USA: Brookhaven Mississippi Synagogue Now a Museum

Brookhaven Mississippi Synagogue Now a Museum
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) Twenty years ago I had the pleasure of visiting the small but lovely Temple B'nai Sholom in Brookhaven, Mississippi. Even then there were few Jews left in the town to use the synagogue, built in 1896. Still, it was well maintained, and could still serve the community on holidays. But even in 1991 it was clear something would have to be done to save this building and its history for another generation. I wrote about the building on this blog in June 2009, and shortly afterward the synagogue was deconsecrated.

http://samgrubersjewishartmonuments.blogspot.com/2009/06/usa-brookhaven-mississippi-synagogue.html




With just two Jews in town, B'nai Sholom was too much to care for. But the tiny congregation had planned ahead and when the doors closed for worship it was announced that the building was begin donated to the Lincoln County Historical and Genealogical Society to be used as a county history museum, which would include a B'nai Sholom Jewish heritage exhibit, organized by the Institute of Southern Jewish Life. The new museum and exhibition opened March 11, 2011.

According to an article by Rachel Jarman in the current issue (summer 2011) Circa: The Newsletter of the Golring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life , "On the bimah, panels describe the orioginal use of the Temple and explain the various Judaic items still in the sanctuary including the ner tamid, Ten Commandments and menorahs." The exhibit also empahsizes the role Jews played in the town's history. jews came to Brookhaven in the mid-18th century and played an important role in the commerical life of the town. Three Jews have served as mayor of Brookhaven.

For more information about the synagogue and the museum contact Rachal Jarman at (601) 362-6357.

The situation in Brookhaven is not unique. In June 2007 I wrote about the synagogue of Stevens Point, Wisconsin and it restoration as a local history museum. You can read about it here.

USA: Should We Call Classicism in Georgia Georgian?

USA: Should We Call Classicism in Georgia Georgian?
by Samuel D. Gruber

Atlanta, Georgia. Hebrew Benevolent Congregation. W. F. Denny, architect (1902). From postcard.

Architectural historian Richard Funderburke has referred me to the Macon Georgia Living history map webpage for some fine photos of Congregation Beth Israel in Macon, Georgia. Richard is a font of knowledge about Georgia architecture, and I've referred to his work elsewhere on this blog.

I've been to Savannah, but never to Macon and a score of other towns that have or had Jewish communities. Sometime I hope to afford the time and money to make my own march through Georgia and adjacent southern states to more fully investigate the rich Jewish and architectural history of that region.

At present, I'm particularly interested in the persistence of classicism, which in the south has its own particular overlapping and intersecting levels of meaning. Classicism was the style of the elite in the ante-bellum period and we are fortunate to have Beth Elohim in Charleston - literally a touchstone building for American Reform Judaism - as a reminder of how Jews were close to that elite in aspirations if not always in social status. They were not Christians, but they were white. Therefore the widespread use of Greek and Roman classicism beginning around 1900 is only due in part to national trends, since it is also steeped in a strong regional affinity and sense of history. One has to remember that it was a Jew - Commodore Uriah Levy - who undertook to preserve the Jeffersonian (and Palladian) appearance of Monticello. The Palladian form of Monticello - which derives from Rome's Pantheon and is a seen is many types of American civic architecture plays a role in Southern synagogue design, too. I discuss this in brief - but not to the extent that it deserves - in a new article "Arnold W. Brunner and the new classical synagogue in America" that will appear shortly in Jewish History.

While the famed Touro Synagogue at Newport, designed by colonial-era architect Peter Harrison and completed in 1763 is typically described as of "the Georgian Style," since it was erected during the English Georgian period, in this article I touch upon a very different Georgian classicism - that found in Atlanta and Macon a century ago.Meridian, Mississippi. Temple Beth Israel (1905, demolished 1964). From postcard.

Alexandria, Louisiana. Gemiluth Chassodim (1908, destroyed by fire 1956)

In recognition of Richard's link about Macon, I include a few paragraphs from that article - though they are out of their full context, and without their full accompanying end notes.

Already in 1902, two Roman temple style synagogues were erected in Georgia. In Atlanta, the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation dedicated on September 12, 1902, a large new Roman temple style home, designed by Louisville-born W. F. Denny (1875 - 1905), at the corner of South Pryor and Richardson Streets. The Atlanta Constitution called this structure “one of the handsomest church buildings in the city.” Actually, in old photographs the building appears to have been mostly Renaissance in style, but it had a projecting porch facing the street consisting of six large Ionic columns supporting a robust entablature and pediment. Denny also was the architect of the Jefferson County Courthouse in Louisville in 1904, so perhaps it is no surprise that the synagogue looks something like a courthouse. Rabbis from several states attended the dedication. Rabbis were there from both Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Richmond, Virginia, both cities where classical style synagogues were subsequently dedicated in 1904.

Congregation Beth Israel in Macon, Georgia, also built an imposing Roman-temple type building in 1902, designed by local architect Peter E. Dennis. In 1905, a year before Brunner’s Brickbuilder article, three “modern classic” temples had been dedicated in Mississippi alone; in Meridian (demolished 1964), Natchez, and Greenville. A similar 450-seat synagogue in Alexandria, Louisiana opened in 1907.

In Mississippi especially, the motive for the classical designs might have been patriotic. While the forms of the new synagogues recall those of Kahn’s Beth El in Detroit, they closely resemble those of the Pantheon-like Illinois State Monument dedicated at the Vicksburg Battlefield, also in 1906.vi Elsewhere, throughout the country, classicism could be equally tied to civic life and could be seen in the architecture of libraries, courthouses and universities, many of which were quickly adopting the new “White City” classicism.vii

Significant classical style synagogues were erected in Chattanooga (1904), Richmond (1904), Louisville (1906), Kansas City (1907), St. Louis (1908) and New Bern, North Carolina (1908), among many other places. The normality of these buildings and their religiously neutral or ecumenical appearance is seen in a postcard from Louisville that pairs the new Temple Adath Israel with the First Christian Church. The two buildings are virtually indistinguishable, except that the synagogue displays a Decalogue (Ten Commandments) set within its pediment though historian Lee Shai Weissbach has pointed out that this Decalogue was never installed. Many of the other classical synagogues of the period did include Jewish symbols as pediment decorations, particularly the Star of David, though on most of these buildings symbols were unobtrusive and façade inscriptions were usually in English, not Hebrew. A favorite line used on the façades of Reform Temples is “My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples (Isaiah 56:7). The quotation, always presented in English, was a proclamation intended as much for the general community as it was for the Jewish congregants. It signified – as did the classical architecture – the attempt at near-ecumenicalism of the Reform Movement. In the 1920s, when the classical style became widespread among Conservative and Orthodox congregations, their buildings always had inscriptions in Hebrew, though sometimes English was also included.

Louisville’s Temple Adath Israel had staged a competition for the design (one of the first competitions for synagogues in America), to which Louisville architect William G. Tachau had submitted an entry. Despite his local Jewish roots, Tachau did not receive the commission, which went to Kenneth McDonald and John Francis Sheblessy, prominent local architects and both Christians. We do not know what specifically the architect and congregation were thinking when they chose the Roman temple-style design. According to Weissbach, “There is no way of determining whether they were aware of recent Greco-Roman synagogue discoveries in Palestine, for example, or how important it was that a member of the congregation, Alfred Joseph, served as senior draftsman on the project.” xii Still, it is easy to agree with Weissbach that, “Adath Israel was attempting to associate itself with the most sophisticated artistic sentiment of the time and the latest developments in American culture. In doing so, the commonwealth’s oldest congregation was declaring its strong sense of self-confidence and its feeling of security as a part of Kentucky society.”

Notes:

Richard D. Funderburke, "Willis F. Denny II, Architect: A Brief Career, a Lasting Influence," Preservation Bulletin (January 1995); and “W. F. Denny (1874-1905),” in New Georgia Encyclopedia, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-715&hl=y (posted 2002, accessed Nov 14, 2008). According to Funderburke, Denny’s work “reflects the major shifts in design that took place at that time when the picturesque, eclectic forms of the Victorian era gave way to neoclassicism and more historically accurate period revival styles.” For more on the synagogue, see Janice Rothschild Blumberg, As But a Day to Hundred and Twenty, 1867-1987 (Atlanta: Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, 1987), 55 ff.

Steven H. Moffson, “Identity and Assimilation in Synagogue Architecture in Georgia, 1870-1920,” in Alison K. Hoagland and Kenneth A. Breisch, editors, Constructing Image, Identity, and Place: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, volume 9, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), 151-165.

Lee Shai Weissbach, The Synagogues of Kentucky: Architecture and History (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 74-75.

USA: Lexington, Mississippi Synagogue Set to Close

Lexington, Mississippi, Temple Beth El.
Photo: Bill Aron from Shalom Y'all (used with permission).

USA: Lexington, Mississippi Synagogue Set to Close
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) The other day I posted about a Polish synagogue celebrating Rosh Hoshanah services for the first time in a quarter century. On the side of the coin, and from the other side of the world, comes news that yet another small Southern American synagogue is set to close. Andrew Muchin in the Forward (click here for article and photo) reported that the 104-year old Temple Beth El in Lexington, Mississippi celebrated what is likely to be its last High Holiday service.

Lexington is the smallest place in Mississippi where a Jewish community has survived for a considerable period of time. The future of the building has not been decided. Fortunately, there is no urgency to destroy, move or reuse it. This closure is due to a dwindling Jewish presence in the small Mississippi town, not a deteriorated building or pending development. There are several paths the congregation may choose to follow.

The Lexington story is just a chapter in the continuing history of transformation of small town American Jewish communities. I have written about this process many times before, since I visited Mississippi in 1991 to speak at the centennial "celebration' of the (now former) synagogue in Port Gibson. The likely closure of Lexington follows that of Brookhaven (see my earlier post). That synagogue will be used as a town museum. The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in Utica, Mississippi, now a constituent part of the Goldering Institute for Jewish Life has long tried to track and manage such synagogue closures. In a few cases former synagogues have become branches of the museum - but needs and funds can only support a limited number of such institutions. In the worst case scenario, it is now hoped that congregations plan in advance for the eventual closure of their synagogues, and work to carefully preserve their records and their Judaica, and consult with local and national experts about the proper way to protect and preserve this heritage and their building.

Many of the Mississippi synagogues were built at the turn of the 20th century and are fine examples of vernacular religious architecture and in many cases, local versions of the preferred (after about 1900) Neo-Classical style favored by the Reform movement. The Lexington synagogue is a fairly simple and restrained version of this style, but is still a member of this group of structures which once included synagogues in Meridian (demolished 1964), and the still-extant buildings in Natchez (1905) and Greenville (1906).

Meridian, Mississippi. Former Synagogue, demolished 1964. Will the Lexington Synagogue building survive?
Photo: postcard.

Muchin's story begins:

“As the members of Temple Beth El in Lexington, Miss., pray this Yom Kippur for inclusion in the Book of Life, they’ll be attending a funeral of sorts. The Ne’ilah, the day’s traditional closing service, will be the last scheduled worship to be held in their 104-year-old white wooden synagogue. “Our last regular service had four people,” said Phil Cohen, 72, operator of Cohen’s department store which his grandfather founded on Lexington’s town square in 1908.”

He goes on to write:

“Next year, he and the other local congregants will attend synagogues in nearby Mississippi cities. Meanwhile, he expects that Beth El will open its doors for an occasional life cycle ceremony.

Cohen and former Lexington businessman Bob Berman have ideas for moving the building, or perhaps its contents and windows, to the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford, but they have no formal plan.”

According to Munchin "the synagogue’s well-maintained interior is 90% sanctuary. Each side wall features four tall stained-glass windows with intricate Tiffany-style patterns." This is in keeping with Natchez and Greenville.

Munchin writes "the simple symmetrical exterior with its tall, gabled front porch resembles a rural church. The only visible Jewish symbol is a round window with a small, six-pointed star above the entry." This is not entirely true, since few churches at the time would have had such a prominent arched facade. The Brookhaven synagogue was more "church like." But the limited decoration was certainly par for the time. For a later example see the facade former Chevra T'helim, an Orthodox Congregation in Portsmouth, Virginia).

USA: Brookhaven (Mississippi) Synagogue Likely to Become Museum

USA: Brookhaven (Mississippi) Synagogue Likely to Become Museum
by Samuel D. Gruber (ISJM)

The 19th-century Temple B'nai Shalom of Brookhaven, Mississippi is likely to be transformed into a museum, if all goes according to plan. Hal Samuels, a member of the small town's last remaining Jewish family, has negotiated the transfer to the local historical society with the assistance of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, the Jackson based Jewish charitable and educational group that also maintains the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in Utica, Mississippi, and at several satellite sites in synagogues throughout the region.

Read more in the (Mississippi) Daily Leader.

Brookhaven, Mississippi. Temple B'nai Shalom. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber, 1991.

The Brookhaven synagogue is one of the most charming in the South. I had the pleasure of visiting Brookhaven when I was a guest of the Museum of the Southern Jewish experience in 1990. Even at that time, it was clear the synagogue would have to close - or at least undergo a transition. One option - the one that has been tried until now - has been to keep the building open nominally as a synagogue, even though it is rarely used for worship. Its upkeep is donated by the Samuels family and through donations from descendants of Brookhaven Jews. This is a solution that has been used to preserve other small town and rural synagogues such as in Brenham, Texas and Alliance, New Jersey.

As caretakers age, however, it is often hard to guarantee preservation for another generation unless some institutional affiliation is established. The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life is a pioneer in such arrangements. One of the Institute's goals is that when synagogues of the region must close, that they do so in dignified way, and one that provides the optimum opportunity to protect and preserve the history and memories of the congregation, as well as the physical integrity of the ritual object and art, and the synagogue building, too. Sometimes this means finding a Jewish use for a site, sometimes for an appropriate reuse. More and more, local historical societies are turning to former synagogues as useful facilities. The synagogues are exhibitions themselves, and they are often adaptable for exhibition, lecture and concert activities. Another example of such as transformation as in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.