Congregation Mickve Israel in Savannah, organized in 1735, is among the oldest Jewish congregations in the United States and traces its origins to 42 Jews who arrived in 1733, many of them Sephardic refugees with ties to London. Despite disruption during the 1742 invasion and later reorganizations, it endured and received its charter in 1790. The congregation played a major role in Georgia and American Jewish history, erecting Georgia’s first synagogue in 1820 and preserving a Torah brought by its founders. Its present Gothic Revival synagogue, begun in 1876 and consecrated in 1878, reflects the congregation’s gradual shift from Sephardic tradition to Reform practice.