Temple Beth Israel (Eugene, Oregon)
synagogue in Eugene, Oregon
Temple Beth Israel (Hebrew: בית ישראל) is a Reconstructionist synagogue located at 1175 East 29th Avenue in Eugene, Oregon, in the United States. Founded in the early 1930s as a Conservative congregation, Beth Israel was for many decades the only synagogue in Eugene.
The congregation initially worshipped in a converted house on West Eighth Street. It constructed its first building on Portland Street in 1952, and occupied its current LEED-compliant facilities in 2008.
In the early 1990s conflict between feminist and traditional members led to the latter leaving Beth Israel, and forming the Orthodox Congregation Ahavas Torah. Beth Israel came under attack from neo-Nazi members of the Volksfront twice, in 1994 and again in 2002. In both cases the perpetrators were caught and convicted.
Services were lay-led for decades. Marcus Simmons was hired as the congregation's first rabbi in 1959, but left in 1961. After a gap of two years, Louis Neimand became rabbi in 1963, and served until his death in 1976.
“Temple Beth Israel (Eugene, Oregon)” enters the record as synagogue in Eugene, Oregon. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Temple, Beth and Israel can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2689378. VIAF identifies the subject as 144651417. The Library of Congress control number is no2009199296. Authority coordinates are 44.026, -123.075. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1175, 1952, 2008 and 1994.
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This entry incorporates text from “Temple Beth Israel (Eugene, Oregon)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.