Founded in 1868 and a member of the Union for Reform Judaism, the congregation's first permanent house of worship was a Middle Eastern-style building constructed in 1879.

[4] The congregation stayed in this building for several years, before eventually being forced to move due to complaints of flies attracted by horse droppings outside of a nearby retail store.

The new synagogue could seat 500 and featured stained glass windows displaying the Ten Commandments, a menorah, the Star of David, and Noah's Ark.

The members of Beth Israel sponsored these newcomers, helping them to find jobs and homes and holding night classes to teach them English.

Nonetheless, without ordination Paula Ackerman served as "spiritual leader" (the congregation elected not to call her "rabbi") for three years until Beth Israel could find another.

[1] (Ackerman would later move to her original home of Pensacola, Florida, where she would serve as an interim rabbi at Temple Beth-El for nine months in 1962 until a replacement was found.

[1] The new facility, located at 57th Court and 14th Avenue,[10] was dedicated in December 1964 and was composed of a 200-seat sanctuary, a social hall with a kitchen and a library, and an education building.

[1] During the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the leadership of Beth Israel spoke out against the Ku Klux Klan's attacks on black churches.

[1][12] The blast was caused by about 15 sticks of dynamite planted by Tarrants and his accomplice, Danny Joe Hawkins,[11][13] a top hitman in the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

[12] A hole approximately 24 inches (61 cm) in diameter was left in the concrete floor, and damages were estimated to be around $50,000 (equivalent to $438,000 today).

[13] According to Sammy Feltenstein, past president of Congregation Beth Israel, pieces of stained glass that survived the bombing were salvaged and adorn the front window of the synagogue today.

[15] On June 30, Tarrants[16] returned to Meridian to bomb the home of Meyer Davidson, an outspoken leader of the Jewish community, on 29th Avenue.

[11] Leaders of the Jewish communities in Jackson and in Meridian had raised money to pay the two informants, who tipped off the FBI about the attack before it happened.

U.S. Navy Machinist's Mate Second Class Robert E. Burton, a resident of the neighborhood, opened his door to see what was going on and was struck by stray bullets.

[16] The car's owner was identified to be Danny Joe Hawkins, who had helped bomb Beth Israel; he was arrested on robbery charges a few weeks later.

[11] Besides their main campus in Broadmoor, the congregation also operates Beth Israel Cemetery, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

[17] The cemetery contains generations of German and Alsatian immigrants,[18] as well as many big names of the largely mercantile Jewish community of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

[17] Beth Israel Cemetery is the only remaining built memorial for many of Meridian's early Jews since the era of the 1879 and 1906 temple buildings,[17] neither of which still stands.

Many grave sites are adorned with well-maintained Victorian era funerary art, which gives the cemetery its historic significance.