A modest white wooden building on a quiet residential street, the Pioneer Jewish Synagogue (Congregation B'nai Israel) was built in 1857 to serve the Jewish merchants and shopkeepers who arrived in Jackson during the Gold Rush. It is the oldest Jewish house of worship in California still standing on its original site, and one of the oldest in the western United States.
The synagogue is not normally open to the public, but the exterior — plain clapboard, gable roof, modest scale — is itself revealing of mid-19th-century Sierra foothill life. The associated Pioneer Jewish Cemetery, a few hundred metres uphill, is another piece of the same story.