In 1910, six local Jewish merchants organized the Georgetown Hebrew Benevolent Society, which began to conduct religious services above a storefront on M Street, NW.

[9] This demographic trend, coupled with the passing of the founding generation, reduced Kesher Israel's membership in the 1960s to the point where it was difficult to ensure a daily minyan.

The synagogue, however, experienced a renaissance beginning in the late 1970s,[10] spurred by young urban professionals who were moving to Georgetown and nearby neighborhoods, including the West End, Foggy Bottom, Dupont Circle, Burleith, and even those further afield like Adams-Morgan, Kalorama and Rosslyn, across Key Bridge in Arlington County, Virginia.

[14] Kesher Israel attracted national media attention during the 2000 U.S. presidential election when a member, Senator Joseph Lieberman, was selected as the Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States.

[22] The synagogue's first spiritual leader was the Polish-born, British-trained Rabbi George (Gedaliah) Silverstone, who concurrently served Ohev Sholom Congregation (then located at 5th and I Streets, NW).

Born in Žlobin in what is today Belarus, he was one of the original students of the fifth Lubavitcher rebbe, Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, at the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva in Lyubavichi, where he studied for seven years.

He is remembered in Chabad for being instrumental in facilitating the wartime evacuation of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, from German-occupied Warsaw in 1940 by interceding, together with several rabbinic colleagues, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a number of senators.

Rabbi Dubrow bequeathed in his will that his personal library of religious books was to be auctioned off after his death and the money raised be donated to help support the poor of Jerusalem.

With World War II on the horizon, he left home at the age of 18 to study at an American yeshiva, the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago, Illinois, where he would receive semikhah.

At Kesher Israel Rabbi Rabinowitz focused on three objectives: to study and teach Torah, sustain the daily minyanim and watch over the welfare of his community.

[2] On the evening of February 28, 1984, Rabbi Rabinowitz, a 63-year-old widower who lived alone,[25] was murdered in his West End home by an unknown assailant shortly after returning from Maariv.

It is presumed that the rabbi knew his murderer because he was always careful to peek out the window pane in order to check the identity of whoever rang his doorbell before opening the door.

[28] An estimated one-thousand mourners attended Rabbi Rabinowitz's funeral held on the morning of March 1 at the synagogue, including the Israeli ambassador, Dr. Meir Rosenne, who delivered one of the eulogies.

[39] The synagogue board immediately directed its attention to the victims of his actions by arranging a support group led by a licensed psychologist and consultations with therapists,[40] as well as organizing a closed community meeting with Cathy L. Lanier, Washington's chief of police.

[46] The synagogue board responded with this statement: "Kesher Israel's leadership is deeply concerned about the harm caused by Rabbi Freundel's actions—of which we did not and could not have known—and for the personal welfare of all those individuals who may have been violated.

[51] Milevsky, an associate professor of psychology at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, was the author of five books and previously served as interim rabbi of Ner Tamid Greenspring Valley Congregation in Baltimore.

[54] Kesher Israel was the target of an antisemitic incident on December 17, 2023, when a man from Toledo, Ohio illegally parked his U-Haul van on the sidewalk in front of the synagogue and then attempted to gain entry into the building while the rabbi was conducting a class.

Earlier on the same day, multiple Jewish institutions and synagogues in Washington, including Kesher Israel, received bomb threats by email, which the police had deemed to be "non-credible.