Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, Hebrew for Holy Congregation House of God, welcomes you to the second-oldest synagogue building in the United States and the oldest in continuous use. The congregation was founded in 1749 by Sephardic Jewish merchants, many of them refugees or descendants of refugees who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, been expelled from other colonies, or sought opportunity in Charleston's relatively tolerant religious climate. By the early nineteenth century, Charleston had the largest and most prosperous Jewish community in North America.
This congregation made history in 1824 when a group of members petitioned for reforms — services in English, shorter liturgy, more accessible sermons — launching the American Reform Judaism movement. When the original synagogue burned in the great fire of 1838, this magnificent Greek Revival replacement was completed in 1840. The Torah scrolls here include some of the oldest in the United States.
The congregation also includes enslaved people and their owners among its historical membership — a reminder that Jewish communities in the antebellum South were embedded in the same social order as their neighbors. Beth Elohim is a living institution that has survived persecution, fire, and the contradictions of American history for nearly three centuries.