Although Savannah has more than its share of ghosts, bootleggers, gangsters, pirates and mystery, as well as its incredible colleges for art and design and its precisely and beautifully laid out town squares, clearly its attention to faith and the practice and freedom of religions is exemplified in two resounding magnificent houses of worship, the Congregation Mickve Israel synagogue and the St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic cathedral, the main church of the Savannah diocese.
The two buildings and their congregations trace their roots in Savannah back to the 1700s, both built in the Gothic Revival style, both listed on the National Register of Historic Places and both major contributing members of the Savannah Historic District with their own museums and tours so visitors can recognize and appreciate the impact both religions have had in the South.
Some of the most unusual features about Mickve Temple are in its architecture. Designed by New York’s Henry Harrison in the 1800s, an architect who also designed the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, New York, Mickve is built in a cruciform, or cross-shaped design and its tower topped with an open gazebo designed to enable an overall view of the city. The tower is also designed by what appears to be an Islamic-inspired cupola.
In addition to telling the story of how the Jewish people helped settle Savannah with James Oglethorpe, Mickve Israel is also home to a collection of Torahs and other scrolls including a Torah rescued from destroyed European Jewish communities during the Holocaust and other scrolls from 1733 brought from Europe by the founding congregation .
Some of the scrolls show the Sephardic heritage of the Jews that came from Spain and Portugal to this nation, the group of Jewish immigrants who came in 1733 and helped establish Mickve as the third oldest congregation in the United States. The Sephardic, Spanish and Portuguese Jews, had originally fled to London fleeing the Spanish Inquisition of ten years earlier, then sailed to America on the William and Sarah, and worked with James Oglethorpe to found Svannah.
They brought with them a Sefer Torah, the religious scroll containing the entire text of the Five Books of Moses, hand-written in original Hebrew and rolled around two ornate wooden shafts, attached to either end of the scroll. That scroll is still on display at Mickve and used on special occasions.
The first Catholic immigrants also came during the 18th century, many fleeing turmoil in both Haiti and France and towards the end of the 1700s, formed their first parish and named it St. Jean-Baptiste. As the parish grew, a small brick church was built and by the mid-1850s, the Diocese of Savannah was created. Damaged by hurricane, the church, now known as a cathedral, since it is the primary church of the diocese, was devastated by fire in 1898, with only the exterior walls and two spires preserved. It took 14 years to rebuild and restore.
In 2012, there was concern over cracks discovered in the steeples of the Cathedral, apparently caused the previous year by an earthquake more than 500 miles away in Washington. The quake apparently . Some suspect the damage was caused by an August 2011 earthquake, centered 500 miles away near Washington, DC, which had also rocked the upper levels of office buildings in the downtown area. The cathedral’s magnificent rose window was also damaged to some degree, and restoration of both cost more than one and a half million dollars.
Last year, the Diocese of Savannah celebrated its 175th anniversary with special events and hundreds of both Catholics and non-Catholics joining in the celebration of history.
Mickve Temple congregation was established in 1735, but seven years later, when Spanish troops invaded Georgia, many abandoned the temple, fearing being burned at the stake, while others stayed in hiding and worshiped at private homes. When they returned years later, they reestablished the congregation before the start of the Revolution.
The Congregation has the letter from President George Washington thanking the congregation for their congratulations to him on becoming President, and noting ” May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivered the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors and planted them in the promised land – whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation – still continue to water them with the dews of heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.”
At St. John the Baptiste Cathedral, where dozens of murals and stained glass windows tell the stories of Saints important to the Irish who built the Church, the 14 incredibly detailed Stations of the Cross were all created by a team of artisans…but the face of Christ, which appears in each of the Stations, were all done by the same artist.
Both places of worship offer museums and gift shops that not only highlight and explain the importance of their own religion’s histories in the formation of the United States, but also the role they have played in Georgia, Savannah specifically. Both show how the Jewish and Catholic communities blended their cultures to ensure freedom of religion in spite of war and diverse beliefs in many areas, and how both continue to come together to ensure preservation of history and an invitation to practice faith,
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