10.13 Miami Beach, Florida
Beth Israel Congregation, 770 West 40th Street
Architect unidentified, ca. 1965
Frank Boran Photography, Miami Florida, publisher; no date, but postmarked December 3, 1966
Beth Israel (House of Israel) Congregation began in 1954 when a couple of Jewish New Yorkers purchased two storefronts on the corner of Prairie Avenue and 41st Street for use as an Orthodox synagogue for “snowbirds,” that is, northerners who were wintering in Miami. By 1964, the congregation had outgrown the storefronts—then numbering three—and the founders bought the property across the street at 40th Street and Chase Avenue and rebuilt an existing building into a distinctive synagogue.
Photo: Samuel Gruber, 2022
The building is divided in two main parts. The street entrance leads into a polygonal sanctuary, nearly circular in plan. A women’s gallery wraps around almost the entire interior. Fitting for an Orthodox prayer hall, the bimah is centrally placed beneath the apex of the Byzantine-inspired scalloped dome. This recalls typical bimah positioning in many of the domed wooden synagogues of Eastern Europe. Virtually all these remarkable structures were destroyed in the Holocaust but likely were known to the architect through the influential book Wooden Synagogues, published in 1959. Stained glass fills the narrow windows of both sanctuary levels.
To the rear of the sanctuary is a larger two-story rectangular wing containing a social hall, offices, and classroom spaces. Unlike many synagogues of the 1960s, there is no large adjacent parking lot. Built for a nearby community of Orthodox worshipers who walked to shul, a lot for cars was considered unnecessary.
Photo: Samuel Gruber, 2022
An impressive sculpture commemorating the victims of the Shoah once stood in front of the synagogue near the street, but it has been removed. Until 1990, when the much larger Holocaust Memorial of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation was created at (intentionally numbered) 1933–1945 Meridian Avenue, this was the most prominent Holocaust monument in Miami. The inscription read, “In the dark era of the Nazi infamy one-third of our people were brutally annihilated. Let this be a stern warning to all men against silence in the face of tyranny and never again shall the conscience of men be still in the presence of inhumane cruelty and injustice.”
In 2012, Beth Israel Congregation merged with Young Israel of Miami Beach, and the strengthened congregation had continued to meet in this building. Within a decade membership had grown to more than 230 families, including people of all ages and varied backgrounds.