Temple Sinai (Oakland, California)
Temple Sinai is a Reform synagogue in Oakland, California. Founded in 1875, it is the oldest Jewish congregation in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of 2015, Temple Sinai had nearly 1,000 member families.
About Temple Sinai (Oakland, California) in brief
Temple Sinai is a Reform synagogue in Oakland, California. Founded in 1875, it is the oldest Jewish congregation in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. It grew out of Oakland’s Hebrew Benevolent Society, which had been organized in 1862 by eighteen merchants and shopkeepers from several foreign countries. By 1914, it had become a Classical Reform congregation. In 2006 Temple Sinai embarked on a USD 15 million capital campaign to construct an entirely new synagogue campus adjacent to its current sanctuary. Groundbreaking took place in October 2007, and by late 2009 the congregation had raised almost USD 12 million towards the construction. As of 2015, Temple Sinai had nearly 1,000 member families. The rabbis were Jacqueline Mates-Muchin and Yoni Regev, and the cantor was Ilene Keys. The synagogue has two emeritus rabbis, Samuel Broude and Steven Chester. The current sanctuary was built: a Beaux-Arts structure designed by G. Albert Lansburgh, which is the old synagogue building in Oakland. It is located at 2808 Summit Street, and is located on the corner of 14th and Webster streets. It was built in 1878, but due to a severe recession in California at the time, the congregation did not construct a building until 1878. Services were initially traditional, following the Polish rite. In 1881 the new president, David Hirschberg, led a campaign to modernize, and convinced a small majority to introduce a number of reforms, including the addition of a mixed choir of Christians and Jews and organ music.
Traditionalists withdrew, forming their own Orthodox minyan, which eventually became Oakland’s Congregation Beth Jacob. The congregation hired Oakland’s first rabbi, Meyer Solomon Levy, in 1881. He was the son of Rabbi Solomon Levy of Borough Synagogue in London, and moved to Australia as a young man. Levy was progressive in many ways, but also more observant than his congregants, which led to conflict. He accepted the reforms of shortening the Shabbat services, and facing the congregation during prayer, but he successfully resisted attempts to adopt Mayer Wise’s 1885 \”Minhag America\” Prayer-Book. In 1886, the synagogue burned down, although a congregant who entered the burning building to retrieve the Torah scrolls saved them. Levy made prodigious efforts to raise funds for a new building, including traveling as far away as Vancouver to give a series of talks at the Unitarian Church, where he spoke on the theory of evolution. He also gave lectures with titles such as ‘Progress of Science’ and ‘Theory of Science’, while he invited a Unitarian minister to give lectures at the First Hebrew Congregation. Levy in turn was well received at the synagogue, and received a well-received letter from the U.S. Supreme Court. He died in 1901, and was buried in Oakland’s Jewish cemetery. He is survived by his wife and three children.
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This page is based on the article Temple Sinai (Oakland, California) published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
