The Touro Synagogue was built from 1759 to 1763 for the Jeshuat Israel congregation in Newport under the leadership of Cantor (Chazzan) Isaac Touro, a Dutch-born American rabbi. The cornerstone was laid by Aaron Lopez, a Portuguese-born and Newport-based merchant and philanthropist who was the wealthiest person in Newport. The new Touro Synagogue building was formally dedicated on 2 December 1763 by the Jeshuat Israel congregation.
Touro Synagogue's original congregation was Shearith Israel, founded in 1654, but they fled the original building during the American Revolutionary War.
In 1946, Touro Synagogue was designated as a National Historic Site,[4] and it is an affiliated area of the National Park Service. The synagogue was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966. In 2001, the congregation joined into a partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The congregation at Newport was initially composed of Jews with roots in the Sephardic Spanish and Portuguese diaspora, and by the eighteenth century, with some Ashkenazi Jews. The first Jewish residents of Newport, fifteen Spanish Jewish families, arrived in 1658. It is presumed that they arrived via the communities in Curaçao, home to the oldest active Jewish congregation in the Americas, dating to 1651, and Suriname. The small community worshiped in rooms in private homes for more than a century before they could afford to build a synagogue.
The Touro Synagogue remains an active Orthodox synagogue.
