The oldest Jewish temple in North Carolina is expanding its footprint in downtown Wilmington.
The historic Temple of Israel, located at Fourth and Market streets, is building an off-site office space and social hall farther east along Market—on a south side lot between Ninth and 10th streets, just east of the Cape Fear Museum campus.
The new building, under construction at 922 Market St., is being built next door to a building the temple had rented for its offices and religious school. A three-year lease for that building expired in June, but plans had already been in the works to build a permanent space, said Nancy Robert, the temple’s office administrator.
“We were looking for a permanent home, we had done a capital campaign and we purchased the land next door, and so now, we’re building,” Robert said Tuesday.
Ground was broken on the site two weeks ago, she said. While construction continues, with completion projected early next year, the temple’s offices are being housed in a temporary location at 4004 Oleander Drive.
The one-story building, with nearly 7,700 square feet of space, is planned to house 10 classrooms for the temple’s religious school, a sizeable social hall with a commercial kitchen, administrative offices, a conference room and bathrooms.
Robert said the space would allow for programs and activities not easily accommodated at the temple, which she said features a social hall underneath the temple but minimal space to meet the temple’s needs.
“It is the oldest temple in North Carolina, and of course the space is so limited. There’s nothing down there at Fourth and Market that we can do,” Robert said. “So we bought the closest property available, and that was 10th and Market.
“We will have the ability to use that for all sorts of things—conference gatherings, dinner and a movie, and just all sorts of things that we hadn’t really had the space to do on campus or on our own property,” she said.
To be called the Rita and Jonathan Reibman Center for Kehillah, Robert said the building is intended not only as a center of learning but also a center of the Wilmington community.
“Our goal is that it will provide not just for ourselves but for the whole Wilmington area at some point, in terms of being a resource for community and a resource for learning,” she said. “We have high hopes for the whole thing.”
Josh Vogel, president of the temple’s board of trustees, noted the fundraising efforts of the temple’s congregation in making the new building become a reality.
“We are all extremely excited about the project,” Vogel said in an email. “The congregation has responded very generously to the fundraising effort.
“We have needed this for a long time to suit our growing school and congregation. Of great significance, it is the first new construction for our temple since the original sanctuary at Fourth and Market in the 1860s,” he said. “We are also happy that the two buildings will be very close.
“We hope a prominent new building may generate interest among the unaffiliated greater Wilmington Jewish community,” he said, “and send the message that we want to be inclusive, that we encourage anyone to come check us out.”
Jonathan Spiers is a reporter for Port City Daily. He can be reached at (910) 772-6313 or jonathan.s@portcitydaily.com. On Twitter: @jrspiers
