Drive east on Poplar Avenue, past the towers at White Station and the shops near Ridgeway, and you cross into the part of Memphis where the city’s Jewish life has gathered for three generations. The Jews in East Memphis built their synagogues, their schools, and their community centre along this corridor after the war pulled them out of the old downtown. What had begun in a cramped twelve-block neighbourhood by the river ended in the leafy subdivisions off Poplar, and it has stayed there ever since.
The Place
East Memphis is not a single neighbourhood so much as a collection of them, strung along the Poplar Avenue corridor between the I-240 loop and the Germantown line. It holds names like Chickasaw Gardens, Hedgemoor, Belle Meade, and the Walnut Grove area, home to some of the largest houses in the city.
In 1950 the eastern edge of Memphis was essentially the western edge of what is now East Memphis. The postwar decades pushed the city outward, and by the mid-1960s most of the land inside the loop had been annexed. The commercial heart settled around Poplar and Ridgeway Road, anchored by the Hilton and the office towers of the Poplar corridor.
It became, and remains, an affluent, tree-canopied district of good schools and quiet streets. It is also where the institutions of Jewish Memphis chose to put down their second roots, in the same way that postwar Jewish families remade the suburbs of Jewish Dunwoody outside Atlanta and the streets of Jewish Meyerland in Houston.
How It Became Jewish
The story does not start in the east. It starts by the river, and it starts early.
Merchants and cotton, before the war
Jewish Memphis began in the 1840s with men who came to trade. David Hart was running an inn by 1843. Joseph Andrews, who arrived around 1840, became a successful merchant and cotton broker and served as a city alderman in 1847 and 1848. When his brother Samuel died in 1847, Andrews donated land for a Jewish cemetery, and the Hebrew Benevolent Society grew out of that act.
German Jewish families followed in the 1850s and went into retail. Benedict Lowenstein arrived in 1854 and built B. Lowenstein and Brothers into one of the largest dry goods houses in the region. Isaac and Jacob Goldsmith opened their store in 1870 and pioneered the department layout, the escalator, and the bargain basement that Memphis shoppers would know for a century.
Cotton was the engine. Memphis sat at the head of the Mississippi Delta trade, and Jewish brokers and merchants worked the market alongside everyone else. Congregation B’nai Israel, chartered by the state on 2 March 1854, was the first permanent Jewish house of worship in Tennessee. Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the founder of American Reform Judaism, dedicated its building in 1858. The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life keeps the fullest record of those early years.
Fever, and recovery
The yellow fever epidemics of the 1870s nearly ended it all. After the 1878 outbreak, the Jewish population of Memphis fell from roughly 2,100 to about 300. Rabbi Max Samfield stayed through the dying, ministering to victims of every background. The community that survived rebuilt anyway, and B’nai Israel put up a new synagogue by 1884.
The Pinch
The next wave was different. Eastern European Jews arriving from the 1880s onward settled into a twelve-block neighbourhood north of downtown known as the Pinch, a Memphis answer to New York’s Lower East Side. They founded their own Orthodox congregations: the Baron Hirsch Benevolent Society in 1884 and Anshei Sphard in 1893. A Workmen’s Circle ran a Yiddish school and a clubhouse.
Out of this neighbourhood came the entrepreneurs who would shape the city. Abe Plough founded his chemical company in 1908; it eventually merged into Schering-Plough. Philip Belz and his son Jack built Belz Enterprises and, in 1975, bought the Peabody Hotel. For half a century, from the 1890s to the 1930s, the Pinch was the centre of Jewish Memphis, dense with synagogues and shops.
The move east
The war changed the map. Postwar affluence and the G.I. Bill drew young families out of the Pinch toward the eastern suburbs, where they could buy single-family homes with yards. The Jewish population of Memphis was estimated at 6,500 in 1948 and around 9,000 by 1960, and most of that growth landed in the east.
The congregations followed their members. Anshei Sphard relocated eastward in 1950. Baron Hirsch built an enormous new home on South Yates Road, completed in 1957, with a sanctuary that seated over 2,000 and room for a thousand more. By the late 1950s Baron Hirsch had over 1,000 households and 500 children in its school, and was described as the largest Orthodox congregation in North America.
The Reform congregation made the same journey. Beth Sholom, founded in 1954, became the city’s first Conservative congregation and settled in the east as well. Temple Israel, the old B’nai Israel, moved to its thirty-acre wooded campus on East Massey Road in 1976. The geography of Jewish Memphis had finished its migration from the river to the Poplar corridor.
The Landmarks
Temple Israel, 1376 East Massey Road. The oldest and largest Jewish congregation in Tennessee, descended from the 1854 charter of B’nai Israel, sits on a thirty-acre wooded campus in the heart of East Memphis. It is the only Reform synagogue in the city and one of the largest Reform congregations in the country, serving roughly 1,500 member families since its 1976 move to Massey Road.
Baron Hirsch Congregation, 400 South Yates Road. When its sanctuary was finished in 1957 it was reportedly the largest in the United States, built with 2,200 permanent seats. The Modern Orthodox congregation grew out of the 1884 benevolent society in the Pinch and became, for a time, the largest Orthodox congregation in North America.
Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth, formerly 120 North Yates Road. The product of a 1966 merger, ASBEE dedicated its East Memphis building in September 1970 and served for over 160 years of combined history before merging into Baron Hirsch in 2023. The Yates Road property was sold in 2020, closing one of the long-standing anchors of the corridor.
Memphis Jewish Community Center, 6560 Poplar Avenue. The MJCC sits on twenty-four acres at the corner of Poplar and Aaron Brenner Drive, between Massey and Kirby, in the heart of East Memphis. Its gym, pool, and early childhood programmes have made it the secular gathering place for the community, the counterpart to the synagogues a few minutes down the road.
Margolin Hebrew Academy, 390 South White Station Road. The city’s only Orthodox Jewish day school, the MHA campus runs from the Leach early childhood centre through the Cooper Yeshiva High School for Boys and the Goldie Margolin High School for Girls. It is the institution that allows Orthodox families to raise children in the city rather than leave it.
Bornblum Jewish Community School, in the Eastwood Manor area. A community day school serving grades one through eight in the Solomon Schechter tradition, Bornblum offers a combined secular and Judaic curriculum. Between Bornblum and Margolin, East Memphis families have two day schools without crossing town.
The Poplar corridor itself. From the towers at White Station to the Ridgeway commercial hub, Poplar Avenue is the spine that the community organised itself along. Kosher goods are stocked in the local supermarkets and ordered in when needed, and the synagogues, schools, and centre all sit within a few minutes of one another off this one road.
Where They Came From
Two distinct streams made Jewish Memphis. The first was German, arriving in the 1840s and 1850s: merchants and cotton brokers who founded B’nai Israel, opened the dry goods houses, and entered civic life. These were the families that built the Reform tradition in the city.
The second was Eastern European, arriving from the 1880s through the early twentieth century and settling first in the Pinch. They brought Orthodox practice, Yiddish, and the congregations of Baron Hirsch and Anshei Sphard. The tension and eventual blending of these two streams, German Reform and Eastern European Orthodox, is the underlying shape of the community, much as it was in older Jewish enclaves like Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh.
When the families moved east after the war, they carried both traditions with them. East Memphis is where the two streams ended up living side by side, a Reform temple and a large Orthodox shul a short drive apart on the same corridor.
East Memphis Today
A 2006 study estimated about 7,800 Jews in the Memphis metropolitan area. That is a decline from the mid-century peak, and the community is honest about it. The 2023 merger of ASBEE into Baron Hirsch, and the sale of the Yates Road building, were the kind of consolidations that a smaller community has to make.
Yet the institutions remain unusually complete for a city this size. There is a major Reform temple, a large Modern Orthodox congregation, a Conservative congregation, two Jewish day schools, and a twenty-four-acre community centre, all clustered in the same few square miles off Poplar. Few mid-sized American cities can still say that. The same density of synagogue, school, and centre defines other Southern and Midwestern Jewish suburbs, from Jewish Bexley near Columbus to Jewish Creve Coeur outside St. Louis.
The centre of gravity has drifted further east over the years, toward Germantown and the outer subdivisions, but it has not left the corridor. The Jewish story of Memphis began by the river and finished in the east, and in East Memphis it is still being told.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do the Jews in East Memphis live?
The Jewish community in East Memphis is concentrated in the affluent subdivisions along the Poplar Avenue corridor, between the I-240 loop and the Germantown line, with the centre of gravity having drifted eastward toward Ridgeway and Germantown over recent decades. The synagogues, schools, and community centre all sit within a few minutes of one another off Poplar.
What are the main synagogues in East Memphis?
The three pillars are Temple Israel, the Reform congregation on East Massey Road; Baron Hirsch, the Modern Orthodox congregation on South Yates Road; and Beth Sholom, the city’s first Conservative congregation. Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth merged into Baron Hirsch in 2023.
Why did Memphis Jews move from downtown to East Memphis?
After the Second World War, postwar affluence and the G.I. Bill drew young Jewish families out of the old Pinch district near downtown toward the eastern suburbs, where they could buy single-family homes with yards. The congregations followed their members, with Anshei Sphard relocating in 1950 and Baron Hirsch building its new home on Yates Road by 1957.
How old is the Jewish community in Memphis?
It dates to the 1840s, with merchant Joseph Andrews arriving around 1840 and donating land for a Jewish cemetery in 1847. Congregation B’nai Israel, the ancestor of Temple Israel, was chartered in 1854 as the first permanent Jewish house of worship in Tennessee.
How many Jews live in Memphis today?
A 2006 study estimated about 7,800 Jews in the Memphis metropolitan area, a decline from a mid-century peak of around 9,000 in 1960. The Jews in East Memphis remain the core of that community, supported by two day schools and a full set of congregations.
Are there Jewish schools in East Memphis?
Yes. Margolin Hebrew Academy on South White Station Road is the city’s only Orthodox Jewish day school, running from early childhood through high school. Bornblum Jewish Community School serves grades one through eight in the Solomon Schechter tradition, giving East Memphis families two day-school options.
If your family’s story passed through East Memphis, or any of the places Jews have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the cotton wharves and the Pinch district by the river, to a wooded synagogue campus off Poplar Avenue, to wherever you are now.