Sha'ari Tob Congregation, Minneapolis – Downtown

Jewish settlers began arriving in Minneapolis in the early 1870s.  In 1876 they established the Montefiore Burial Association and purchased land on 42^nd Street and 3^rd Avenue South for a cemetery that is still in use.  Two years later many of the same settlers established a Jewish congregation that was incorporated on September 23, 1878.  The new congregation, aligned with the liberal Reform Movement, had the Hebrew name, Sha’ari Tob, “Gates of Goodness.”  The following year the congregation leased a lot on 5^th Street between 1^st and 2^nd Avenues for five years with an optional five-year extension. Their plan was to erect a synagogue on the site; the first in the city.  While in the process of raising funds its members met on the third floor of a building described in the congregation’s history as either above a drugstore on Washington Avenue or at 213 Hennepin Avenue.

By 1879, the congregation engaged Leroy Buffington, one of Minneapolis’s leading architects, to design the synagogue, which was completed the following year and dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, 1880.  In a speech presented at its dedication in front of many luminaries, including ministers from local churches, the congregation’s president laid out the congregation’s religious position: “…in keeping pace with Reformed [sic] Judaism, our object is to reconcile our faith as much as possible with our progressive times, which lies in the nature of our faith.” 

Buffington designed the synagogue in the Moorish-Islamic style, which was popular for many synagogues erected in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, particularly among Reform Jewish congregations.  The frame building, crowned with a dome, has two minarets and features horseshoe arches.  The building was to remain on its leased land for eight years until the congregation was able to purchase a lot on the corner of 5^th Avenue South and 10^th Street.  The building was then moved to the new site. A new rabbi Samuel Deinard arrived in 1901, and a year later the building was badly damaged in a fire. The damaged structure was demolished, and the congregation hired the architectural firm of Kinney and Detwiler from Austin, Minnesota, to design its replacement. The firm was best known for its design of courthouses throughout the Midwest, and indeed, the new synagogue resembled their courthouses.  The brick building certainly was not as unique as the congregation’s first building, a decision that may have been intentional, as can be seen in comments made by Rabbi Deinard at its dedication in 1902 regarding the “real purpose” of a house of worship:   “…a House of God…should not stand as a monument of vanity, to please the senses, but it should be dedicated to truth, justice to humanity, to fraternal fellowship and the principles of righteousness.”

Within ten years the congregation had outgrown its new building and had moved away from its neighborhood.  A committee was formed to seek a site in what was described as a “more convenient neighborhood.”  In 1914, a congregant offered to sell the congregation a house and lot he owned in the Kenwood neighborhood at 24^th and Emerson Avenue South.  The board agreed to the purchase and once again began to raise funds for a new edifice and religious school.  Until funds were available, the congregation used the house for a chapel, religious school, and social events, and named it “Temple House.”  In 1920, the Board voted to change the congregation’s name to Temple Israel.  Rabbi Deinard died in 1922, and a new rabbi, Albert Minda, arrived.  Shortly after his arrival, a fire badly damaged Temple House and the congregation began to hold services at the Universalist Church of the Redeemer at 8^th Street and 2^nd Avenue South.  [The fate of the second building is unclear; was it sold, if so when and to whom?  It was demolished to make way for the Freeway.  Personally, I recall it still standing prior to that and being used as a storehouse.]   

In 1926 a building committee was formed and funds were raised for a new synagogue, to be erected on the lot at 2324 Emerson Avenue, South.  Jack Liebenberg, a member of the congregation and the first Jew to graduate from the University of Minnesota’s School of Architecture, was hired to design the building.  Liebenberg, who was well known for designing a number of movie theaters throughout the Midwest, understood the importance of sight-lines and acoustics.  With input from Rabbi Minda, he designed an auditorium-style building with a Neoclassical style architectural vocabulary that was becoming popular for Reform synagogues.  Dedicated in 1928, the building continues to serve this congregation to the present day.