An independent synagogue that is at once mindful of its conservative traditions yet welcomes Jews of all traditions.

Temple B’nai Brith is an independent egalitarian congregation with historical roots in the Conservative movement. It successfully preserves the traditional tone of its Jewish worship and ritual life, while at the same time evolving as an egalitarian, independent, democratic community that is welcoming to Jews from all walks of life and background.

Congregation B’nai Brith was founded in 1903 primarily by Eastern European immigrants who had originally settled in Boston and Chelsea. The Congregation’s Byzantine Revival style synagogue building was constructed in 1922. The sanctuary’s focal point, a hand-carved mahogany ark, is one of the oldest in New England. The ark came from a synagogue in Boston’s North End that was razed in 1920.

The Jewish population of Somerville declined in postSWorld War II years and by the late 1970s only a couple of dozen elderly congregation members remained. In 1980 a philosophy graduate student named Phil Weiss along with Morris and Ada Kleiman, who owned a business nearby, led a revitalization of the Temple B’nai Brith. A new generation of young members were attracted to the Temple in the following decades and in 2010 the congregation hired its first full-time rabbi since 1978. The reinvention of Temple B’nai Brith continues as a new generation of greater-Somerville Jews finds it way to the shul on the hill.