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30
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H
istory of the
P
lum
S
treet
T
emple
Prior to the Civil War, the 200 families of K.K. B’nai
Yeshurun (now also known as the Isaac M. Wise
Temple) envisioned a magnificent building to house
their growing twenty-year-old congregation that had
already gained national prominence because of their
rabbi, Isaac Mayer Wise. With his energy and vision,
the congregation and Cincinnati were fast becoming
a center of national Jewish life. The lot on the corner
of Eighth and Plum Streets was purchased, and after
delays caused by the Civil War, the building was
erected in 1866.
Designed by James Keyes Wilson, a prominent
American architect and first president of the Cincinnati
Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the
building exhibits a Byzantine-Moorish architectural
style that had emerged in Germany in the nineteenth
century. It reflects the Golden Age of Spain and Rabbi
Wise’s optimism that the American Jewish experience
would be the next Golden Age. All other examples of
such architecture in Germany were destroyed by the
Nazis and only one other synagogue of similar style is
extant in America, New York City’s Central Synagogue.
The complex design of Plum Street Temple mirrors
many cultures: from the outside the tall proportions,
three-pointed arched entrances and rose window
suggest a Gothic revival church; the crowning minarets
hint of Islamic architecture; the motifs decorating the
entrances, repeated in the rose window and on the
Torah Ark, introduce a Moorish theme; and the
fourteen bands of Hebrew texts surrounding the
interior were selected by Rabbi Wise and are chosen
primarily from Book of Psalms.
The building has been carefully preserved. The original
flooring, pews, and pulpit furnishings are still in use.
The chandeliers and candelabra, formerly gaslight and
now electrical, are the original fixtures. The original
pipe organ, itself historic and unique, was built by the
Cincinnati firm of Koehnken and Company and was
recently restored.
Plum Street Temple is not a museum; it is a dynamic
sanctuary sustained by a congregation devoted to its
preservation and use. The building offers on a nearly
weekly basis Sabbath services, programs, life-cycle
events, religious functions, concerts, and community
events. It has been the venue for the Inauguration of
every President in the 139-year history of Hebrew
Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, including
today’s ceremony for Rabbi Aaron D. Panken.
Beyond its history and its beauty, Plum Street Temple
is the fountainhead of Reform Judaism in America.
It was from this edifice that Rabbi Isaac M. Wise
established the core pillars of Reform Judaism, which
prior to his active career had consisted of ideology
without an institutional structure. Rabbi Wise was
the founder and President of the Union of American
Hebrew Congregations (1873, now the Union for
Reform Judaism), the Hebrew Union College (1875),
and the Central Conference of American Rabbis
(1889),
while leading K.K. B’nai Yeshurun until his
death in 1900.
The Temple annually hosts the ordination of rabbis
from the Cincinnati campus of HUC-JIR. This
majestic synagogue continues to reflect Rabbi Isaac
Mayer Wise’s vision of a distinctly American Reform
Judaism, where “a religious Jew can also be a citizen
of a free country, a member of society, a reasoner of
modern thought.”