Rockdale Sanctuary

Cincinnati's First Synagogue

Congregation Bene Israel (now Rockdale Temple) was founded by a group of ten Orthodox English Jews on January 18, 1824, although they did not receive their charter from the General Assembly of Ohio until January 8, 1830. The first parnas (president) of the congregation was Joseph Jonas, the first permanent Jewish resident of Cincinnati. With donations from across the U.S. and as far away as England, the congregation erected its first building at Sixth and Broadway in 1836, established Cincinnati's first Jewish school and Talmud Torah in 1842, and hired its first permanent rabbi in 1855 when Rabbi Max Lilienthal arrived in Cincinnati. He introduced many reforms into the previously traditional service, including a mixed choir and pews, organ accompaniment, prayers and sermons in English, an American prayerbook, and abolishing the second day of Rosh Hashanah observance. The congregation relocated several times, eventually settling into its current site in Amberley Village in 1970, after much of the Cincinnati Jewish population migrated to the suburbs.