Berkeley, Italy
Congregation Beth Israel (Hebrew: בית ישראל) is a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Berkeley, California, United States. Established in 1924 as the Berkeley Hebrew Center, it traces its origins to the First Hebrew Congregation of Berkeley, founded in 1909. It was Berkeley's first synagogue and remains it
s oldest. Lay-led for four decades, it hired its first rabbi, Saul Berman, in 1963. Berman served until 1969, and was succeeded by Yosef Leibowitz, who served for 15 years. During the 1980s and early 1990s Beth Israel was at the vanguard of the baal teshuva movement in Modern Orthodox Judaism. In 1999 the congregation began an $8 million fund-raising campaign to build a new synagogue, a replica of the Przedbórz Synagogue, destroyed in Poland by the Nazis, during the Holocaust in 1942. Difficult economic times restricted fundraising efforts, and instead the congregation completed a more modest structure in 2005. As of 2022, the rabbi was Yonatan Cohen.
Listen to the audio guide for Congregation Beth Israel Free on WIP — starts by itself when you arrive, even with the screen off