Congregation formed The congregation was established in July 1735 as Kahal Kadosh Mickva Israel (the Holy Congregation, the Hope of Israel); they soon rented a building for use as a synagogue. The congregation was founded by many from a group of 42 Jews who had sailed from
London aboard the
William and Sarah and had arrived in Savannah on July 11, 1733, months after the colony's founding by
James Oglethorpe. All but eight of the group were
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who had fled to England a decade earlier to escape the
Spanish Inquisition. In London, many had been members of the
Bevis Marks Synagogue. Wealthy members of London's Jewish community, then numbering 6,000, had provided financial assistance to subsidize the initial group and a second ship, which carried additional Jewish colonists to Savannah. The founders of the congregation brought with them a
Sefer Torah, which is still used on special occasions at the synagogue. On July 5, 1742, during
The War of Jenkins' Ear between Spain and the
Kingdom of Great Britain, Spanish troops landed on
St. Simons Island as part of their
Invasion of Georgia. Most of the
Sephardi Jews abandoned Savannah, fearing that if captured they would be treated as
apostates and burnt at the stake. The
Abraham Minis family and Sheftall families,
Ashkenazi Jews, were the only ones to stay. They gave up the rented synagogue building and held services informally at the home of Benjamin Sheftall. The Congregation was the first Jewish community to receive a letter from the
President of the United States. In response to a letter sent by
Levi Sheftall, the congregation's president, congratulating
George Washington on his election as the first President, Washington replied, "To the Hebrew Congregation of the City of Savannah, Georgia": ... May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors 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.
First synagogue building site Moses Sheftall and Jacob De la Motta led an effort in 1818 to construct a synagogue building on a plot of land given to the congregation by the city of Savannah. A small wooden building was erected at the northeast corner of Liberty and Whitaker streets and was consecrated on July 21, 1820, making it the first synagogue to be built in the State of Georgia. A fire destroyed the building on December 4, 1829, but the congregation saved its Torah scrolls. Not long after the building plans were confirmed, the synagogue president received a letter from a
Pennsylvania woman commenting on the design of the synagogue, resembling Christian form: An unused portion of property adjoining the synagogue building, which had been dedicated by Mordecai Sheftall in 1773 for use as a cemetery, was sold. Another portion of the lot was used as the site of the Mordecai Sheftall Memorial in 1902, a building that included space for meeting rooms and a religious school. A capacity crowd of Jews and prominent Christians attended a ceremony held at the congregation on May 7, 1933, to mark the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Jews in the colony of Georgia. The planned speaker at the event,
Harold Hirsch of Atlanta, was unable to attend. As the congregation found additional needs, the original Mordecai Sheftall Memorial space became too small. An expanded replacement structure was dedicated on January 11, 1957. ==Tours==