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...