Atlanta has long embraced its Jewish community amid rising antisemitism

It was the first time a non-Christian house of worship had been dedicated in Atlanta — yet it was not treated as an event for Jews alone. It was embraced as a public event — one that symbolized something greater than any single community.

While marking Jewish American Heritage Month in May, I found myself thinking back to that milestone — and to my own, more recent connection to it.

Community came together after The Temple was bombed

The first synagogue service I ever attended took place 13 years ago, at The Temple on Peachtree Street, during the holiday of Shavuot. I was in high school then, visiting Atlanta on a school trip from my hometown, which had no synagogue.

Credit: Rachel Philipson

Credit: Rachel Philipson

When I visited, I knew that the congregation had been bombed in 1958, but I did not know its opening over two decades before had been celebrated by the wider community over several days and included at least five Christian ministers.

Since 1877, The Temple (formerly the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation) has moved buildings three times. But each move has carried the same echo: of interfaith partnership, civic welcome and a belief that difference need not mean division.

In 1902, when the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation moved to a larger sanctuary at South Pryor and Richardson, “big crowds” filled the new space, which could seat 1,500, and many were turned away for want of space. Two months later, the synagogue hosted what was described as Atlanta’s first interdenominational Thanksgiving service, according to The Atlanta Journal. Seven Protestant ministers joined Rabbi David Marx on the bimah. By this time, the congregation’s former home on Garnett Street was converted into a Baptist church.

In 1929, the South Pryor synagogue was sold to the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral and the congregation met on Washington Street briefly. In 1931, the congregation dedicated the current synagogue on Peachtree Street. The three-day celebration was a citywide occasion.

Christian clergy from five denominations participated in what was called the “Good Will Service.” Orthodox and Conservative rabbis joined their Reform colleagues from across Georgia. The service was broadcast on WSB radio. Above the entrance, a verse from Isaiah — “My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples” — was engraved in Hebrew, spelling out in stone what the city, in that moment, seemed to be living in practice.

That vision would be tested in 1958, when the same synagogue was bombed by white supremacists in retaliation for its rabbi’s public support of civil rights. No one was ever convicted, but the city did not remain silent. Atlantans of many backgrounds rallied in support of Rabbi Jacob Rothschild and The Temple’s congregation. Donations arrived from across the region. Letters of sympathy were sent. A Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial by Ralph McGill named the moral failure for what it was: when civic leaders equivocate, others feel emboldened to destroy.

Credit: Unknown

Credit: Unknown

Atlantans have a tradition of embracing Jewish neighbors

Today, as antisemitism rises across the country and interfaith trust is once again under strain, these stories from Atlanta’s earlier history are worth revisiting.

Atlanta is now home to an increasingly diverse faith community — where Judaism and Christianity are two among many. What does it mean to show up for one another across lines of belief?

This history does not erase the challenges. But it complicates the narrative. And it reminds us that pluralism is not a modern invention or a fragile dream. It’s a tradition — an inheritance Atlantans have claimed before and still can.

The sources in this essay come from period newspaper accounts I transcribed while researching early synagogue dedications in Georgia.

In revisiting those articles, I found more than civic pride. I found a kind of trust. When a city turns out not just to observe a synagogue dedication but to embrace it as its own — that’s more than tolerance. That’s belonging.

Austin Reid Albanese is a historian and writer whose work explores overlooked stories of civic and interfaith collaboration in American Jewish history.