B’nai Zion Congregation

The B’nai Zion Congregation is a charter member of the Union of Reform Judaism. Located in Shreveport, Louisiana and established in 1861, it is home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the state, and the first Jewish congregation outside of New Orleans. The art and architecture of the B’nai Zion Congregation and its historic cemeteries shed light on the complex issues of immigration, assimilation, discrimination, and life as part of a minority community in the United States. The material culture of the B’nai Zion Congregation highlights this negotiation of religious, ethnic, local, and national identity within Louisiana’s Jewish communities, shedding light on how the sacred/secular binary functions and whom it serves.

After the arrival of Jacob Bodenheimer in 1827, Jewish merchants from Germany and Alsace began to arrive in what would become Shreveport. By 1848, 12 Jewish families lived in Shreveport, and they began to hold services at the home of Abraham and Sarah Winter. As the Jewish population grew, so did their infrastructure needs. In 1858 they secured land for a Jewish cemetery, and in 1861 the congregation formally organized, only the third in Louisiana and the first outside of New Orleans. In 1869 the congregation, then called Hebrew Zion, built their first temple on Fannin Street. 

The current building, designed by three Jewish architects (Flaxman, Wiener, and Van Os), was dedicated in 1956. Its iconic mid century modern design has had obvious updates over the decades, most notably its sanctuary renovation in 2014. The number of members at B’nai Zion has dropped since its height in the 1950s, and the design updates reflect the needs of its aging membership.

The main hallway of the building includes photos and news clippings of the Jewish mayors in Shreveport, serving as a reminder of acceptance and leadership for the congregation. The main hallway also features early 20th century confirmation photos, all of which feature multiple American flags in the sanctuary and an American flag bunting on the menorah. While national flags are rare inside the sanctuary in other parts of the world, they often feature prominently in American sanctuaries. This brings up interesting questions about what is categorized as a religious symbol versus a political, national, or secular symbol. Is the desire to perform an authentic American identity merely a secular concern? These images highlight how the many nationalities and homelands that Jewish folks brought with them added to the negotiation of American, religious, and other national identities. It also highlights the conception of Jewishness as a religious or ethnic rather than a political identity, serving as a useful example of how “religion” has been a helpful category for cordoning off a specific part of one’s identity or a specific set of cultural data.

The sanctuary of B’nai Zion features a stone wall from the same quarry as the Western Wall in Jerusalem. It also features a large stained glass piece using glass from New Orleans. The flame light above was made by a local artist from Shreveport. This combination visually captures how each of these places contributes to what it means to be Jewish and Louisianan for this community. 

The cemeteries also capture this combination of homeland and new land. The first Hebrew Rest, which is the Jewish section of Oakland Cemetery, was established in 1858. Generally, it follows the Eastern European Jewish tradition of the cohesive community even in death, with all the land being used, leaving little space for walkways, or roads, or plants. In this one there aren’t really family plots, but rather, the whole “family of Israel” was buried together in more or less the chronological order in which they died. Graves are densely packed together. 

In use since 1886, the second Hebrew Rest cemetery is considerably larger than Hebrew Rest Number One, created to accommodate the needs of the growing community. Hebrew Rest II is divided into family plots with walkways as well as shrubs and flowers. This cemetery followed the more Western Victorian concept of the family as a singular unit. The comparison of the two cemeteries is an interesting study in the integration, or what some might call the Americanization, of nineteenth-century Jewish immigrants to the American South.

The story of the Jewish community in Shreveport is largely a happy one. Jewish folks from Germany and France were in Shreveport before it even became Shreveport. They were political leaders and business owners from the beginning. However, local communities have not been immune from larger national trends and instances of antisemitism, which is reflected in the space itself. The front of the main entrance was originally glass, in keeping with its mid century design. But because of higher security risks, homeland security recommended that B’nai Zion remove the glass and install solid steel doors with more sophisticated locking mechanisms. 

The spaces of the B’nai Zion Congregation thus reflects mid century growth and current stagnation; it reflects a past of civic leadership and acceptance in Louisiana, but also contemporary bouts of antisemitism. Its cemeteries, too, tell a story of change over time, and the Jewish people of Shreveport, Louisiana, like most Americans who identify with Judaism or Jewishness, have shown how they can use its concepts in creative ways.  

The Jewish spaces of Shreveport serve as an ideal case study to complicate popular definitions of “religion,” and B’nai Zion provides considerable evidence of the inseparability of culture, politics, and religion.