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GREENSBORO

The six Jewish college girls were special guests for Rosh Hashana services at the city's first synagogue.

Only things didn't go exactly as planned at the Greensboro Hebrew Congregation, which had organized in 1907 and previously met atop a South Elm Street grocery store.

This new meeting place, a vacant Quaker church on East Lee Street purchased by a handful of Jewish men, came with a large lot next door — a lot where, unfortunately for them, a farmer kept his cow.

Each time Rabbi G. Mendelsohn — whose first name was never recorded — sounded the shofar, the cow answered with a deep moo.

"I'm afraid it wasn't a very devout service," Beatrice Weill, one of the college girls, recounted years ago as part of the written history of Temple Emanuel and its first spiritual leader. "We all got the giggles. Rabbi Mendelsohn was very perturbed. He didn't think it was funny a bit. I'm afraid that made it even funnier for us."

It would be a lighter moment in the history of a congregation that turns 100 this year. In the decades since, the temple, with campuses on Greene Street and Jefferson Road, has become a tower of strength in Greensboro and beyond. Its members remain a prominent presence in the greater community, having served in the mayor's office, on civic boards and in organizations throughout the city.

History shows those members, many with recognizable names such as Cone, Sternberger and Tannenbaum, contributed much of themselves and their imaginations to the development of Greensboro, helping fuel its growth from village to city.

Temple Emanuel served not only as their spiritual home, but also an incubator for promoting education, ecumenical goodwill and civic ideas in the community. The early Jews found fertile soil to work in — a progressive and open community that allowed them the freedom to practice their faith and be good neighbors.

"Greensboro has been exceptional in terms of the openness and welcome that Jews received here," says author and historian Leonard Rogoff of the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina.

Greensboro benefited, as well. Without the Cones and the Sternbergers, Rogoff says, "it might have remained another mill town."

Even so, Jews must have felt isolated in those early days with just a handful of them here, as noted by Dr. Donald Cone, a retired physician who researched the temple's history.

"It was in this atmosphere that the handful of founders of the Temple organized in 1907," he wrote in celebration of the temple's 50th anniversary.

The new congregation gave early indication that, while clinging to thousands of years of religious traditions, theirs would be a unique legacy, starting with Orthodox (traditional) and Reform (liberal) Jews worshipping under one roof.

Indeed, the few Reform Jews who owned carriages would hitch their horses a block away from the temple "so as not to offend the stricter brethren," Weill said.

In the early 1920s, the congregation's women asked for equal membership. After the initial request, the all-male board took no action. A year later, the women came back in what would be another break from tradition for the congregation.

"This time they (the doors) were opened wide — so wide, in fact, that soon afterwards Miss Etta Spier (a professor at Woman's College, now UNCG) was named a trustee," Weill recalls.

A good neighbor

Temple Emanuel's history and progress would parallel that of the city itself.

In the early 1900s, contractors worked to produce the 6 million bricks it would take to build the South's largest cotton mill for Ceasar Cone, one of the temple's founders, and his brother Moses. The Cones, among the first permanent Jewish settlers, would go on to build schools, hospitals and YMCAs.

When Greensboro became an overseas replacement depot and basic training center for the military during World War II, the temple opened its doors to provide recreation space for enlisted men, including Ping-Pong tables and a jukebox.

"I can remember men in uniforms worshipping among us," says attorney Henry Isaacson, whose grandfather, Isaac Isaacson, was a charter member. Isaacson, along with his son Marc, also an attorney, are among a handful of fathers and sons who have been Temple Emanuel presidents through the years.

By then the congregation, which in 1924 had moved to Fisher Park, had formed partnerships with new neighbors First Presbyterian and Holy Trinity Episcopal to help the less fortunate.

The Star of David etched in a glass pane at First Presbyterian Church is a reminder of those early friendships. The star, a universal symbol of Judaism, faces the old campus across Greene Street.

First Presbyterian had donated hundreds of dollars when the Temple was built. Later, during the Depression, the synagogue responded by helping First Presbyterian when it ran out of money to finish its new building.

"There were good feelings," says Dr. Edgar Marks, a retired physician believed to be the oldest Jewish man in Greensboro who was born here. His grandfather Michael Marks was one of the temple's founders .

Those good feelings also translated into votes. In 1949, Benjamin Cone became the first Jewish mayor of the city and, later, a state legislator. Just five years earlier, Jews numbered about 500 in the city of 70,000.

As the area's Jewish population grew, Conservative Jews at Temple Emanuel eventually formed their own synagogue — Beth David — with help from the congregation they left.

The congregation that stayed behind took the name Temple Emanuel for its Hebrew meaning — "God with us" — while also honoring its first president, Emanuel Sternberger.

A trailblazer

A succession of rabbis added to Temple Emanuel's reputation as a seat of influence.

Rabbi Frederick Rypins, probably the first rabbi to introduce the local community to Judaism, set a path for those who would follow him.

"He was more than just the spiritual leader of Temple Emanuel," Isaacson says of Rypins, here from 1931 to 1958. "He walked pretty tall in the entire community."

Rypins served as president of the Greensboro Ministerial Alliance, the first rabbi in the country thought to have led such an association. He also founded the local branch of the National Conference for Christians and Jews.

One day a young black English instructor at N.C. A&T named John Stevenson, who would later change his name to John Kilimanjaro, stopped by to see Rypins.

"I asked him if he would have any trouble with my coming to service," says Kilimanjaro, who would go on to found The Carolina Peacemaker newspaper. "I wanted to know if there would be a problem. In Pine Bluff (Ark., where he had previously lived) there had been a problem. They'd sent a delegation to my home … telling me they were afraid they'd get bombed.

"Rypins simply said ... 'Come on,'" Kilimanjaro recalls.

In the South in the 1950s, that just didn't happen, says Jeanne Tannenbaum, whose great-grandfather was a founding temple member.

"I was just a young girl at the time," Tannenbaum says, "but it made a huge impact on my life."

The rabbi's wife, Ruth Rypins, operated a private preparatory school, having taught former U.S. Rep. Richardson Preyer and UNC-system President Erskine Bowles.

"That's another part of the temple's aura — the quality of the temple that radiated out in the community," says Rabbi Arnold Task, who served as rabbi from 1968 to 1989.

Task, an adjunct professor of religion and philosophy at Greensboro College, also was chairman of the city's Human Relations Commission. Among his accomplishments was helping those in the temple and the greater community revisit the Holocaust, when it was more common to keep silent.

"I will never forget (Holocaust survivor) Elias Mordechai, who said to me, 'Honest and true, you brought me back to life,'" says Task, now a rabbi in Alexandria, La.

By the time Rabbi Fred Guttman arrived in 1995, membership was declining.

"We were coming off a period that was very difficult for the congregation," says former temple President Neil Belenky, who was also on the rabbi search committee. "There had been a long-standing rabbi who had left and split the congregation. There had been a new rabbi who didn't work out.

"For those people who were active attenders, it was not always enjoyable coming to service because you were caught up in the controversy."

Guttman brought a sense of pride and energy that Belenky, the executive director of the United Way of Greater Greensboro, thought had been missing for a while.

He encouraged adults to renew their studies in Judaism and to participate in a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah if they never had done so as children.

He developed a program that sends Jewish high school students to Europe to tour former concentration camps. He holds classes on Judaism, attracting large numbers of non-Jews, and speaks out on social justice issues, such as the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

Since his arrival, the temple has grown from 365 families to 560 families — a congregation of nearly 1,500 people.

"I think some of the early rabbis would not believe what's going on now," Guttman says. "The nature of the service: more guitar; a grand piano instead of an organ; the rabbi doesn't wear a robe. I think they would be pleased to see an excitement among the young."

In 1998, the congregation voted on one of its most difficult issues yet: whether to build the Jefferson Road campus. That meant leaving Fisher Park when the new sanctuary was completed in 2002.

A group of worshippers purchased the Greene Street property, where services are held once a month, and rented it to the congregation for $1 a year.

"Much of our history is connected to that building," says Leonard Guyes, a former Temple Emanuel president involved in the purchase.

Thriving tradition

Although generations of these founding families provide continuity, nearly 70 percent of the congregation have no longtime ties. Yet old and new find common ground.

"That overarching philosophy of community involvement and repairing the world is the driving philosophy of our congregation — that we are responsible for each other and our community," says Ellen Sheridan, whose family ties go back to the Temple's founding and whose son Elliot just celebrated his bar mitzvah there.

Many of the early Jews — and others since — provided for their city in ways that would outlive them.

Sydney Cone Jr. was founding president of the Greensboro Arts Council, now the United Arts Council. Sternberger Elementary got its name from Bertha Sternberger, who served on the school board.

And Temple Emanuel thrives.

"When you go to a service now on Friday night, there's a crowd there," Isaacson says. "If you go on the High Holy Days, you can barely get a seat. … You may be in the back row standing. It is very active and alive."

Contact Nancy H. McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nmclaughlin@news-record.com