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The history of Temple Emanu-El is a reflection of the Jewish historical experience in America. Though the first Jews to arrive in the New World came as early as 1654, their numbers reached significance only at the midpoint of the nineteenth century. It was during this time that Emanu-El was founded. Thirty- three immigrants from Germany, part of a wave of Western European Jews who came to these shores to escape the rigid conservatism of post-Napoleonic Europe, established the Temple in 1845.

As did many of their fellow immigrants, these thirty-three men sought to adapt their lives, including their religious practice, to the new environment. In 1844 they formed a cultural society, or Cultus Verein, for this purpose. From that society their new temple -- a Reform congregation -- was born.

Liberal Judaism traces its origins to Germany, yet the founders of the Temple were not particularly conversant with the movement. Seeking advice, they wrote to Congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, which in 1824 became the first Reform temple in the United States, and to Har Sinai in Baltimore, Reform Judaism's second congregation in this country, founded in 1843. After responses were received, Emanu-El, meaning "God is with us," was established, simultaneously the first Reform congregation in the city of New York and the third in the nation.

In contrast to the limitless spiritual hopes of the founders their finances were modest. The records indicate that at the organizing meeting in 1845, those present contributed a sum of less than thirty dollars with which to inaugurate the Congregation. Consequently, Emanu-El's first place of worship was a rented room on the second floor of a private dwelling at the corner of Grand and Clinton Streets on the Lower East Side. Soon, however, the space became inadequate, and in 1848 Emanu-El moved to Chrystie Street, a few blocks west of its original location. A former Methodist church was purchased and transformed into a Jewish house of prayer and meeting place.

In its first years, Emanu-El grew steadily if not dramatically, and the members remained modest of means. Yet there was sufficient development to warrant another relocation in 1854, this time a little to the north, the Jewish community having begun to move uptown along with the general population. The Congregation acquired a structure at Twelfth Street near Fourth Avenue, which had once housed a Baptist church, and refurbished it as a synagogue.

Gradually the prosperity of the Congregation increased, and the dream of building a grand temple became a reality after the Civil War, in 1868. An imposing sanctuary was erected on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street, of which a contemporary critic wrote, "[the new Temple Emanu-El] is the finest example of Moorish architecture in the Western world." This magnificent building remained the Congregation's house of worship until the late 1920s. Thus, in less than twenty-five years, Emanu-El's rise to eminence -- a microcosm of the success of the Western European immigrant in general and the German Jewish immigrant in particular -- was nothing short of extraordinary.

Emanu-El's initial spiritual leader was Dr. Leo Merzbacher, believed to be the first ordained rabbi to serve a congregation in New York. Dr. Merzbacher guided the Temple in its introduction to Reform Jewish philosophy and practice and authored one of the first Reform prayer books in America. Upon his death in 1856 he was succeeded by Dr. Samuel Adler, who by that time had achieved a reputation as one of the great philosophical and theological leaders of the Reform movement in Germany. This early period of the Congregation's history was marked by radical modifications in liturgy, theology and practice.

Further change occurred with the arrival in 1873 of Dr. Gustav Gottheil, late of Manchester, England, as Emanu-El's first permanent English-speaking rabbi. Up until then German had been spoken from the pulpit, however, the new generation of congregants were American- born. Dr. Gottheil was assisted, beginning in 1888, by Dr. Joseph Silverman, a native of Cincinnati and the first rabbi born in the United States to serve in New York.

Gustav Gottheil was one of the earliest rabbis in this country to reach out to the Christian community, and his rabbinate witnessed the beginnings of the interfaith movement. Other innovations taking place during the Gottheil years were of a liturgical and ritual nature, including the discarding of head coverings for male worshippers. The original Merzbacher prayer book, extensively emended by Dr. Adler in 1860, was retained until the adoption of the Union Prayer Book in 1895, which the Congregation continues to use in a revised edition.

Emanu-El's Golden Jubilee, presided over by Dr. Gottheil in 1895, was an anniversary celebrated not only by the Congregation but by prominent New York City figures as well. Members of the Christian clergy, educators, political leaders and the foremost spokesman of the Reform Movement attended the ceremonies, which attracted wide press coverage and confirmed Emanu-El's considerable growth and status. A congregation with humble origins on the Lower East Side was just a half century later recognized as one of the most prestigious religious institutions in the city and nation.

In 1906 Dr. Judah Leon Magnes ascended the pulpit of Emanu-El to serve as co-Rabbi with Dr. Silverman as its first American-born senior rabbi. An active member of the nascent Zionist movement, Dr. Magnes also played an important role in bridging the cultural differences that separated the Jewish community of German origin from those who had emigrated from Eastern Europe following the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. Magnes remained at Emanu-El only a few years before becoming the first president of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His successor as spiritual leader of the Temple was the eminent scholar Dr. Hyman G. Enelow, whose contributions to higher Jewish learning are profound.

As the resources of the Congregation grew, so did its sense of responsibility toward the huge influx of Eastern European Jews who came to the United States in the forty-year period beginning in the early 1880s. Fleeing pogroms and economic hardship, the newcomers were greeted with overwhelming generosity by the members of Emanu-El. Charitable activities that included creative social and educational programs were undertaken to help ease the difficult process of Americanization. Temple Emanu-El had become a living example of the ancient Jewish tradition that one must "aid the poor, care for the sick, teach the ignorant and extend a helping hand to those who have lost their way in the world."

By the beginning of the third decade of the twentieth century the membership of the Temple turned its focus inward, answering a call from the pulpit for spiritual renewal. What followed was the establishment of many of the auxiliary organizations and activities that continue to the present day, enriching the life of the Temple and giving service to the greater community. Also by this time Eastern Europeans were becoming congregants -- an indication of how they had settled into American society. A generation later, the majority of the men and women who belonged to Temple Emanu-El traced their ancestry to Eastern rather than to Western Europe.

In the late 1920s there were two further major events in the history of Emanu-El. One was the consolidation with the influential Reform congregation Temple Beth-El, located at Fifth Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street. Beth-El claimed among its spiritual leaders Dr. David Einhorn, one of the architects of nineteenth-century Reform Jewish thought, and Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, who left the pulpit in 1903 to become president of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.

The second watershed was the move from Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street, the surroundings having undergone a transformation from a residential to a commercial area. The structural deficiencies of the building itself also made relocation necessary. Through the foresight of Emanu-El's president, the distinguished jurist Louis Marshall, property was purchased at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-fifth Street, formerly the site of the John Jacob Astor mansion. Because of its proximity to Central Park, Marshall astutely reasoned that Emanu-El would remain in a residential setting. In September 1929 the first religious service was conducted in the new sanctuary, just weeks before the stock market crashed.

The Great Depression that followed significantly diminished the membership of Emanu-El. Yet, to the credit of the Board of Trustees and the spiritual leadership, which included Drs. Hyman Enelow, Nathan Krass and Samuel Schulman and Samuel H. Goldenson, the Temple continued to wholeheartedly assume social responsibility even in the face of burdensome debt. Those European Jews fortunate enough to escape Nazism were welcomed with the same attention and devotion shown by an earlier generation to refugees who had fled the tyranny of czarist Russia.

In the same spirit of generosity and duty, the men and women of Emanu-El served with distinction both in and out of uniform during World War II. The recreation center occupying the Isaac Mayer Wise Hall was considered the finest canteen not only in New York but in the entire country. Near the war's end, Emanu-El had additional reason to celebrate, for on the third and fourth of April, 1945, the Congregation commemorated its first hundred years with services of rededication.

As the twentieth century progressed, the rabbis of Emanu-El continued to be a great source of pride for the Congregation. Dr. Samuel H. Goldenson was a prominent champion of Classical Reform Judaism. Dr. Nathan A. Perilman, who came to the Temple in 1932 as an assistant rabbi, remained for forty-one-and-a-half years, making his rabbinate the longest active service in the Congregation's history. Dr. Julius Mark won wide recognition for the important role he played as a Navy chaplain during the Second World War. In 1973 Dr. Ronald B. Sobel became the youngest senior rabbi elected by the Congregation, carrying the legacy of Gustav Gottheil as a leading advocate of interfaith relations, both in the national and international arenas. Today, the Senior Rabbi is Dr. David M. Posner, a scholar in the fields of Semitic Linguistics and Jewish Musicology.

In 1995 Emanu-El, the largest Reform congregation in the world, housed in the largest synagogue in the world, marked its sesquicentennial anniversary. Throughout the Temple's 150 years, its members have served as the finest examples of what the Jew in America could strive to be. In this new millennium Emanu-El will continue to uphold the traditions that have placed it among the preeminent exponents of Liberal Judaism.