Jimmie & Emil Hess loved Temple Emanu-El. It was their congregation… their spiritual home. It was the place that so many important simchas took place – Consecrations, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Confirmations, weddings and, yes, funerals. Our rabbis were their rabbis, especially Milton Grafman and Jonathan Miller. When Emil’s father, Carl, died, the family dedicated our first chapel to him, and later the family contributed a lead gift to name the new chapel.
Jimmie and Emil were passionate leaders in our Jewish community and the broader community. They committed their resources, financial and human, to causes they believed in and were not bashful about asking others to do the same. Temple Emanu-El was fortunate to be one of their passions.
Their son Donald said, “By endowing their dues, my parents had the foresight to know that this was a great way to perpetuate the Temple that they cared so much about for generations to come”.