Just three years after Jewish families organized Oregon’s first congregation, Beth Israel, neighbors gathered at the corner of Oak and Fifth streets to dedicate the state’s first synagogue. Beth Israel adopted a resolution thanking “their friends and fellow citizens” for the “generous assistance” that made the synagogue possible. Services were held “in all the Churches and in the Jewish Synagogue,” one paper reported. In 1869, the Orthodox congregation Ahavai Sholom dedicated its first synagogue on Sixth Street. When Beth Israel rebuilt in 1928 at 19th Avenue and Flanders, that interfaith spirit was literally built into the walls.