The Jewish Temple (Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim)

Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim was founded in 1859 by Jews from Alsace, growing out of a Hebrew benevolent society formed in 1852 to provide a Jewish cemetery. It joined the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873. Its Greek Revival second temple, with a dome, burned in 1956, and membership had risen from 123 families in 1925 to 203 in 1945. Rabbi Raina Siroty, hired in 2017, was the congregation's first woman clergy member. The Jewish population of Alexandria fell from 760 in 1980 to 175 in 2001.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 1.0 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Kent Plantation House — 1.8 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 1.8 mi
  Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.
• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — 5.9 mi
  A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.

More markers nearby

• Little Walter — 0.4 mi
• Lee Street Riot of 1942 — 0.8 mi
• Arna Wendell Bontemps Home — 1.1 mi
• St. Francis Xavier Cathedral Complex — 1.1 mi