Bet Mishpachah was founded in 1975, as the
Metropolitan Community Temple Mishpocheh. At first, its members were all men, and it later had woman as members too. In 1976, it hosted the First International Conference of Gay & Lesbian Jews, which was organized in response to the
United Nations resolution equating
Zionism with
racism, in an effort to create a forum for communications and mutual support among gay and lesbian Jews. In 1978, the congregation elected members of its
Board of Directors and began holding weekly worship services, using rented spaces in Washington, D.C. The following year, the congregation received a
Torah scroll, rescued from
The Holocaust, on permanent loan from the Westminster Synagogue in
London. The scroll (a
Sefer Torah, in Hebrew) once belonged to a small 500-year-old Jewish community in
Dolní Kounice, a town destroyed in 1940, in the former
Czechoslovakia. In 1980, the congregation formally adopted its present name,
Bet Mishpachah, "House of Family", and co-founded the World Congress of Gay & Lesbian Jews at the Third International Conference of Gay & Lesbian Jews, in
San Francisco,
California. At the time, Bet Mishpachah had 80 members. Its services, led by lay leadership, were held in the basement of a United Methodist church called Christ Church. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Bet Mishpachah lost several of its members to
AIDS. The congregation decided it needed to hired its first rabbi, in part in order to help with the
pastoral needs of members with partners who were terminal or had died. The siddur's text included mentioned both women and men, and it included a gender-neutral word for God. By 1999, Bet Mishpachah had over 300 members of the congregation. That same year, Rabbi Toby Manewith began serving as rabbi. In 2013, Rabbi Laurie Green replaced Toby Manewith as rabbi. In 2019, Rabbi Laurie Green moved to Chicago, and Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin replaced her as rabbi of Bet Mishapachah. The congregation has also started a cemetery called
Bet Mishpachah Cemetery, located in
Congress Heights. == Choir ==