Congregation Mickve Israel

Congregation Mickve Israel, the oldest congregation now practicing Reform Judaism in the United States, was founded by a group of Jews, mainly of Spanish-Portuguese extraction, who landed at Savannah on July 11, 1733, five months after the establishment of the Colony of Georgia. The congregation was incorporated in perpetuity by a special act of the Georgia Legislature on November 20, 1790. After worshipping in various temporary quarters for almost a century, the congregation built its own synagogue in 1820, the first in Georgia, on the northeast corner of Liberty and Whitaker Streets. The present synagogue was consecrated on April 11, 1878. In 1789, the congregation received a letter from President George Washington that stated in part, "May the same wonder-working Diety who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian suppressors, planted them in the promised land - whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation - still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah."

Savannah, Georgia · United States