Shir Tikvah is a Reform congregation in south Minneapolis founded in 1988 after a dispute at St. Paul's Mount Zion Temple over the sexual orientation of Associate Rabbi Stacy Offner. Offner resigned from Mount Zion in February 1988 and became the first woman rabbi in Minnesota.
A small group of Offner's supporters met soon after she resigned and decided to form a new congregation open to all Jews. More than two hundred people attended the first informational meeting, and the forty-family congregation held its first Shabbat service in May 1988 at the St. Paul Jewish Community Center. Rabbi Offner was formally hired in August. By year's end, the congregation had eighty families, and it had taken the name Shir Tikvah (Song of Hope). After David Harris served as soloist for Shir Tikvah's first High Holiday services in the fall of 1988, the temple hired him as its music director in July 1989.
The congregation's membership reached 120 households by the end of 1989. Shir Tikvah voted in 1990 to join the Reform movement. Two other choices considered were to be an independent congregation or join the Reconstructionist movement of American Judaism. The congregation went with the larger Reform movement to give children the chance to take part in regional and national youth groups.
At the time of its founding, Shir Tikvah members agreed that decisions would be made democratically. The congregation also agreed to accept all Jewish lifestyles and family types, with no discrimination based on gender, marital status, race, age, or sexual orientation. Shir Tikvah was the first Twin Cities synagogue to perform same-sex wedding blessings on its altar. The congregation also developed a strong social action committee.
After five years, the congregation outgrew the St. Paul Jewish Community Center, and Shir Tikvah bought a former Universalist church building in 1994 near Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. In 2008, Rabbi Offner became vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism in New York City. Before she left, Shir Tikvah named her founding rabbi emerita. The congregation hired Twin Cities native Michael Adam Latz as its second permanent rabbi in 2010. In 2012, the congregation had more than 400 households.