B'nai Israel Synagogue and Montefiore Cemetery in

Grand Forks Grand Forks is the third-largest city in the state of North Dakota (after Fargo and Bismarck) and the county seat of Grand Forks County. According to the 2020 census, the city's population was 59,166. Grand Forks, along with its twin city o ...

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the Native Americans in the United States, indigenous Dakota people, Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north a ...

, in the United States, consists of a

Reform Reform ( lat, reformo) means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The use of the word in this way emerges in the late 18th century and is believed to originate from Christopher Wyvill#The Yorkshire Associati ...

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

congregation and its

synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...

; and the congregation's related

cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...

. Both the synagogue building and the cemetery were added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2011.

B'nai Israel Synagogue

The B'nai Israel Synagogue (

transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or ...

from

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

as "Sons / Children of Israel") is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at 601 Cottonwood Street, in Grand Forks. The congregation was chartered on August 26, 1891; founded by Eastern European Jews, including Jews fleeing

pogroms in Russia Pogroms in the Russian Empire (russian: Еврейские погромы в Российской империи) were large-scale, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting that began in the 19th century. Pogroms began to occur after Imperial Ru ...

and

Lithuanian Jews Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks () are Jews with roots in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, the northeastern Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland, as well as adjacent areas ...

. The first building, a wooden synagogue called the Congregation of the Children of Israel, was built in 1891 at 2nd Avenue, South & 7th Street. The second and current synagogue was built in 1937, designed by Grand Forks architect,

Joseph Bell DeRemer Joseph Bell DeRemer (1871–1944), who lived and worked in Grand Forks, North Dakota, was one of the finest architects in North Dakota. Some of the important works produced by him or his firm, which included his son Samuel Teel DeRemer, include ...

, in the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style of architecture, and built by local builders Skarsbro and Thorwaldson at a cost of $14,000. In the early 1990s, B'nai Israel joined the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the

Union for Reform Judaism The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), known as the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) until 2003, founded in 1873 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the congregational arm of Reform Judaism in North America. The other two arms established ...

). The synagogue has been without a permanent

rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...

since 1987.

Montefiore Cemetery

Montefiore Cemetery is a Jewish cemetery located at 1450 North Columbia Road, in Grand Forks. The cemetery dates from 1888. The Montefiore Cemetery in Grand Forks is one of many institutions named in honor of

Sir Moses Montefiore Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet, (24 October 1784 – 28 July 1885) was a British financier and banker, activist, philanthropist and Sheriff of London. Born to an Italian Sephardic Jewish family based in London, afte ...

Heritage listing

On October 13, 2011, the B'nai Israel Synagogue and the Montefiore Cemetery were jointly added to the

, as one listing.

References

External links

*
Montefiore Cemetery at Find A Grave
* * * {{Grand Forks County, North Dakota 1888 establishments in North Dakota 1891 establishments in North Dakota 20th-century synagogues in the United States Art Deco architecture in North Dakota Art Deco synagogues Cemeteries on the National Register of Historic Places in North Dakota Jewish cemeteries in North Dakota Jewish organizations established in 1891 Joseph Bell DeRemer buildings Lithuanian-Jewish culture in the United States National Register of Historic Places in Grand Forks, North Dakota Properties of religious function on the National Register of Historic Places in North Dakota Reform synagogues in the United States Russian-American culture in North Dakota Russian-Jewish culture in the United States Synagogues completed in 1937 Synagogues in North Dakota Synagogues on the National Register of Historic Places Ukrainian-Jewish culture in the United States