Obj. ID: 56756
  Architecture  Stained Glass from Temple Israel, Blytheville, AR, in the chapel in Beth Sholom Synagogue in Memphis, TN, USA

To the main object: Beth Sholom Synagogue in Memphis, TN, USA

Address of the original Reform synagogue:
Temple Israel, 1500 Chickasawba Street; Blytheville, Arkansas 72315

Address of the Conservative synagogue, where the stained glass windows found a new home:
Beth Sholom Synagogue, 6675 Humphreys Blvd, Memphis, TN 38120.

The history of the stained glass windows was summarized by Doron Holzer, Beth Sholom Synagogue congregant since 2004, Board Member,  and Vice President (Ritual) 2012 - 2017:

The eight stained glass windows that adorn the Becker Chapel are filled with light and memories. They are given by the members of Temple Israel in Blytheville, Arkansas to Beth Sholom Synagogue as a testimony to Jewish life in northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri. The first Jewish families arrived in the region in the early 1900’s and by 1923 they founded Temple Israel in Blytheville, Arkansas, eighty miles north of Memphis. Under the leadership of Rabbi Alfred Vise, the congregation’s permanent house of worship was dedicated in 1947 at 1500 Chickasawba Street in Blytheville. For over fifty years, these windows transformed a simple building into a sacred place of worship. As the membership of Temple Israel diminished at the end of the twentieth century, congregants faced difficult choices about the fate of their beloved building. In commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the building in 1997, the congregation bequeathed these  windows to Beth Sholom, both as a symbol of the endurance of Judaism and in memory of their Jewish home, Temple Israel.