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Murray Harris Organ A musical – and visual – treasure
Organs became part of the Reform musical tradition in 19th-century Germany, leading to a flowering of Jewish musical composition. The Polish and eastern European Jews who founded Sherith Israel in 1851 brought their music with them to California. They designed the sanctuary with a choir loft and organ to showcase this rich musical heritage. In 1904 Sherith Israel purchased the organ for $18,000 from the Murray M. Harris Co. of Los Angeles. Long considered one of the treasures of American organ building, it is still in perfect working order after more than 100 years of continuous use. Other organs by Harris’ company include Stanford University’s instrument built in 1901 and the core of the famed Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia, originally created as the world’s largest organ for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.  Behind the organ's magnificent facade, a gigantic mechanism supports and controls more than 3,500 pipes that vary in length from six inches to sixteen feet. The organ contains more than 15,000 board feet of choice white pine and hardwoods, more than 50 miles of electrical wire, 5 tons of metal and enough leather to make 10,000 pairs of fine lady's gloves. The keys and stops are made of pure ivory, and the decoration of the pipes and the carving of the elaborate console was all completed by hand. The most unusual mechanical feature of the instrument is its electrical action, which uses the principals of telephone signals to control thousands of valves that operate the pipes.
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