Temple in Texas

The eyes of Dallas, Texas were upon its Jews last week as they dedicated a new synagogue that ranks with the most impressive in the U.S. Brown brick and somber on the outside, surrounded by twelve acres of brown gravel parking space, on the inside Temple Emanu-el sparkles with stained glass, gold, green and blue mosaic work, and a curtain of shimmering metallic cloth in front of the Ark. The temple, at the intersection of Northwest Highway and Hillcrest Avenue, cost its Reform congregation $2,000,000, stands on one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the city's bustling northwest.

The 17,000 Jews of Dallas (pop. 650,000) are largely descendants of early settlers who grew up with Texas, never bunched together in the little quasi-ghettos most early Jews formed elsewhere in the New World. Eleven of them banded together in 1872, in the dusty prairie town that was Dallas, to organize charity and conduct high Holy Day services. Four years later they had become the Jewish Congregation Emanuel, comprising 32 families. Today there are 1,500 families in Emanuel, the dominant Jewish congregation in Dallas. Its leaders include Banker Fred Florence (Republic National Bank), Papermaker Lawrence Pollock (Pollock Paper Corp.), Merchant Prince Stanley Marcus (Neiman-Marcus), all of whom take Texas-size pride in being civic leaders and Dallas boosters. On Friday the temple was dedicated to the congregation itself, on Saturday to Judaism as a whole, on Sunday to the entire city of Dallas. "That's how their thinking goes," explained Emanuel's Rabbi Levi Olan. "They think of themselves as a natural part of the larger community."

Said Chancellor Umphrey Lee of Southern Methodist University in accepting Sunday's dedication: "You are contributing to the world about you when you worship ... A praying temple is a great addition to the well-being of the Commonwealth."

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