Sep 2, 2021 2 min read

With its membership declining and maintenance costs straining its budget, the Beth Israel Congregation in Washington is selling its synagogue on North Avenue.

The congregation, which now numbers somewhere between 30 and 45 members, has been quietly marketing the 3.37-acre property since just before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, but its efforts to sell the synagogue and a house that adjoins it became much more public in recent days when a large and very noticeable for-sale sign was planted in the front yard.

It is being listed for $1.6 million. The synagogue is located within a residential neighborhood, but it has commercial properties nearby. The structure was built in 1955, and according to Gary Gilman, a Washington County judge and president of the congregation, the cost of maintaining the large, 66-year-old building has become overwhelming.

“It is sad,” Gilman said. “But financially, we can’t swing it. It’s just a costly building to maintain. It’s not that we don’t want to stay there, but it’s a matter of finances.”

He pointed out, though, that selling the synagogue does not necessarily spell the end of the Beth Israel Congregation. Its members had services online before COVID-19 vaccines arrived, and have more recently been mixing in-person services with online rites.

“We have not voted to dissolve in any way,” Gilman said.

Designed by architect Alexander Sharove, who also designed several other synagogues in the Pittsburgh region, it contains two sanctuaries, two kosher kitchens, and a library, social hall, parlor and gymnasium. For a handful of years, the nondenominational Living Stone Community Church met in the synagogue’s gym and paid rent to the congregation, but that church disbanded.

Beth Israel was founded in 1891, and its synagogue is the last remaining in Washington, Greene and Fayette counties. It was once one of several synagogues in the region outside Pittsburgh, with Jewish communities in Monessen, Brownsville and Charleroi supporting synagogues. Now, the synagogues closest to Beth Israel are located outside Washington County, in Mt. Lebanon and Scott Township.

“Churches or synagogues used to be a focal point of family life, and it hasn’t been that way for decades,” Gilman said.