Temple History

In 1912, eight visionary leaders gathered around a table on the second floor of Rosenthal’s Grocery at the corner of Wilmington and Hargett streets in downtown Raleigh. At the time, Jewish families represented only a few dozen of Raleigh’s total population of 22,000 residents.

Despite their small numbers, the resolute group at the table established the city’s first Reform Jewish congregation and hired its first rabbi. From the shadows of that room came the House of Light –Temple Beth Or.

In 1923, eleven years after that first meeting above the grocery, Temple Beth Or moved to its first dedicated home on Hillsborough Street next to Raleigh’s Char-Grill where it remained for more than half a century.

In 1978 Temple Beth Or outgrew the Hillsborough Street site and moved seven miles north to the ‘country’ on Creedmoor Road where we built our present home. To read more about our history, click here.