Old Town San Diego's Heritage Park has a great building from 1889 - Temple Beth Israel, the city's first synagogue.
Not only is it really neat-looking, front and back...
...but it's also very well preserved inside.
A little austere, perhaps, but that wouldn't be unusual for a religious building of that period. Plus, as the land slopes away to the West towards the ocean, you get a fantastic breeze when the doors / windows are open. Soooo nice.
A rather amusing fact about Temple Beth Israel is, if you go straight out the front door and straight down the stairs...
...the very, VERY first thing you will come to is...
...one of those Mormon places that only I seem to visit.
If you're not feeling as amused as I think you should be, then you probably need more historical background. I would recommend skimming over the very nice Wikipedia article on Mormonism and Judaism. Or if you want the cliff notes: the LDS church is very philo-Semitic. So much so that their San Diego visitor center is next to a Jewish temple rather than their own rather impressive temple.
Picture show continues...
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