupils meeting weekly.[11] It also listed the Hebrew Ladies’ Benevolent Society and a Ladies’ Auxiliary.[11]

In 1914 the congregation purchased a community house at 24th Street and Emerson Avenue for $14,000, using it for classrooms and offices.[3] With religious-school enrollment reaching 200, it also rented the Lyceum Theatre for Rosh Hashanah services.[3] The adoption of the name Temple Israel in 1920 preceded Deinard’s death from a heart attack on October 12, 1921, as members were gathering for Yom Kippur.[3]

Albert G. Minda, from South Bend, Indiana, succeeded Deinard after having been ordained three years earlier.[3] He revised the religious-school curriculum, arranged joint teacher training with Mount Zion Temple in St. Paul, and encouraged young men to establish a Men’s Club.[3] Under his leadership, the congregation replaced its Emerson Avenue community house with a synagogue designed by architect Jack Liebenberg, holding its inaugural service on September 1, 1928.[3]

The new synagogue cost $225,000, with $150,000 borrowed against members’ pledges.[3] During the Great Depression, many members could no longer meet their pledges or pay dues.[3] The Men’s Club and Sisterhood responded with “Rigadoo,” a weekend carnival selling goods and offering prizes; over five years it raised $25,000 and helped preserve the congregation’s finances and credit rating.[3]

Minda worked with nearby church clergy on educational programs and opposed racial and religious prejudice as a founder of the Minneapolis Urban League and the Minneapolis Round Table of Christians and Jews.[3] He also founded and became the first president of the Minneapolis Federation for Jewish Service, later the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, and served as president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis from 1961 through 1963.[3]

A Jewish art gallery and museum opened at the synagogue in 1940, followed by a religious-school addition in 1955.[3] The 1963 congregational directory listed Minda as rabbi, William N. Cardozo as president, and Joseph W. Kahn as executive director.[6] On February 4, 1964, Minda offered the opening prayer in the United States Senate, where he was identified as Temple Israel’s rabbi emeritus.[14]

Max Shapiro joined Temple Israel as assistant rabbi in 1955 and succeeded Minda in 1963.[3] He introduced Friday-evening Torah reading, a Bar/Bat Mitzvah program, and changes to Sabbath and High Holy Day liturgy.[3] His tenure also brought expanded educational opportunities and greater participation by women in worship.[3]

Shapiro’s public work included civil rights, refugee resettlement, and interfaith Seders.[3] A neighborhood initiative with five churches provided medical and dental care, counseling, tutoring, food, and clothing.[3] On November 13, 1979, he offered the Senate prayer, drawing on Genesis 12:2 to describe the United States as blessed with “a land of plenty,” freedom and justice, and a creative and purposeful people, while praying for a world without war, fear, hunger, or cruelty.[15]

During Stephen Pinsky’s tenure, Temple Israel appointed its first woman rabbi, Marcia Zimmerman, and its first fully trained cantor, Barry Abelson.[3] A 1987 addition created a parking-lot entrance, a 250-seat theater, meeting rooms, offices, and elevators intended to improve accessibility for people with disabilities.[3] Pinsky served as the Senate’s guest chaplain on June 13, 1989, offering a prayer linking generations and calling attention to violence, hunger, poverty, and unequal access to national resources.[16] He urged work toward equity, justice, righteousness, and peace, declaring that “if the cost of turning our land into a garden seems high to some, the price of making it a desert is higher still.”[16]

Joseph Edelheit arrived as rabbi in 1992 and led a joint Israel tour for members of Temple Israel and the Basilica of St. Mary.[3] Zimmerman, who had served as assistant rabbi since 1988, became senior rabbi in 2001.[17] She was the first woman to lead a synagogue congregation of more than 2,000 families; her tenure included a sanctuary renovation and the congregation’s 125th-anniversary celebration.[3] The current clergy listing identifies Marcia A. Zimmerman as senior rabbi and Jennifer S.G. Hartman and Jason Rodich as rabbis.[18]

Early directories recorded 84 members and seat-holders in 1901, 110 members in 1907, and 225 members in a directory compiled mainly from information gathered in 1918.[10][19] The 1907 directory also recorded congregational income of $5,200.[11] These figures document membership at different stages without constituting a continuous population series.[11][10]

By 1958, Temple Israel had approximately 975 members.[8] Contemporary synagogue membership figures were approximate: congregations had not supplied individual membership lists, some people belonged to more than one synagogue, and the overall community calculation used an estimated 5 percent allowance for duplication.[8] The surrounding Kenwood–Cedar Lake area then had 38,633 residents, including about 1,100 Jewish residents, or nearly 3 percent of its population.[8]

In 1985, Temple Israel had 1,850 member families and ranked as North America’s tenth-largest Reform Jewish congregation.[3] Its current description gives a community of nearly 2,000 families,[4] while a report for 2024 gives more than 6,000 individual members and identifies it as Minnesota’s largest Jewish congregation.[17] Reporting in 2025 likewise identifies Temple Israel as the state’s largest synagogue.[2]

Temple Israel’s religious school grew from 75 pupils in six classes taught by six teachers in 1901 to 150 pupils in eight classes with eight teachers in the directory based mainly on 1918 information.[10][19] The school was identified as Reform in the national census of Jewish supplementary schools for 2006–2007.[7] Adult classes in Bible, Hebrew, Jewish history, and other subjects were popular by 1954.[3]

In 1940 Sisterhood members began a statewide Braille-transcribing and training program associated with the Library of Congress, producing books for blind readers.[3] Volunteers began a daily 5:45 p.m. service in Deinard Chapel in 1958 for people commemorating a death among family or friends.[3]

Camp TEKO began as a day camp in 1945.[3] In 1958, 90 children attended Temple Israel’s day camp, while the congregation separately reported about 25 boys in a scout group and 110 children participating in its youth activities, the city’s third-largest reported synagogue youth program.[8] Temple Israel and Adath Jeshurun organized fewer, larger groups than Beth El and Mikro Kodesh; synagogue programs also offered leadership training for promising teenagers and camp scholarships.[8] Community-wide participation totals were duplicative because some children attended multiple activities or congregations.[8]

The Men’s Club purchased and developed a Lake Minnetonka campsite for Camp TEKO in 1965.[3] In 2008 Temple Israel received a $50,000 grant for a Camp Teko accessibility project and an archiving project.[20] Accessibility improvements also formed part of the congregation’s earlier building expansion, including the elevators installed in the 1987 addition.[3]

The 1928 synagogue’s pillared facade reflects Greek influence on early Judaism.[3] Five entrance doors represent the five books of the Torah, and 12 sanctuary columns represent the tribes of ancient Israel.[3] Acanthus leaves in the organ grilles recall Jewish enslavement in Egypt, while the windows depict Creation, the Patriarchs, Exodus, the Temple, the Prophets, and post-Biblical ideals of one world and one humanity.[3] The sanctuary seats 950, and a smaller chapel across the hall commemorates Rabbi Deinard.[3]

Temple Israel Memorial Park Cemetery was founded in 1876 at what is now the corner of 42nd Street and Third Avenue South in south Minneapolis.[21] Its chapel is the oldest Jewish building in Minneapolis and is listed on the registry of Minnesota Historic Buildings.[21]

The congregation holds Czech Memorial Scroll Number 248, known as the Tabor Torah.[22] During the Nazi occupation, Jewish religious objects, including more than 2,000 Torah scrolls, were brought to Prague for cataloging and safekeeping.[22] In 1964, 1,564 Torah and other scrolls arrived at Westminster Synagogue in London after Ralph Yablon donated them following their purchase from the Czech government.[22] The Memorial Scrolls Trust was established to care for and repair scrolls distributed to communities as memorials to those lost in the Shoah.[22]

The congregation believes the scroll was collected at Tabor, about 90 kilometers south of Prague, but notes that Tabor served as a collection point for surrounding communities and that the scroll’s precise origin is uncertain.[22] It is read by the congregation’s b’nai mitzvah and was repaired and rededicated in May 2014.[22]

In April 2024, the nearly century-old Emerson Campus achieved LEED Gold certification with 67 points and acceptance as a U.S. Green Building Council Legacy Project.[23] The congregation announced it as the first synagogue globally to receive LEED Gold certification for an existing building.[23] Facility updates and policy changes formed part of an energy-efficiency effort linked to a board-approved goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.[23]

During Rosh Hashanah services in October 2024, Temple Israel’s security team reported seeing a man with a gun outside the synagogue.[24] Police identified him as Jaden LeBlanc and arrested him the following day, although no weapon was recovered.[24] Investigators connected him to threatening telephone calls, and the county attorney’s office said he had previously thrown beer bottles onto synagogue property.[24] Police Chief Brian O’Hara called the timing concerning but said there was no evidence of an antisemitic motive or other hate or bias motivation.[24]

On December 16, 2024, at approximately 7:20 a.m., the synagogue was vandalized with painted swastikas on exterior doors and a pillar.[17] A custodian observed the spraying through security cameras, and surveillance footage showed a suspect completing the vandalism in less than two minutes before leaving in a Honda Civic.[17][25] Police investigated and took steps to address safety concerns, while Minneapolis officials, including Mayor Jacob Frey, publicly condemned the act.[25]

On the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack, graffiti was sprayed on the synagogue’s preschool wing.[26] It included “Watch out Zionists,” “F*ck Zionism,” “Al-Aqsa Flood,” and 14 inverted red triangles.[26] Zimmerman was notified by a neighbor and described her reaction as “outrage and pain.”[27] A police report was filed and video footage was provided for investigation; the reporting did not identify those responsible.[26][27]

Zimmerman characterized the graffiti as antisemitic hate speech, while Jewish Community Relations Council leader Steve Hunegs called it an escalation of anti-Israel rhetoric.[26] She stated that she was a proud Zionist who also wanted suffering in Gaza to end and that the incident would not halt the congregation’s interfaith work.[26] Summarizing her response, she said, “It’s not about political differences. It’s about hate.”[27]