Venues

Rodef Shalom, the oldest Jewish Congregation in Western Pennsylvania, was chartered by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1856 with its origins actually back to the late 1840s. Members of Rodef Shalom have been instrumental in the development of Pittsburgh's cultural, civic and Jewish institutions. In 1885, Rodef Shalom hosted an important meeting of Reform rabbis in Pittsburgh. The resulting Pittsburgh Platform declared that Judaism was a religion, not a nation; that the Bible was an ethical guide, not the infallible word of God. This Pittsburgh Platform guided North American Reform Judaism until 1937.

J. Leonard Levy, a dynamic leader with an internationalist outlook, became Rodef Shalom's Rabbi in 1901. He worked to strengthen interfaith communication in Pittsburgh and beyond by starting an international peace organization. In response to Rabbi Levy's invitation, President William Howard Taft visited Rodef Shalom on Saturday, May 29, 1909, the first time that a sitting United States president spoke from the alter of a Jewish congregation during regular Sabbath services.

Henry Hornbostel, selected by architect Andrew Carnegie to design Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie-Mellon University, won the design competition in 1904 for the Rodef Shalom building located on Fifth Avenue. Hornbostel incorporated many new ideas in the design of the Temple. The double dome, 90 feet in diameter and constructed without structural steel, uses the Catalan vault, a Spanish vernacular style. For the exterior, Hornbostel chose local yellow brick, with decorations in colored terra cotta. The design incorporates four representational stained glass windows by William Willet with a large stained glass skylight in the dome and a lunette over the Fifth Avenue entrance. The 1907 Kimball organ is the largest of its type still in use. The Temple sanctuary holds over 1,200 people.

You can visit the rodef Shalom web site at http://rodefshalom.org/