On a Friday evening in Scottsdale, the heat finally breaking, the cars turn off North 56th Street into a low, sand-coloured campus where 500 seats fill for Shabbat. The Jews in Scottsdale, Arizona did not arrive here by the slow accretion of a single immigrant generation. They came by aeroplane and moving van, from Long Island and Chicago and Cleveland, chasing dry air, low taxes, and a winter that never bites. In two decades they built one of the fastest-growing Jewish communities in the American Sun Belt.
The Place
Scottsdale sits on the eastern edge of metropolitan Phoenix, hard against the McDowell Mountains, in the broad bowl of the Sonoran Desert that locals call the Valley of the Sun. It is one of Arizona’s most prosperous cities: the 2024 median household income was about $110,886, nearly half of households earn over $100,000, and the median age of 47.7 runs almost a decade older than the national figure.
The city of roughly 244,000 grew up around resorts, golf courses, and art galleries rather than factories or rail yards. That gave it a particular character: affluent, leisured, and full of people who chose to be there. For a Jewish population built largely on retirement and relocation, it was a near-perfect fit.
How It Became Jewish
Jews have been in Arizona since the territorial years. In 1877 a census counted just 48 Jews in the entire Arizona Territory, mostly merchants and traders scattered across mining towns. The community that would anchor Scottsdale, though, began in Phoenix, a short distance to the west, and only later migrated east.
The Phoenix Beginning, 1920
On 8 April 1920, thirty-eight Jewish residents of Phoenix gathered to form Congregation Beth Israel. They hired an architect and, in 1921, completed a small synagogue near Central Avenue and Culver Street, the first purpose-built synagogue in the territory’s largest city. An annex followed in 1930.
This was a modest, desert-frontier Judaism. Rabbi Abraham Lincoln Krohn, who led Beth Israel from 1938 to 1953, found a congregation of fewer than 100 families and left it with 538. Phoenix Jewry was growing, but slowly, and it was still firmly a Phoenix story, not yet a Scottsdale one.
The Postwar Boom
Everything changed after the Second World War. Air conditioning made the desert summer survivable. Cheap land and a booming economy drew newcomers by the thousands. The Greater Phoenix Jewish population, a few thousand at midcentury, began a climb that has barely paused since.
Rabbi Albert Plotkin, who served Beth Israel for nearly four decades from 1955, presided over much of this expansion. New synagogues opened across the Valley. A Jewish Community Center, Jewish day schools, and a federation took shape. The institutional scaffolding of a major community was being raised, and it was beginning to lean eastward, toward the wealthier suburbs.
The newcomers were different from earlier Arizona Jews. They were not frontier merchants but professionals and retirees, doctors and lawyers and business owners who had already lived a full chapter elsewhere. They arrived with the expectations of the suburbs they had left, and they wanted the institutions to match: serious schools, full-service synagogues, a community centre with a gym and a preschool. Scottsdale, with its land and its money, could give them that.
The Move East, 1966 to 2002
The pivot toward Scottsdale and neighbouring Paradise Valley happened over a single generation. In April 1966, twelve people met in a living room to found Temple Solel, a Reform congregation; by 1978 it had bought a former church on East McDonald Drive in Paradise Valley and within a year counted 200 member families.
The decisive moves came at the turn of the century. In 1997, Congregation Beth Israel left central Phoenix for a new 45,000-square-foot home on North 56th Street in Scottsdale, with a sanctuary seating 500. By 2003 it was the largest Jewish congregation in Arizona, with roughly 1,000 member families. When the congregation vacated its century-old downtown building, the structure was preserved as a museum, a literal handing-off of the old community to the new.
In 2002 the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center opened on the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus at 12701 North Scottsdale Road, the gift of philanthropist Bill Levine in memory of his late wife. With the JCC, a day school, and the region’s largest synagogue now clustered within a few miles, Scottsdale had become the institutional heart of Jewish life in the Valley.
Explosive Growth
The numbers tell the rest. A community study counted roughly 44,000 Jews in Greater Phoenix in 2002. By 2019 the estimate had more than doubled to nearly 99,000. Arizona has posted some of the highest population growth in the country, and its Jewish community has tracked that climb, with an Orthodox presence that local rabbis describe as having grown explosively in the same years.
The Landmarks
Congregation Beth Israel, 10460 North 56th Street. The oldest Reform congregation in the metro area and the largest synagogue in Arizona, Beth Israel traces its founding to 1920 in Phoenix and moved to this Scottsdale campus in 1997. It opened the Valley’s first community mikvah, a ritual bath, in 2007.
Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center, 12701 North Scottsdale Road. The Ina Levine campus opened in 2002 on thirty acres donated by Bill Levine. It is the secular hub of the community, with a fitness centre, early childhood programmes, and cultural events, and it shares its grounds with Jewish schools and agencies.
Pardes Jewish Day School, 12753 North Scottsdale Road. A K-8 school of roughly 290 students, Pardes sits beside the JCC on the same stretch of Scottsdale Road. It has been repeatedly named the best Jewish day school in the Phoenix area by the local Jewish press.
Temple Solel, 6805 East McDonald Drive, Paradise Valley. Founded in a living room in 1966, this Reform congregation bought a former church building in 1978 and has anchored the affluent enclave of Paradise Valley ever since, serving the southern edge of the Scottsdale Jewish community.
Chabad of Scottsdale, on North Scottsdale Road. The local outpost of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, it provides Orthodox services, holiday programming, and kosher resources for a community where observant Judaism has grown sharply in recent years.
Chompie’s, 9301 East Shea Boulevard. Arizona’s New York-style deli since 1979, Chompie’s is the unofficial canteen of Valley Jewry, famous for boiled-then-baked bagels, matzo ball soup, and mile-high sandwiches. It is kosher-style rather than certified kosher, but it is where transplants go to taste home.
The Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center, 122 East Culver Street, Phoenix. Built in 1921 as Beth Israel’s first synagogue, the oldest Jewish building in the city was reborn as a museum and heritage centre run by the Arizona Jewish Historical Society. It opened to the public in 2010 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
Where They Came From
Unlike the great immigrant enclaves of the East Coast, Scottsdale’s Jewish community was not built by people stepping off a ship. It was built by people stepping off a plane, after a first life somewhere colder.
The dominant streams came from the Northeast and the Midwest: greater New York and New Jersey, the suburbs of Chicago, the older Jewish neighbourhoods of Cleveland and Detroit. Many arrived first as snowbirds, wintering in the Valley and returning north for the summer, before deciding to stay year-round.
The draws were practical and consistent. Arizona does not tax retirement income such as Social Security. The dry desert climate is gentle on ageing joints and lungs. Housing, until recently, was cheaper than in coastal metros. For a generation of Jewish retirees and second-home buyers, Scottsdale offered the warmth of Florida with the openness of the West.
That this echoes other Sun Belt and Northeastern Jewish stories is no accident. The same currents that filled the Jewish community of Boca Raton, Florida sent a parallel stream to Arizona, while many Scottsdale families trace their roots to suburbs like Scarsdale, New York or to Chicago-area communities such as Skokie, Illinois.
Scottsdale Today
Today the Jewish community of Scottsdale and its neighbour Paradise Valley is one of the most established in the interior West, even if it is young by the standards of older enclaves like Borough Park in Brooklyn. The institutions are real and growing: a 1,000-family flagship synagogue, a thirty-acre community campus, day schools, an active federation, and a widening network of Chabad houses and Orthodox shuls.
The community is not without strain. The same growth that built it has driven up housing costs sharply, a pressure felt across affluent Scottsdale, and the city’s median age sits nearly a decade above the national figure. It remains, demographically, an older community, shaped by retirement and relocation rather than by large young families, though the Orthodox and day-school populations are steadily changing that balance and bringing more children into the synagogues each year.
What endures is the sense of a community deliberately assembled. The Jews of Scottsdale chose their desert, and then chose to build in it: a synagogue on 56th Street, a campus on Scottsdale Road, a deli on Shea Boulevard, a preserved 1921 sanctuary back in Phoenix holding the memory of where it all began. For more on the broader story, the history of the Jews in Arizona traces the arc from territorial merchants to the present-day Valley.
Frequently Asked Questions
How large is the Jewish community in Scottsdale, Arizona?
Scottsdale anchors the Jewish community of Greater Phoenix, which grew from roughly 44,000 Jews in 2002 to nearly 99,000 by 2019. Scottsdale and neighbouring Paradise Valley hold a large and prosperous share of that population, including the area’s largest synagogue.
Why did so many Jews move to Scottsdale?
Most of the Jews in Scottsdale, Arizona came from the Northeast and Midwest, drawn by the dry desert climate, the absence of state tax on retirement income, and relatively affordable housing. Many began as winter snowbirds before settling year-round.
What is the oldest Jewish congregation in the area?
Congregation Beth Israel, founded in Phoenix in 1920, is the oldest Reform congregation in the metro area. It moved to its Scottsdale campus on North 56th Street in 1997 and is the largest synagogue in Arizona.
Where can you find Jewish institutions in Scottsdale?
The Valley of the Sun JCC, Pardes Jewish Day School, and Congregation Beth Israel are all clustered in and around the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus on North Scottsdale Road, with Temple Solel and several Chabad houses nearby.
Is there kosher food in Scottsdale?
Kosher and kosher-style dining is available, anchored by Chompie’s New York-style deli on East Shea Boulevard and supported by kosher sections in local supermarkets and resources through Chabad of Scottsdale. Fully certified kosher options are more limited than in larger coastal communities.
What happened to the original Phoenix synagogue?
Beth Israel’s 1921 building, the oldest Jewish structure in Phoenix, was preserved as the Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center. Run by the Arizona Jewish Historical Society, it opened as a museum in 2010 and joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
If your family’s story passed through Scottsdale, or any of the places Jews have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a winter apartment in the Valley of the Sun to a forever home beneath the McDowell Mountains, to wherever you are now.