Congregation Mickve Israel

Open Monday-Friday, 10am-3:30pm (for tours)
Admission Adults $10
Address 20 East Gordon Street
Phone 912-233-1547
Official website

Congregation Mickve Israel is one of the oldest Jewish congregations in the United States. The congregation was organized in 1735 by (mostly Sephardic) Jewish people who had settled in Savannah in the first year of the city’s founding, fleeing persecution in Europe.

Its synagogue, which stands on the eastern side of Monterey Square, was constructed in 1878. It is one of the few examples of Gothic-style design employed in synagogue architecture in the United States.

A small on-site museum and guided tours of the historic synagogue are available, for which a charge applies.

Each October, the congregation also puts on an extremely popular festival of Jewish food, held in Monterey Square in front of the synagogue.

Visitor Info

Museum & Tours

Tours, led by volunteer docents, are available Monday-Friday, 10am-3:30pm. Tours are not available on Jewish holidays or some Federal holidays.

The tour discusses the role of Jewish people in the history of Savannah, visiting the synagogue’s sanctuary and its museum. Highlights include a 15th-century deerskin Torah scroll that Savannah’s original Jewish settlers brought over to the city from Europe, and letters from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and several other presidents.

The guided portion of the tour usually takes 35-45 minutes; reservations are not required. A tour fee of $10 for adults and $5 for children (0-11) is charged to aid in the upkeep of the historic building. There is also a gift shop.

→ More about tours at Mickve Israel

Services

The congregation practices Reform Judaism. Services are held Friday night and Saturday morning, and conducted primarily in Hebrew. Visitors are welcome to attend.

Architecture

The cornerstone for the new synagogue was laid in 1876. The design, in Gothic style, was drawn up by the English-born New York architect Henry G Harrison (1813-1895). Harrison specialized in the design of houses of worship (including others in the then-fashionable Gothic Revival style), which may explain the synagogue’s similarity to church architecture.

At the time of the synagogue’s construction, it was complemented by another place of worship in the Gothic style across the square, a Presbyterian church (destroyed by fire in 1929).

The building was completed, and consecrated, in 1878. It is the only synagogue in the United States in the neo-Gothic style. Gothic features include its buttresses, stained glass windows, pointed arches, and its tower. Instead of the steeple that might be expected on a building in this style, however, there stands instead a Middle Eastern-inspired cupola.

Additions to the original structure were made over the years, including the Mordecai Sheftall Memorial Building in 1902, later replaced by a new Sheftall Memorial Building in 1957.

A new three-story building (housing the museum, gift shop, offices and other educational and administrative spaces) was dedicated in 2003, replacing the incongruent 1950s addition to the building with a structure in closer conformity to the original design.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Inside are a beautiful Gothic-style sanctuary interior and the original stained glass windows.

History of Congregation Mickve Israel

Savannah’s first Jewish settlers landed in Savannah in the summer of 1733, only a few months after the arrival of the very first colonists.

Most of the 42 men and women who formed the first kernel of Georgia’s Jewish population came originally from Spain and Portugal. From persecution in those two countries, they fled to England, joining an established congregation there and later traveling to America.

That first group (which also included eight members of two German Ashkenazi Jewish families) emigrated to Savannah with the financial support of wealthy Jewish Londoners, who would also later finance a second emigration to the city.

By 1735, these first settlers founded a new congregation, originally called Kahal Kadosh Mickva Israel (which translates as Holy Congregation, Hope of Israel). A rented building on Ellis Square served as synagogue for the first few years.

All was reasonably well until 1742, when war between Spain and Britain broke out. Savannah’s Sephardic Jewish population was considerably alarmed at the arrival of their former persecutors: torture and death were the punishments then meted out to Sephardic Jews who had practiced their own faith in Catholic southern Europe.

When Spanish troops landed on the southern Georgia coast, many of Savannah’s Sephardic Jews fled. The only representatives of the Jewish religion remaining in the city were members of the Ashkenazi Minis and Sheftall families. With only a handful of congregants, they abandoned the rented synagogue, holding informal services instead in a member’s private home.

For almost three decades, there were too few of the Jewish faith in Savannah to support a formal congregation and services. Not until around the time of the Revolutionary War did the population grow back to a sufficient size.

Once the war was over, the Congregation Mickve Israel reorganized. That year, 1786, they again rented a synagogue. A charter was granted in 1790, but numbers dwindled once more and services returned to private homes.

By 1820, the Congregation was in a position to build its first permanent synagogue – the first in Georgia, too – on the corner of Whitaker and Liberty streets.

This first, wooden, building was destroyed by fire less than a decade later. A new brick edifice was reconstructed on the same site in the mid 1830s, and was dedicated in 1841.

Over the following years, the congregation grew until it could no longer be accommodated in its then synagogue. A new structure was planned, in the current location on Monterey Square, from 1876. Designed in the Gothic Revival style (rarely employed in synagogue architecture) by the New York architect Henry G Harrison, the synagogue was dedicated in 1878.