The Temple, Congregation B'nai Jehudah

The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah is the oldest Jewish congregation in the Kansas City metropolitan area, founded in 1870 as a Reform synagogue by twenty-five German-Jewish merchant families. Over 150 years it occupied four successive buildings across Kansas City before relocating to Overland Park, Kansas, in 2000, and it remains the primary Reform Jewish congregation in the region.

History

Founding, 1870

On October 2, 1870, twenty-five men gathered in a room above a grocery store near the Kansas City riverfront and pledged $800 to establish the city’s first Jewish congregation. The founders were merchants, tobacconists, saloon owners, and butchers, most with roots in Germany and German-speaking central Europe. They named the congregation B’nai Jehudah — “Sons of Judah” — and organized it along Reform lines from the outset, adopting family pews and a mixed choir of men and women in accordance with the Minhag America rite. The first president was B. A. Feineman; the first rabbi was Reverend Marcus Cohen, a mohel brought from Chicago.

In the latter decades of the nineteenth century B’nai Jehudah became a founding member of what is today the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish religious organization in North America, now comprising more than 1,300 congregations in the United States and Canada.

Growth and the downtown years

The congregation’s first permanent synagogue was completed in 1875 at Wyandotte and Sixth Streets, seating approximately 300. As membership grew, B’nai Jehudah moved in 1885 to larger quarters on Oak Street, seating 600. Both buildings placed the congregation in the commercial heart of a rapidly expanding frontier city, reflecting the central role its founders played in Kansas City’s early mercantile economy.

The Linwood Boulevard Temple, 1908–1957

In 1907 the congregation purchased the southeast corner of Linwood Boulevard and Flora Avenue, in what was then a prosperous residential district south of downtown. The new temple, designed by the Kansas City firm Howe, Hoit and Cutler and completed in 1908, was among the finest classical-style synagogues erected in the early twentieth century. Six Ionic columns anchored the facade beneath stone lettering reading My House Shall Be a House of Prayer for All Peoples. Inside, twenty stained-glass windows were designed by John La Farge, one of the most celebrated American glass artists of the nineteenth century.

The congregation occupied the Linwood building for nearly five decades, through both World Wars and the Pendergast era, making it the congregation’s longest-tenured single address. The building later passed to another religious organization after B’nai Jehudah’s departure.

The Holmes Road Temple, 1957–2000

By the mid-1950s the Jewish population of Kansas City was shifting southward. In 1957 B’nai Jehudah opened a new temple at 712 East 69th Street, at the corner of 69th and Holmes Road in south Kansas City, Missouri. The building was designed by architect Clarence Kivett. The congregation dedicated a fourth, expanded building on the same site in 1967. The Holmes Road complex served the congregation for over four decades until it was demolished in 2003, three years after the congregation’s departure.

Notable rabbis

Three rabbis stand out across the congregation’s long history for their civic impact beyond the synagogue:

Joseph Krauskopf and Henry Berkowitz, both graduates of the inaugural class at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (1883), served B’nai Jehudah in the late nineteenth century and helped connect the congregation to the national Reform movement at its founding moment.

Samuel S. Mayerberg (served 1928–1957) became one of the most prominent voices against the Pendergast political machine. Beginning in 1932 he led a civic cleanup campaign that drew threats and harassment but ultimately contributed to machine boss Tom Pendergast’s federal prosecution. Mayerberg’s willingness to use the pulpit as a platform for civic reform established a tradition of social-justice engagement that defined the congregation’s public identity through the mid-twentieth century.

William B. Silverman succeeded Mayerberg in 1959 and carried that tradition into the civil rights era. Silverman worked actively with the Greater Kansas City Council on Religion and Race during the 1960s, pushing for fair housing legislation and building coalitions between the Jewish and African-American communities of Kansas City.

Current location and status

In 2000, the congregation relocated to 12320 Nall Avenue in Overland Park, Kansas, tracking the broader southward and westward migration of Kansas City’s Jewish population into Johnson County over the preceding decades. The Overland Park campus, known simply as The Temple, continues to operate as an active Reform congregation and remains the largest synagogue in the Kansas City metropolitan area by membership.

Cultural significance

B’nai Jehudah has functioned as an anchor institution of Kansas City’s Jewish civic life since 1870. Several families whose names are woven into Kansas City’s broader commercial and philanthropic history — including the Helzberg family, founders of Helzberg Diamonds, and the Bloch family, founders of H&R Block — maintained deep ties to the congregation. The congregation’s archives are held jointly by the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati and the State Historical Society of Missouri, and its centennial history, Roots in a Moving Stream (Frank J. Adler, 1970), remains the standard institutional account.

Sites associated with B’nai Jehudah

Period	Address	Notes
1875–1885	Wyandotte & Sixth Streets, Kansas City, MO	First permanent synagogue; seated ~300
1885–1907	Oak Street, Kansas City, MO	Seated ~600
1908–1957	Linwood Blvd & Flora Ave, Kansas City, MO	Howe, Hoit and Cutler, architects; La Farge windows
1957–2000	712 E. 69th Street (69th & Holmes), Kansas City, MO	Designed by Clarence Kivett; demolished 2003
2000–present	12320 Nall Avenue, Overland Park, KS 66209	Current home of The Temple

Sources

See also

• midtown-kc
• civil-rights-era-kc
• jewish-community-kc
• brookside
• overland-park-ks
• helzberg-diamonds
• hr-block
• The KS.City Wiki