Beth Hamedrash Hagodol
Beth Hamedrash Hagodol was the oldest Russian Jewish Orthodox congregation in the United States. Founded in 1852 by Rabbi Abraham Ash, the congregation split in 1859. The congregation’s building, a Gothic Revival structure built in 1850 as the Norfolk Street Baptist Church and purchased in 1885, was one of the largest synagogues on the Lower East Side. In the late 20th century the congregation dwindled and was unable to maintain the building, which had been damaged by storms. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
About Beth Hamedrash Hagodol in brief
Beth Hamedrash Hagodol was the oldest Russian Jewish Orthodox congregation in the United States. Founded in 1852 by Rabbi Abraham Ash, the congregation split in 1859. The congregation’s building, a Gothic Revival structure built in 1850 as the Norfolk Street Baptist Church and purchased in 1885, was one of the largest synagogues on the Lower East Side. In the late 20th century the congregation dwindled and was unable to maintain the building, which had been damaged by storms. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. In December 2013 the leadership of the synagogue under Rabbi Mendel Greenbaum filed a “hardship application” with the Landmarks Preservation Commission seeking permission to demolish the building to make way for a new residential development. The application was withdrawn in March 2013, but the group Friends of thelower East Side described the synagogue’s status as ‘demolition by neglect’ The abandoned synagogue was ‘largely destroyed’ by a ‘suspicious’ three-alarm fire on May 14, 2017. It was the first Eastern European congregation founded in New York City and the oldest Orthodox Jewish synagogue in the U.S. Unlike German Jews, the Jews who founded Beth Hamed rash viewed the synagogue as central to their lives. They attempted to re-create the kind of synagogue they had belonged to in Europe. In 1859, disagreement broke out between the rabbi and most of the members renaming their congregation Beth Haming rash.
The synagogue was closed in 2007 and the congregation moved to a new location on the Upper East Side, where it continues to meet today. It is now located at 60–64 Norfolk Street between Grand and Broome Streets in Manhattan. It has been closed since 2007 and has been listed as “critically endangered” by the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission. It had been the most important center for Orthodox Jewish guidance in the country. It also included a rabbinic family court, and, according to historian and long-time member Judah David Eisenstein, “a good Hebrew library” The congregation moved frequently in its early years: in 18 52 it was located at 83 Bayard Street, then at Elm and Canal, and from 1853 to 1856 in a hall at Pearl between Chatham and Centre Streets. It moved again in 1856, with the assistance of the philanthropist Sampson Simson and wealthy Sephardi Jews who sympathized with the traditionalism of the congregation’s members. The membership consisted mostly of Polish Jews, but it also included Lithuanians, two Germans, and an Englishman. The first and only Chief Rabbi of New York city, Rabbi Jacob Joseph, led the congregation from 1888 to 1902. Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, one of. the few European Jewish legal decisors to survive the Holocaust, led it from 1952 to 2003. It became the first Orthodox Jewish congregation to be located on the East Side of Manhattan.
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This page is based on the article Beth Hamedrash Hagodol published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
