Temple De Hirsch Sinai

Temple De Hirsch Sinai is a Reform Jewish congregation with campuses in Seattle and nearby Bellevue, Washington, USA. It was formed as a 1971 merger between the earlier Temple De Hirsch (Seattle, founded 1899) and Temple Sinai (Bellevue, founded 1961) and is the largest Reform congregation in the Pacific Northwest.

The old Temple De Hirsch building (or Old Sanctuary) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but was demolished in 1993. Part of the façade remains.

When Seattle's "quasi-Reform" Ohaveth Sholum Congregation, founded 1889, disbanded because of financial hardships after the Panic of 1893, Seattle's liberal Jews were left without a synagogue. Temple De Hirsch was founded as a specifically Reform synagogue in 1899, named after Jewish philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch.

Construction of a synagogue was begun at Boylston Avenue and Marion Street in Seattle. A cornerstone was laid in 1901, and a basement was built; the congregation held services in the vestry, but rapid growth of the congregation led to the construction of a larger building at Union Street and 15th Avenue. Temple De Hirsch was begun in 1907, completed in 1908, and dedicated on the congregation's ninth anniversary, May 29, 1908. An adjacent Temple Center opened in 1924, housing a religion school and other organizations; a wing was added in 1951.

The old temple was demolished in 1993 after an unsuccessful attempt to work out a way to repurpose it as an arts venue. That effort did, however, end up salvaging a different former religious building: Seattle's Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist, now Town Hall Seattle.

The current sanctuary at 16th Avenue and Pike Street—the opposite corner of the same block as the old temple—was completed in 1960. That current building was designed by B. Marcus Priteca, John Detlie, and John Peck. Priteca was a noted theater architect: he designed all of Alexander Pantages' theaters between 1910 and 1929, as well as the landmark Seattle synagogue, Chevra Bikur Cholim (1912), now the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center.

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