Our Congregation's History

A brief history of Kehilat Kesushah B'nai Yeshurun - Isaac M. Wise Temple

1840 A group of German Jewish immigrants in Cincinnati organize themselves into a separate congregation, breaking away from the existing congregation, K. K. Bene Israel. The first place of worship is in a home on Third Street, between Sycamore and Broadway.

1841 The congregation adopts a constitution on September 19, 1841. Included in the constitution is the directive that the congregation observes German "rites, customs and usages," in contradistinction to the English practice of K. K. B'nai Israel.

1842 The congregation is incorporated on February 28, 1842 under an act of the General Assembly of Ohio. Services during this time were conducted by a Hazan (cantor).

1846 The congregation elects its first rabbi, James K. Gutheim. Described as a man of "genuinely liberal tendencies," he tries to introduce to the congregation such reforms as a choir in worship services.

1848 The Lodge Street Synagogue is dedicated on September 22, 1848.

1849 The congregation's religious school, the Talmud Yeladim Institute, is founded in the winter of 1849. Due to a cholera outbreak, the school is not opened until September 13, 1849.

1853 The congregation votes to engage Rabbi Isaac M. Wise as its spiritual leader, thus permanently altering the congregation's course of history and that of Reform Judaism. Rabbi Wise and his family arrive in Cincinnati soon thereafter.

1854 Rabbi Wise begins the publication of The American Israelite. He also begins instituting reforms in the synagogue, such as the successful introduction of a choir (which initially he conducted with his violin).

1855 Rabbi Wise argues for the use of an organ in synagogue. Various other reforms during the next few years included the abrogation of second day observance of holidays, with the exception of Rosh Hashana (1859), and the permission to pray without a head covering (1873).

1858 The congregation, with a membership of two hundred and twenty, is reported to be the second largest congregation in the United States.

1860 Along with K. K. Bene Israel, a joint cemetery in Walnut Hills is organized (which will become known as the United Jewish Cemetery). Today this joint enterprise is responsible for numerous cemeteries in the Cincinnati area.

1865 The laying of Plum Street Temple's cornerstone takes place. The congregation had needed a larger building for years, but their plans were postponed due to the Civil War.

1866 The Plum Street Temple is dedicated on Friday, August 24, 1866. As a daily paper writes at the time, "Cincinnati never before had seen so much grandeur pressed into so small a space." Although originally budgeted at a cost of $35,000 for the land, and $55,000 for the building, the total cost of the enterprise exceeded $300,000, largely due to post Civil War inflation.

1873 Rabbi Wise founds the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the umbrella body of the Reform Movement in North America.

1875 Rabbi Wise founds the Hebrew Union College, what is now the oldest rabbinical school in the Western Hemisphere.

1889 Wise founds the Central Conference of Reform Rabbis, the professional union of the Reform rabbinate in America.

1892 A celebration of the fiftieth year of the congregation is held on February 26, 1892. An impressive procession and banquet is held.

1899 The congregation celebrates Rabbi Wise's eightieth birthday along with the Central Conference of Reform Rabbis.

1900 Rabbi Wise dies on March 26, 1900. His pulpit chair at Plum Street Temple is draped in black and kept vacant for a year. Rabbi Grossman is Senior Rabbi until 1926.

1903 What will later be known as The Wise Center is opened on September 25, 1903 on Reading Road as an additional building for the congregation.

1913 The Wise Temple Sisterhood is formed at this time and becomes a charter member of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods.

1920 Rabbi James G. Heller is hired as Assistant Rabbi. He will become the Senior Rabbi in 1926, upon the death of Rabbi Grossman.

1927 The Isaac M. Wise Center on Reading Road and North Crescent is opened on April 24, 1927. Usage of Plum Street Temple is limited to the High Holy Days, festivals, and Ordination services of Hebrew Union College.

1928 The Wise Temple Brotherhood is inaugurated on January 11, 1928.

1931 The congregation merges with the Reading Road Temple, making a combined membership of 908 families. Rabbi Samuel Wohl of the Reading Road Temple becomes rabbi of K. K. B'nai Yeshurun, along with Rabbi Heller. Reading Road Temple itself is a consolidation of the John Street Temple (Ahavath Achim) and the Mound Street Temple (She'erith Israel). The first congregational seder is also held. In addition, the basement of Plum Street Temple becomes a shelter for homeless men. Throughout the next five years, an average of 210 men will sleep there each night.

1953 Rabbi Albert Goldman begins his service to the Temple as Co-Rabbi with Rabbi Wohl.

1966 The congregation celebrates the centennial anniversary of Plum Street Temple. Rabbi Goldman becomes the Senior Rabbi during this year.

1970 Temple Bene Israel of Hamilton, Ohio joins the congregation as an affiliate.

1971 Rabbinical student Sally Priesand, who will become the first woman ordained as a rabbi a year later, serves as a rabbinic intern to the congregation.

1973 The Wise Center on Reading Road and North Crescent is sold. The congregation holds regular Sabbath services once again at Plum Street Temple.

1975 Plum Street Temple is placed on the National Register of Historic Places of the Department of the Interior as a national landmark.

1976 New Isaac M. Wise Center is opened on Ridge Road in Amberley Village.

1979 The Congregation begins the Wise Center Day Camp program, which becomes one of the largest day camps in the community serving pre-school and young school children.

1981 Rabbi Alan D. Fuchs is elected Senior Rabbi.

1983 Friends of Plum Street Temple, an organization devoted to maintaining this historic place of worship, is inaugurated on March 25, 1983.

1985 Rabbi Lewis H. Kamrass is engaged as Assistant Rabbi.

1989 Rabbi Lewis H. Kamrass is elected Senior Rabbi.

1991 The congregation receives prestigious national recognition by the Reform Movement for leadership and innovation in social action programming, (WiseUP) with over a third of the congregational membership involved in various programs.

1992 A year of special events celebrates two milestones in the life of the Isaac M. Wise Temple: the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Congregation, and the 125th anniversary of the Plum Street Temple. Also during this year, the Wise Temple Religious School becomes one of only 25 schools in the United States to receive accreditation from the National Association of Temple Educators (NATE).

1993 Wise Temple begins participation in the Interfaith Hospitality Network, a night shelter for homeless families in the classrooms of Wise Center. As the only synagogue to participate, this program involves dozens of Temple volunteer hosts, and complements the many soup kitchen programs in which Wise Temple participates.

"The Wise Commitment: Tradition and Tomorrow Campaign" is inaugurated to provide for renovation, building and program needs for the 21st century. It is received with enthusiastic response by the Congregation and raises an unprecedented $5.8 million.

1994 Eitz Chayim, a comprehensive program of lifelong Jewish learning is initiated, including numerous courses and opportunities for Jewish study and enrichment for people of varying Jewish educational backgrounds. It will later receive a national award from the Reform movement for being an innovative, exemplary model of lifelong learning.

Plum Street Temple closes to complete a major two million dollar restoration including extensive structural, electrical, and interior work, with the assistance of the Friends of the Plum Street Temple. The building reopens on July 21 with great fanfare and renewed vitality, as the Congregation also celebrates ten years of Rabbi Lewis H. Kamrass' leadership.

1995 Groundbreaking and construction begins July 22, 1995 on a significant expansion and renovation of Wise Center in Amberley Village. The project includes eight new classrooms, new program areas, expanded Library and pre-school areas, and the addition of a grand lobby and seating area. The 2.5 million dollar expansion, including full disabled access and safety additions to the entire building, is a 50% increase in size for Wise Center, in order to accommodate the growing congregation and increased programming for the next century.

1996 The 1300 Wise Temple families rededicate the Wise Center during a special Shabbat service on April 26, 1996.

The Congregation accepts an invitation to participate in the Experiment in Congregational Education (E.C.E.), an opportunity to take a closer look and evaluate the learning opportunities at Wise Temple.

1997 The Temple engages a cantor, in partnership with Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. This is an historic move, representing the first professional cantor in a Reform Congregation in this city.

2002 Rabbi Ilana G. Baden is named Associate Rabbi.

2003 Wise Temple is a congregation of more than 1400 families. In September 2003, Wise Temple is selected as one of four recipients of the 2003 UAHC Congregation of Learners Award, for its outstanding variety of adult Jewish educational programming.

2004 Wise Temple embarks on the Wise Covenant Campaign.

2005 Wise Center Wohl Chapel is renovated. Included in renovation is new ark, wooden panels, memorial wall, lectern, large screen, new projector with satellite feed, carpeting, reupholstered chairs, glass doors, commissioned eternal light and mezzuzah.

Plum Street Temple organ restored as the Rockwern Organ by Fritz Noack and Company at a cost of $500,000.

Rabbi Kamrass celebrates 20 years with the congregation.

2006 Rabbi Michael S. Shulman is named Associate Rabbi, following three years as Assistant Rabbi.

Wise Center Day Camp merges with Jewish Community Center Day Camp.

Wise Temple, one of the first recipients of the Legacy Heritage Grant, received a grant for $32,000.

Julia and Ralph I. Cohen Library becomes automated and the listing of all 20,000 volumes is placed on the website, available to be accessed online.

2007 Barbara Dragul, Wise Temple's Director of Education and Life-Long Learning, was selected as a winner of the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Awards for Excellence in Jewish Education. This national award was established in 2000 as a way to recognize outstanding Jewish educators across North America.

2008 United Jewish Cemeteries merges with 20 other cemeteries in Cincinnati to form the Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati (JCGC). This cooperative venture between all the cemeteries and with the help of the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati and the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati is the first of its kind in the country.

A major renovation of Wise Center's lobby, social hall, board room, bride's room and gift shop is completed.

2009 A major renovation of the social hall of Plum Street Temple is completed.

History of Plum Street

Prior to the Civil War, the 200 families of K. K. B'nai Yeshurun (Isaac M. Wise Temple) envisioned a magnificent building to house their growing twenty-year old congregation that had already gained a national prominence because of their rabbi, Isaac Mayer Wise. With his energy and vision, the congregation and Cincinnati were fast becoming a center of national Jewish life. The lot on the corner of Eighth and Plum Streets was purchased for the sum of $35,000. Construction was anticipated to cost $55,000, but the delays caused by the Civil War and its post-war inflation meant that the building was erected in 1866 at a cost of $263,525. As a note of interest, we have recently found the original ledger book with all the entries of specific costs entailed in the construction of Plum Street Temple.

Designed by James Keyes Wilson, a prominent American architect and first president of the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the building reflects a synagogue architectural style that had emerged in Germany in the nineteenth century, a Byzantine-Moorish style. It hearkens to a previous era of the Golden Age of Spain in Jewish history, and reflects Rabbi Wise's optimism that the developing American Jewish experience would be the next Golden Age. All other examples of such architecture in Germany were later destroyed by Hitler. Only one other synagogue of similar style is extant in America, namely, in New York. The complex design of Plum Street Temple mirrors many cultures: from the outside the tall proportions, three pointed arched entrances and rose window suggest a Gothic revival church; the crowning minarets hint of Islamic architecture; the motif's decorating the entrances, repeated in the rose window and on the Torah Ark introduce a Moorish theme; the 14 bands of Hebrew texts surrounding the interior were selected by Rabbi Wise and were chosen primarily from the Book of Psalms.

The building has been carefully preserved. The original flooring, pews, and pulpit furnishings are still in use. The chandeliers and candelabra, formerly gaslight, are now electrical, but still the original fixtures. The original pipe organ, itself historical in nature and a unique instrument, built by the Cincinnati firm of Koehnken and Company is still in place, and was restored as the Rockwern Organ in 2005.

The 1994 - 1995 restoration renewed a sense of vitality and sparkle to a building which looks much the same now as when it was built over 130 years ago. Designated a national historic landmark and placed on the Department of the Interior's National Register of Historic Places in 1975, it was recognized then as a "splendid and exotic building". It is even more so now with its recent restoration.

Plum Street Temple is not a museum to the past; it is a living, dynamic sanctuary still retained by a congregation devoted to its maintenance and its continuation. The building is used on a nearly weekly basis for Sabbath services, programs, life-cycle events, and other religious functions. Beyond its history and its beauty, Plum Street Temple is the fountainhead of Reform Judaism in America.

It was from this building that Rabbi Isaac M. Wise founded the institutions of Reform Judaism, which prior to his active career, had consisted of ideology without an institutional structure. The founding of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (1873), the Hebrew Union College (1875), and the Central Conference of American Rabbis (1889), representing the structure of Reform Judaism, was accomplished from the Plum Street Temple by Rabbi Wise, who served as founder and president of these three institutions while Rabbi at K.K. B'nai Yeshurun until his death in 1900. The Temple still annually hosts the ordination of rabbis from the Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. The majestic synagogue continues to reflect Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise's vision of Reform Judaism, a religious movement with a distinctly American look, so that "a religious Jew can also be a citizen of a free country, a member of society, a reasoner of modern thought."

8329 Ridge Road | Cincinnati, OH 45236 | 513.793.2556 | welcome@wisetemple.org