History of the Jews in Dallas

The Dallas Jewish community is one of the oldest in the state of Texas. Its first Jewish cemetery was established in 1854. The small but growing Jewish community felt the need for a permanent religious structure as well as for a rabbi to conduct services and to offer religious education for children, so in 1873 several families founded the first congregation in the Dallas area, Jewish Congregation Emanu-El (now Temple Emanu-El ). The Temple was chartered in 1875. The next year they built a small red brick temple in the Byzantine style at Commerce and Church (now Field) streets in downtown Dallas. The congregation engaged its first rabbi, Aaron Suhler, in 1875 and joined the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1906. In 1947, a member of the Jewish community in Dallas began printing the Texas Jewish Post . In 1957 the temple moved to its present location in North Dallas. Sandfield , with noted California architect William W. Wurster as consultant, received an Award of Merit from the American Institute of Architects for the design of the present structure, which was enhanced by art coordinator Gyorgy Kepes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Handbook of Texas states that, "The formal preservation of the history of Texas Jewry goes back to Rabbi Henry Cohen of Galveston and Rabbi David Lefkowitz of Dallas, who set out to interview as many early settlers and their families as possible.¹