@article{1480080,
      recid = {1480080},
      author = {Raphael, Marc Lee, },
      title = {The Synagogue in America : A Short History /},
      pages = {1 online resource},
      abstract = {In 1789, when George Washington was elected the first  president of the United States, laymen from all six Jewish  congregations in the new nation sent him congratulatory  letters. He replied to all six. Thus, after more than a  century of Jewish life in colonial America the small  communities of Jews present at the birth of the nation  proudly announced their religious institutions to the  country and were recognized by its new leader. By this  time, the synagogue had become the most significant  institution of American Jewish life, a dominance that was  not challenged until the twentieth century, when other  institutions such as Jewish community centers or Jewish  philanthropic organizations claimed to be the hearts of  their Jewish communities.Concise yet comprehensive, The  Synagogue in America is the first history of this  all-important structure, illuminating its changing role  within the American Jewish community over the course of  three centuries. From Atlanta and Des Moines to Los Angeles  and New Orleans, Marc Lee Raphael moves beyond the New York  metropolitan area to examine Orthodox, Reform,  Conservative, and Reconstuctionist synagogue life  everywhere. Using the records of approximately 125 Jewish  congregations, he traces the emergence of the synagogue in  the United States from its first instances in the colonial  period, when each of the half dozen initial Jewish  communities had just one synagogue each, to its  proliferation as the nation and the American Jewish  community grew and diversified. Encompassing architecture,  forms of worship, rabbinic life, fundraising, creative  liturgies, and feminism, The Synagogue in America is the  go-to history for understanding the synagogue's  significance in American Jewish life.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1480080},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814769300.001.0001},
}