In The News
Temple Beth-El is proud to be an active voice in the San Antonio community and beyond. Explore recent news stories, media coverage, and press features highlighting our congregation, leadership, and the impact we’re making through worship, learning, and social action.
For any and all press inquiries, please email April Arrington our Director of Marketing & Communications at aarrington@beth-elsa.org
2025
Texas schools may soon display Ten Commandments, sparking debate on religious neutrality
Mara Nathan is Senior Rabbi at Temple Beth-El. She feels public schools should be a place that’s neutral. “The Ten Commandments are important to us as Jewish people, but actually our Ten Commandments are organized a little differently than the Christian Ten Commandments,” Nathan said. “Of course, there are other faiths where that’s not part of their faith. It feels very exclusionary.”
San Antonio’s First Congregation Turns 150
Temple Beth-El, San Antonio’s first Jewish congregation, is proud to celebrate its 150th anniversary with a year of reflection, service and community celebration. The milestone will culminate in a spectacular 150th Anniversary Gala on March 22, honoring its rich legacy while looking forward to a vibrant future. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate our past while envisioning our future,” said Eric Ryniker, executive director of Temple Beth-El.
2024
San Antonio's Jewish and Catholic communities gather for Hanukkah observance
The temple’s Rabbi Mara Nathan said she was inspired by the turnout at the ceremony, which was completely sold out. "It's really important that we all get to celebrate the winter holidays together, and it's really lovely that the Catholic community embraces on our holiday on our behalf because we're a pretty small group in the city of San Antonio."
Texas Jews are ‘deeply concerned’ about Christian material in proposed public school curriculum
Most of the time, as the senior rabbi of Temple Beth-El in San Antonio, Rabbi Mara Nathan’s focus is on Jewish families. But this week, she’s finding herself thinking about Christian ones, too....The curriculum, Nathan said, “gives Christian children the sense that their family’s religion is the only true religion, which is not appropriate for public school education, at the very least.”
Never forgotten: Jewish veterans saluted in San Antonio
The volunteers were up early Sunday because they had a mission to carry out at Temple Beth El Memorial Park on Austin Highway — to plant more than 400 flags at the headstones of Jewish war veterans at this and four other San Antonio cemeteries. "It's just to make sure the Jewish veterans are remembered," Garland Scott said. He was among five people led by Vietnam veteran Herschel Sheiness, whose group placed about 160 flags at headstones in the cemetery.
2023
People of all faiths pack San Antonio synagogue for Israel solidarity vigil
"But this community, which is tens of tens of tens — Jewish people, non-Jewish people, old people, young people, middle-aged people — we're here together to support each other, to mourn, to think about the lives that we've lost too soon,” said Rabbi Mara Nathan of Temple Beth El in San Antonio, one of the oldest congregations in the U.S. She led an interfaith vigil in a sobering chant of "The Mourner's Kaddish," a 2,000-year-old prayer written in Aramaic.
San Antonio Jewish community shows support for one another, including father whose son is fighting on frontlines in Israel
On Monday night, the San Antonio Jewish Federation hosted a community gathering at Temple Beth-El. Attendees said not only did they want to show support for Israel, but they also wanted to be there for one another because many of them have loved ones in Israel.
More News
Tikkun Olam: Repairing The World at Temple Beth-El
Over the ensuing decades, Temple Beth-El’s rabbis were equally visible and no less influential in the affairs of San Antonio, especially when social justice issues arose. That tradition continues today, with a new generation of rabbis who share their predecessors’ commitment to those issues. ... Rabbi Mara Nathan, the current senior rabbi, works with her congregation to support today’s struggles for equal rights, women’s and gender equality, working on behalf of people who are underprivileged, and alleviating childhood hunger in our community.
'Long history': What San Antonio's Jewish community wants you to know
Though it hasn’t been around since the 1700s like the Missions, Temple Beth-El, the oldest Jewish institution in the city, already has a century under its belt. The Jewish community in the greater San Antonio area is 12,000 people strong and is woven into the fabric of the city. Temple Beth-El is even a standout across San Antonio’s skyline when admiring the view from the Tower of the Americas.
The Rabbi Whisperer: A Playwright Helps Sermon Writers Find Their Voice
When Ms. Lowe got a call from Rabbi Mara Nathan at Temple Beth-El in San Antonio, they chatted about how to add contemporary sparkle to sermons that would otherwise touch on ancient themes. The answer they came up with? Barbie.“On the High Holidays, suddenly you have 1,000 people listening instead of 150,” said Rabbi Nathan, who plans to blend lessons from the “Barbie” movie with those of Rabbi Hillel, the Babylonian theologian born in 110 B.C.E., into a sermon about embracing imperfection.
Some religions support abortion rights. Their leaders are speaking up.
After an abortion law took effect in Texas last fall that allows private citizens to sue someone who performs an abortion or helps someone obtain one after six weeks of pregnancy, Rabbi Mara Nathan, the senior rabbi at Temple Beth-El in San Antonio, knew she wanted to address it in a sermon. “It definitely felt like a risky sermon to give,” she said, “but I felt like I really didn’t have a choice.” In the sermon, which she titled “The Right to Choose is a Jewish Value,” Nathan took aim at the law, known as S.B. 8, and outlined how, as she put it, “Judaism has always been pro-choice.”
​Synagogue volunteers feed the homeless 2 Christmas meals today
About a dozen members of the reform synagogue took part in "Mitzvah Month," which consists of good deeds for others throughout December. "It’s been an extra lonely year for those that are basically in isolation themselves," says Ross Halfant, Temple Beth-El's social justice coordinator. "It’s a good opportunity for us since we have the day basically to ourselves to go out into the community and feed those that might need the food."
33,000 tiles later, dome in San Antonio looks like new
For more than 90 years, the iconic dome of Temple Beth-El has been an eye-catching sight along San Pedro Avenue near downtown. Terra cotta in color, its top reaching 100 feet above ground, the structure is one-of a-kind in the city. When a major hail storm hit in 2016, leaving the dome’s thousands of clay tiles cracked and pock-marked, a major renovation was in order, beyond the patchwork repairs made over the decades.