“May the same wonder-working Deity who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors, planted them in the promised land — Whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation — still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.”

 —President George Washington (1790)

 Congregation Mickve Israel

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” is one of the great gag-lines from Monte Python’s Flying Circus. But there was one group of early settlers in Savannah who managed to escape the actual Spanish Inquisition and later sailed here in 1733, just after founder James Oglethorpe established the colony.

It is an inspiring story.

February 1733 marked the official founding of British Georgia when Oglethorpe and a group of settlers slept their first nights in tents on the bluff above the Savannah River, or, in the case of Oglethorpe, preferring to slumber under the stars in the open air.

Earlier that month, Oglethorpe had made a deal with Tomochichi, and the long history of Native American land concessions to the State of Georgia began. (That history is substantially less inspiring.)

Later in the Spring of 1733, yellow fever struck the small group of colonialists hard, and subsequently took the life of William Cox, its physician. And then that summer, additional settlers arrived on the William and Sarah, a group that included several families of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, forced to depart for England during the Spanish Inquisition. Soon after arriving in England, they left for the New World by way of the recently established Colony of Georgia.

Specifically, the charter establishing the Georgia Colony excluded Roman Catholics from settling here. One problem faced upon reaching Georgian shores: this newly arrived group of Jews had not obtained the permission of the Trustees in England to travel to Georgia. 

That decision was made by James Oglethorpe, who provided his consent for them to remain in Savannah despite later objections from the Trustees in London. Among this group of Jewish immigrants was Dr. Samuel Nunes Ribiero, who went on to treat many of the colonialists with great success. 

Within a couple of years, the Jewish colonialists in Savannah agreed to open a Synagogue together, to be named the Kahal Kodesh Mickva Israel, which translated as the Holy Congregation Hope of Israel. Despite those hope-filled plans, they met primarily in the homes of members for several decades.

It took until the early 1800s before the congregation built its first Synagogue in Savannah; in fact, the first Synagogue ever erected in Georgia. In March 1878, construction began on the current Synagogue located on Monterey Square; that building expanded to its present size in 1957. It is magnificent!

The Savannah Congregation would congratulate George Washington on his inauguration in 1789 as the first president of the newly established United States of America. The following year, Washington wrote back, addressing his kindhearted letter: To the Hebrew Congregation of the City of Savannah.