Referred to as one of the top ten breathtaking places of worship in the United States.

The English translation of Shaarey Zedek is Gates of Righteousness. The Congregation was founded in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War. Since that time it has been housed in seven different buildings, moving to its current location in 1962. In 1913 Shaarey Zedek was a founding of the Conservative United Synagogues of America.

The current building was designed by the preeminent synagogue architect, Percival Goodman. Henry Stoltzman writes that it “embodies Goodman’s work at the peak of his career.” The San Francisco Examiner named the building one of the” top 10 breathtaking places of worship” in the United States. Jamie Sperti, a writer on The Examiner website called the congregation’s dramatic concrete building a “phenomenal example of 1960’s futuristic architecture” in her survey of The United States’ top 10 breathtaking places of worship published April 9, 2009. New York Times architecture critic Philip Nobel described it as a “roadside attraction” that “parlays a skyscraping Ark and an erupting eternal flame into a concrete Sinai on the shoulder of Interstate 696. “