Temple Beth Elohim is a Reform synagogue located at 230 Screven Street in Georgetown, South Carolina.HistoryIn the early 1760s, Abraham Cohen and his younger brother Solomon Cohen, were the first Portuguese Jews to arrive and settle in Georgetown District, South Carolina. Moses Cohen their father, emigrated to colonial America with a small group of impoverished Portuguese Jews, with eldest son Abraham age ten, circa 1750 from London, England into Charleston, South Carolina. Moses Cohen was the first religious leader of the small congregation of Jews, known as Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. They used old Portuguese Rituals used in Bevis Marks, the place of worship for Sephardim in London. Charles Patrick Daly in his work; The Settlement of the Jews in North America, writes "They formed themselves into a religious society in 1750, worshipping for seven years in a small wooden house in Union near Queen Street, each year bringing an accession to their numbers".Abraham Cohen and a small number of Portuguese Jews "worshipped in each other's homes and also at the Winyah Indigo Society" in Prince George's Parish according to the book, Shared Traditions; Southern History and Folk Culture by Charles Joyner. Cohen the eldest child of Moses Cohen was a Vendu-master, he "lived on Prince Street in Gerogetown Parish with Free Peggy High Holy Days to "Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, a house of worship, founded in 1749 as a Sephardic Orthodox congregation, in 1841."
