The old old Temple De Hirsch

One way or another, the Washington State Jewish Historical Society got a recording on my phone of the recording of Ein Keloheynu from the Children's Choir at De Hirsch some time prior to 1946.  I had been pushing and pushing.  Today we went back to her office, she put the audio disk into her computer and we put my cell phone up to her headphones.  And we have a minute of it.  Low tech but we got it.  I think I will take it off my phone, get it on my tablet and use it for my interviews which will happen (I hope) next month.


Before I was really engrossed with the minutes from 1904-7.  Seriously, you can really see the path to the New now the Old Sanctuary in the Board minutes.  Not the details but I could clearly see the (somewhat convoluted) path to selling their original site at Marion and Boylston with partially completed building, at a profit and buying a more appropriate piece of land up the hill at 15h Ave and East Union.

This is the only image I've seen of that earlier building.  They had built a basement/first story which gave them a little room.  Around 1905, they had enough money to work on the super-structure.  They realized that their plan would not be big enough for their growing congregation and switched sites.

This image of the one story building was from the newspaper.  I've seen it in Rabbi Koch's scrapbook.  There was also something shady or not right with their previous rabbi Joseph.  I've seen comments such as "he really had to go" and "he had other problems"  Don't know what.