Touro Synagogue

On the first night of Hanukkah in 1763, Congregation Jeshuat Israel gathered to open their synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island — the oldest synagogue building still standing in North America. Designed by Peter Harrison, a British sea captain turned architect, it was funded partly by Jewish communities in New York, the Iberian Peninsula, and the West Indies. Construction began in 1759, when Roger Williams' colony had already been a working experiment in religious tolerance for more than a century. It still holds services today.