Real Places 2023, Texas’s premier historic preservation conference, sponsored by the Texas Historical Commission (THC) and Friends of the THC, will feature a special program about the B’nai Abraham Brenham Historic Synagogue on February 2, 2023 at 11:00 a.m. at the DoubleTree Hotel in Austin. Conference participation will also be available virtually.

Entitled “Between Place and Purpose: Relocating, Renovating and Rededicating the Oldest Synagogue in Texas,” the B’nai Abraham session will explore the rationale, process, challenges and controversies involved in uprooting a 120-year-old historic landmark. Panelists include Jay Rubin, former Shalom Austin CEO, who spearheaded the relocation along with volunteers Rick Goldberg and the late Jack Solka, and Ken Herman, longtime journalist and former Austin American Statesman columnist. Herman chronicled nearly every aspect of the relocation in numerous articles and an hour-long documentary entitled “Synagogue Saga: A Moving Story in Three Parts.”

Completed in 1894 to serve the needs of a small community of Polish and Lithuanian Jewish immigrants to Texas, B’nai Abraham served Brenham’s Jews for more than a half century before higher education and economic opportunity drew most of their descendants to larger cities.

Businessman, philanthropist and civic leader Leon Toubin, grandson of one of the synagogue founders, together with his late wife Mimi, maintained the building over the next half century as an historic landmark in the hope that one day Brenham might again attract Jewish families.

In 2012, after exploring several alternatives, the Toubins reached out to what is now Shalom Austin to discuss the possibility of relocating B’nai Abraham to the Dell Jewish Community Campus.

Relocating, renovating and rededicating the oldest synagogue building in Texas involved a complex process over a three-year period of multiple civic and communal sign-offs, fundraising, with the majority of the funds coming from out-of-town donors with connections to the Toubins and B’nai Abraham, and vetting architects, contractors and building movers.

The Real Places program also will explore questions and concerns within the historic preservation community about the relocation of B’nai Abraham.

For more program and registration information, visit realplaces.us.