[5] Beth Israel built the first synagogue in Mississippi in 1867, and, after it burned down, its 1874 replacement was at one time the oldest religious building in Jackson.

The synagogue followed the Orthodox nusach Ashkenaz, but some members wanted to adopt Isaac Mayer Wise's reformist Minhag America Prayer-Book.

He moved the congregation towards Reform Judaism, replacing Saturday services with Friday night ones, giving sermons in English, and adding confirmation ceremonies.

[2][3][4] Dedicated in 1875, the two-story brick Gothic Revival structure had "pointed-arch windows", and an auditorium on the second floor that was accessed via two curved staircases.

[18] To accommodate members who had moved away from Jackson's downtown, in 1940 the congregation commenced construction of a new building at 546 East Woodrow Wilson Avenue (west of State Street), while holding services at Galloway Memorial Methodist Church.

One rabbi, Louis Schreiber, was hired in 1915, and fired the next year, for "grossly insulting and hurting the feelings of Beth Israel members".

He preferred that the congregation celebrate the Jewish holidays in ways that attracted no attention, and had no objection to members putting up Christmas trees, which he referred to as "Hanukkah bushes.

Born in Toronto in 1908 and raised there, Nussbaum had attended a small Orthodox synagogue as a boy, and, after high school, worked as secretary for the Holy Blossom Temple's rabbi Barnett R. Brickner.

[22][24][26] Nussbaum subsequently served at a synagogue in Amarillo, Texas, and in 1937 accepted a position as a prison chaplain in Pueblo, Colorado, where he also worked as a part-time librarian at the local university, and taught public speaking.

[22] Finding that the rabbi there wanted a secretary, not an assistant, Nussbaum resigned after less than a year, and moved to Temple Emanu-el of Long Beach, New York.

Looking for stability, and some "rest and relaxation", Nussbaum interviewed for the role; the search committee's first question to him was "Doctor, what's your position on school desegregation?"

[32] Nussbaum found Beth Israel's membership highly assimilated,[21][33] and, in his view, some congregants were "anti-Hebrew, anti-Israel, anti-everything!

"[34] He criticized members who put up Christmas trees (a large proportion did), and slowly re-introduced Jewish rituals such as bar mitzvahs to the congregation's practice.

[21] Upon arriving at Beth Israel he discovered that some of his richest members were supporters of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism,[34] and he immediately prohibited them from meeting in the synagogue's premises, which, according to Nussbaum, "left its scars".

[40] As tensions in the Southern United States heightened over the civil rights movement, the Jews of Jackson came under threat, being targeted by both the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the Americans for the Preservation of the White Race (APWR).

The latter set up a booth at Jackson's state fair selling antisemitic literature, and Samuel Bowers, the KKK's Imperial Wizard in Mississippi, ordered attacks on both the synagogue and Nussbaum.

[8] The position of Beth Israel's membership in Jackson was not secure; according to Murray Polner, writing in 1977, "Judaism may rank higher in the moral order of the Bible Belt fundamentalists than, say, Black Christianity or Roman Catholicism, but it remains nonetheless a less–than–equal sect, and extraneous and foreign religion in an area of xenophobes.

[42] In 1967, the congregation moved to its current location, a building on Old Canton Road[5] described by journalist Jack Nelson as "an octagonal structure dominated by a massive roof".

[2][8][9] According to Nelson, the explosion had "ripped through administrative offices and a conference room, torn a hole in the ceiling, blown out windows, ruptured a water pipe and buckled a wall.

[45] Three days later the Greater Jackson Clergy Alliance "expressed their sorrow and support for the Jewish community" by organizing a "Walk of Penance".

[8][46] The Alliance, which had been formed two months earlier, comprised 60 clergy from 10 denominations,[8] "the first racially integrated association of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Mississippi.

[40][47] The Reverend Thomas Tiller, the Alliance president, stated that "by default, we may have contributed to a climate of opinion which gives rise to terrorism.

[23] Though the congregation officially supported him, a number of members privately urged him to leave Beth Israel and find another pulpit.

In 1977, he won the Samuel Kaminker Memorial Award for his informal education curriculum, and in 1983 he was alumni-in-residence at Hebrew Union College in New York.

[50] Birnholz was followed by Eric Gurvis, Steven Engel, and Jim Egolf,[5] all of whom, like Nussbaum before them, also served as the rabbis of Temple Beth El in Lexington, Mississippi, leading services there once a month on Sunday.