Project number: [Memorial, USA-00178]

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The TEMPLE SINAI in SHARON, MA, USA

Temple Sinai is a Reform Jewish congregation that offers a wide array of opportunities for prayer, learning, and community involvement. Our mission is to inspire our members to integrate Jewish values and practice into their everyday lives, being inclusive and creative while also honoring tradition. We celebrate our Jewish lives together in an intimate and caring synagogue, perform acts of tikkun olam – repairing the world – and seek to pass on Jewish identity l'dor vador – from generation to generation.

Temple Sinai was established in 1958 as an outgrowth of the Sharon School of Jewish Education. Having no denominational affiliation, the group determined that the time had come for its new congregation to join the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in order to represent the Reform movement in Sharon.

At the time of the founding of Temple Sinai, families were moving out of the historic Jewish neighborhoods of Mattapan and Dorchester, and Sharon, was a quiet town known for its summer cottages around Lake Massapoag and its summer music festival.

The first membership meeting was held at the former Bell House (now the Chabad Center) on February 26, 1958, at which time 98 families paid a $10 membership fee to join Temple Sinai. Arrangements were made to use the Bell House for religious services and school. Dr. Joseph Sacks was the first president, and Rabbi Milton Weissberg, became the first spiritual leader. Cantor Morris Gordon became the first cantor in 1958 and remained cantor until his retirement in 1977. In less than a year, the Bell House became too small to hold the growing congregation. The Ames Street building was dedicated in January 1960. It was expanded in the 1970s.

By 1998, the congregation had grown, and it was time once again to expand our facilities. In 1999, the congregation voted to build a new synagogue on Canton Street in Sharon. In December 2000, driving between the raindrops, the Temple Sinai family moved from Ames Street into its new building on Canton Street, with a parade of Torahs through the streets of Sharon.

In 2010, the Jewish Community Center Gilson Early Learning Center moved into Temple Sinai's lower level, adding a preschool to the Temple community. Temple Sinai has since grown from being the town of Sharon's Reform synagogue to a synagogue that draws from the entire South Area of Boston.