Founded in 1825, Bnai Jeshurun was the second synagogue founded in New York and the third-oldestAshkenazi synagogue in the United States.[2][3]
The synagogue was founded by a coalition of young members of Congregation Shearith Israel, immigrants, and the descendants of immigrants from the German and Polish lands. It was the stated intention to follow the "German and Polish minhag (rite)."[4] The order of prayers followed that of the Ashkenazi Great Synagogue of London, and the congregation sought the guidance of the British chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschell on matters of ritual. They first held services on Pearl Street, and dedicated their first building on Elm Street in Manhattan in 1829.[2]
The first rabbi, Samuel Myer Isaacs, was appointed in 1839, but a public notice from 1845 indicates that there were disagreements over who should lead B'nai Jeshurun.[5] By 1850, the congregation had grown large enough to make it necessary to build a new synagogue. A building on Greene Street[6][7][8] was dedicated on September 25, 1851, and the Jewish newspaper Asmonean described the edifice and its builders as admirable.[7] Its rabbi in the 1850s and 1860s, when it was frequently called "the Greene Street Synagogue", was Morris Jacob Raphall.[9][8][10][11] By 1852, it had started a Hebrew school open to the entire city's Jews, of all varieties, and by 1854 had opened a separate school building a few doors down Greene Street.[12]
B'nai Jeshurun had a cemetery on 32nd Street, which was in use until 1851, when the city banned burials in the area.[6] At that time, they jointly created a cemetery named Beth Olom in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, but continued to maintain the older cemetery. By 1875, the Manhattan cemetery was becoming derelict, and the congregation sold it to developers in 1875, moving those buried there to its new cemetery. The old location is now occupied by the back portion of the Hotel Pennsylvania, approximately where the loading dock and sports club entrance are situated.[13][14][15]
In 1864, the congregation moved yet again, to a new building on 34th Street,[2] the parcel later became part of the site of the flagshipMacy's store. Driven by the rapid expansion of the city, they moved yet again in the spring of 1885 to Madison Avenue at 65th Street. That building was designed by Rafael Guastavino and Schwarzmann & Buchman.[16] Less than a year later, a fire did extensive damage to the building.[17] Reports rated the damage at $35,000.[18][19] B'nai Jeshurun was temporarily relocated to Congregation Ahawath Chesed, now Central Synagogue, on Lexington Avenue, which ironically had a fire of its own within the month, leaving both congregations homeless.[20]
Henry Jacobs was another long-serving rabbi. He had a 17-year tenure, ending in January, 1893.[21][22][23]
The present building, located at 257 West 88th Street, between Broadway and West End Avenue, was dedicated in 1917. It was designed by Henry B. Herts, a congregant and celebrated theater architect, with Walter S. Schneider.[24] In addition to its place on the National Register of Historic Places, the synagogue was included in the New York City Riverside Drive-West End Historic District created in 1990. The muqarna-studded ceiling was redesigned following its collapse during renovations in the early 1990s and was replaced with a future-invoking space frame back-lit to simulate a nighttime sky[25]
Breakaway congregations
B'nai Jeshurun's original founders broke from the city's only synagogue, Shearith Israel, in 1825, in order to create an Ashkenazi congregation. Subsequently, B'nai Jeshurun members broke away to form new synagogues several times.
In 1828, at a time of rapid growth in the New York Jewish community, a group left B'nai Jeshurun to found Ansche Chesed.[26]
B'nai Jeshurun took a leading role in founding the Board of Directors of American Israelites in 1859. By 1874, there were divisions within the congregation over remaining strictly Orthodox or adopting ideas from the Reform movement,[29] and by 1875, it was in litigation,[2] with the Reform movement ultimately winning in court.[30][31] The Board of Delegates affiliated with the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1878, but in 1884 it left. Two years later, it also supported the founding of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in 1886, a school formed to support Orthodoxy in combating the Reform movement.
In 1870, it worked with the other Conservative (non-Reform) synagogues of the city to develop a uniform siddur.[32] In 1889, the congregation published its own edition of the prayer book.
When Solomon Schechter used the Jewish Theological Seminary to create a conservative set of reforms to traditional Judaism, B'nai Jeshurun joined his United Synagogue of America, now the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. In the late 1980s the congregation left the Conservative movement and became independent.[33]
Contemporary
A spiritual and demographic renaissance began in 1985, with the arrival of Rabbi Marshall Meyer. At the same time, the congregation introduced musical Shabbat services that drew from both Sephardic and Chassidic musical traditions.[34]
A "Stonewall Shabbat Seder" was first held at B’nai Jeshurun in 1995.[35][36] In 2018, B'nai Jeshurun announced its decision to officiate interfaith marriages if the couple promised to raise their children as Jews, exclusively.[37]
Jews in Philadelphia can trace their history back to Colonial America. Jews have lived in Philadelphia since the arrival of William Penn in 1682.
Congregation B'nai Israel is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue located in Galveston, Texas, in the United States. Organized by German Jewish immigrants in 1868, it is the oldest Reform congregation and the second chartered Jewish congregation in the state.
The Congregation Shearith Israel, often called The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, is an Orthodox Jewish synagogue located at 2 West 70th Street, at Central Park West, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States.
Morris Jacob Raphall was a rabbi and author born in Stockholm, Sweden. From 1849 until his death he resided in the United States. He is most remembered for having declared, on the eve of the Civil War, that the Bible and God endorse slavery.
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B'nai Emet Synagogue is a former Conservative Jewish congregation and synagogue located on Ottawa Avenue, in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, in the United States.
Ansche Chesed is a Conservative synagogue located at West End Avenue and 100th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, in the United States.
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Rona Shapiro became the first female rabbi to head a Conservative synagogue in Cleveland in 2007, when she became rabbi of Congregation Bethaynu in Pepper Pike.
Joseph Newmark (1799–1881) was a Prussian-American businessman in New York City and Los Angeles and a member of the Newmark family of Southern California. He helped found Jewish congregations in both cities and later became an ordained rabbi.
Historic Congregation B’nai Abraham, officially B’nai Abraham Chabad, is an Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at 523-527 Lombard Street, in the Society Hill neighborhood of the Center City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. Established as a congregation in 1874 and the current synagogue building completed in 1910, worshipers can access daily, Shabbat, and holy day services in the Ashkenazi rite. B'nai Abraham is home to a Jewish Preschool, as well as Lubavitch of Center City.
Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, abbreviated as KI, is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue located at 8339 Old York Road, Elkins Park, just outside the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. Founded in Philadelphia in 1847, it is the sixth oldest Reform congregation in the United States, and, by 1900, it was one of the largest Reform congregations in the United States. The synagogue was at a number of locations in the city before building a large structure on North Broad Street in 1891, until 1956 when it moved north of the city to suburban Elkins Park.
Temple B'nai Israel is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue located at 4901 North Pennsylvania, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in the United States. The congregation is the oldest active Jewish congregation in Oklahoma.
Dutch people have had a continuous presence in New York City for nearly 400 years, being the earliest European settlers. New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded on the southern tip of Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists in 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. Because of the history of Dutch colonization, Dutch culture, politics, law, architecture, and language played a formative role in shaping the culture of the city. The Dutch were the majority in New York City until the early 1700s and the Dutch language was commonly spoken until the mid to late-1700s.
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Henry Samuel Jacobs was a Jamaican-American rabbi who mostly ministered in the American South and New York City.
↑ "Jewish Innovation". The Herald and Mail. Columbia, Tennessee: Horsley & Co. St. Louis Republican. October 1, 1875. p.1, column 7. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
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