Jewish school turned mosque in Seattle unites Jews and Muslims

Nearly 100 years after the city’s first Jewish school opened, an effort is underway to restore its crumbling building as a multifaith centre

SO FAR, THE EFFORT has netted more than $US40,000 toward a new roof for the building that once housed Seattle Talmud Torah. But that’s a drop in the bucket for what a growing collective of Seattleites are hoping to generate to turn the Cherry Street Collective into a reality.

The building’s story begins in 1928, when Seattle Talmud Torah’s president, Fred Bergman, implored readers of the Jewish Transcript, then Seattle’s Jewish newspaper, to invest in Jewish education.

By 1929, money had been raised — $1,000 for a plot of land at Columbia and 25th in Seattle’s Central District — and the esteemed Scottish Jewish architect B. Marcus Priteca was on board to build an institution for Jewish learning. The Seattle Talmud Torah was born.

Over time, the Jewish community’s educational needs changed, and the Talmud Torah disbanded in 1962. In 1980, the building was sold to the Islamic School of Seattle. The school disbanded in 2012, and the space was refashioned as the Cherry Street Mosque.

FULL STORY In Seattle, a Jewish school turned mosque is bringing Jews and Muslims together (JTA)

Left: The Seattle Talmud Torah Class of 1949. (UW Special Collections/Washington State Jewish Archives); right: The Islamic School of Seattle in 2007. (Joe Mabel/Wikimedia Commons)