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Afternoon sunlight streams through the red, blue and yellow stained-glass, warming the sanctuary of Wilmington’s Temple
of Israel. In 2010, congregation members enlisted Beth Pancoe of SDI Construction to organize and implement an extensive
renovation of North Carolina’s oldest official synagogue.
Judaism in Wilmington dates back to the town’s founding,
in 1740, says Beverly Tetterton, Wilmington Historian and
member of the Temple of Israel. While Orthodox Judaism
accounts for much of the early Jewish presence, by 1872,
Reform Judaism had filtered over from Germany, Tetterton
says, and Wilmington proper had 40 Reform Jewish families, in
need of a temple to call their worship home.
Though Reform Judaism originates within the German and
Eastern European Ashkenazi tradition, the predominantly tolerant
cultural and religious climate of Medieval Spain inspired a sort
of golden age for Iberian Sephardic Jewry. To differentiate the
look and feel of their temple from the Greco-Roman or Gothic
Style architecture, more closely associated with Christianity,
Wilmington’s Reform community embraced the exotic Moorish
Revival architecture, then popular throughout Southern Europe
and Muslim Spain.
In Moorish-inspired fashion, the Temple of Israel features square
towers with onion domes at each corner of the gable front façade, a
Moorish arch over the entry and windows framed by trefoil arches.
In keeping with the Reform tradition of building places of worship
in central locations, on major streets, like the synagogues of Prague,
or London, Tetterton says, the Wilmington Reform community
chose a building site on the corner of Market and Fourth streets.
The members chose Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan to
design the Temple of Israel. Sloan also designed Wilmington’s First
Baptist Church at the corner of Market and Fifth streets, and the
original First Presbyterian Church on Third and Orange streets.
The temple’s cornerstone was laid in 1875, and on May 12, 1876,
it was dedicated.
In nearly 150 years, the Temple — and its community —
has weathered cultural and economic shifts, as well as enduring
physical changes wrought by the Cape Fear climate upon historic
architecture.
In 2010, the congregation embraced the renovation process
authorizing the expenditure of $750,000 and awarding the contract
to Beth Pancoe of SDI. Pancoe, the daughter of a Methodist
Gold onion domes crown the twin towers of the Temple of Israel, opposite. The Moorish Revival structure is the only one of its kind in
Wilmington, North Carolina. Above: The view from the organ loft looks into the temple sanctuary where Torah scrolls are housed in the Ark,
beneath the tablets of the Ten Commandments, far left.
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