The Germantown Jewish Centre is a Conservative synagogue located in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States.

Adult education lectures and classes with topics such as current events, contemporary Jewish life, Palestine, Bible, and Hebrew language were also offered.

In addition, an art department was formed where classes in sculpture, drawing, dancing and photography were available as well as a junior organization to support youth activities and community.

[7] Rabbi Elias Charry, a graduate of the City College of New York and the Teachers' Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary (1930), served the congregation from 1942[8] until 1973, when he was accorded emeritus status.

[9] In the 1960s, as upwardly mobile Black families moved into Germantown and Mount Airy, Rabbi Charry with other local ministers, actively worked to discourage white residents from leaving.

Under Charry's guidance, the Centre chose to remain in the neighborhood rather than relocate to the suburbs, a path many other synagogues in Mount Airy and beyond followed during that time.

The Germantown minyan, as it became known, drew young Jews to the Centre and the neighborhood who might not have been inclined to join a traditional Conservative synagogue.

With a teaching-oriented background, the Centre offered him the opportunity to fully utilize his educational, pastoral, administrative, and community-building expertise.

[13] His goal was to foster unity while respecting each minyan's independence and to bring the community together through engaged learning, open dialogue, and vibrant worship.

[13] Gordon left the Centre in 2010, moving to Boston when his wife Lori Lefkovitz became director of Jewish studies at Northeastern University.

[3][13] The choice of the name was influenced by the Jerusalem congregation Kehillat Mevakshei Derech,[20] a Reconstructionist-influenced community that was then independent, more recently affiliated with the Reform movement.

[22] This entailed defining minyan membership, establishing a formal decision-making process for controversial decisions, providing outside facilitators, and conducting discussions with the Germantown Jewish Centre.

Many Germantown Jewish Centre committee chairs, officers, and board members have come from Dorshei Derekh, including three congregational presidents, Helen Feinberg (2002–04), Rachel Falkove (2004-06), and Mitch Marcus (2012–14).

The minyan itself has constituted a caring community, providing meals and other support for members with illness and at times of loss or of births.

A key part of the Torah service is the mi sheberakh blessings, as people volunteer for aliyot to mark events in their lives and receive recognition from the community: birthdays, new jobs, new academic ventures, arriving and departing for Israel, departing for college, a yahrzeit, a new apartment or home.

For 20 years, speakers alternated between men and women to assure gender equality, until this practice was suspended as an experiment in the summer of 2006.