Throughout the city, houses of worship built in the last century for Jewish immigrants from Europe are now home to congregations with roots in Latin America, the Caribbean or the American South.
The traces of past Jewish life in Brownsville, Brooklyn, are a little less evident at first glance. A half century has erased pretty much any clue that 375 Bristol Street used to be a synagogue. Remade in yellow brick face on the outside and white drywall on the inside, it is now home to Little Rock Baptist Church.
Despite the lack of Jewish symbols on some of the old buildings, Ann-Isabel Friedman, who directs the conservancy’s sacred sites program, can read them like a book. In one former synagogue, on Chester Street in Brooklyn, she pointed out how the towers flanking the central door encased stairs to the women’s balcony. In another, she saw how a plywood-covered recess hid an old skylight.
She stood before one former synagogue in Brownsville and noted how the details were exactly like those found on modest houses of worship on the Lower East Side.
“What you see here is the vernacular synagogue style from the 1920s,” she said. “They took the Lower East Side synagogue and brought it to their new neighborhood in Brooklyn.”
She admitted that they would not be able to get much help for those old buildings that had obliterated past architectural details. Nor might they be able to do much for some once grand structures that have fallen into severe disrepair, like St. Timothy Holy Church, which occupies what used to be the Amboy Street Shul in Brownsville, Brooklyn
Past the marble walls, where the Hebrew script is partly obscured by Caribbean flags from the island homelands of its current occupants……
(NY Times)
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24 Responses
Chaza”l tell us why this would happen to a shul bec we are not carefull to refrain from yalking during davening and krias hatorah
hashem yishmor vehavin yavin
Driving through East New York, if you look around and recognize some of the features of the former shuls (there are several on East New York Ave alone, the street everyone takes to get from the Interboro to Kings Highway) it makes you want to cry to see these remains of our once-magnificent and prolific edifices.
This is the fate of our golus, and has been for 2000 years. We build up a community, then we move out and move on leaving our landmarks, whole neighborhoods even, to other cultures. But it still breaks my heart.
A real heart-breaker to see and this is by far not limited to Brooklyn. The same changes are evident in the Bronx,Queens and Mahattan as well as other large cities thru-out the east coast. I’ve seen this in Newark,NJ as well as Philadelphia PA to name as few. Sad, but what if anything can be done…just reflective of the changes in demographics and of the times. Where my family went in the 1940’s and 50’s on Sterling Place in Brooklyn the buildings are long gone. The synagogue that we later went to on Park Place and Kingston Ave (Brooklyn)now still stands but it’s now a church….makes me very sad each time I pass it!
I wonder what happerned to R Tulushkins shul ?
there’s an easy answer.it was given by Rabbi Schneerson.
Growing up in East New York and Brownsville, I can tell you that these neighborhoods once boasted some unbelievable shuls and gedolei Torah. In the early 50s, East New York-Brownsville was home to Rav Moshe Rosen, Rav Tomashoff, Rav Notelovitz, Rav Chinitz, the Novominsker Rebbe, Rav Telushkin, Rav Sheps, Rav Chaim Rosen, Rav Meir Cohen. The Ashford Street Shul (Rav Menashe Frankel) was home to the Bais Hatalmud after the Mirrer Yeshivaleit came from Shanghai in the late 40s and included such luminaries as Rav Shmuel Charkover, Rav Leib Malin, Rav Levi Krupenia, etc.
In East New York, there were magnificent old shuls on almost every block: Ashford St, Elton St, Barbey St, Dumont Ave, Warwick St, Penn Ave, Sackman St, etc.
The present generation has absolutely no idea that these run-down, crime-filled neighborhoods were once pulsating with Yiddishkeit.
while there is no number of how many? Likely in the 100’s if not more, Newark, NJ alone has over 30! Virtually every urban city in US, outside much of the South, if you care to look hard enough, you will find them, to top this – how many orthodox shuls became reform or conservative; in fact – likely more than half of them
There is a program on Public Broadcast Chanel (13 in NY) entitled Jews in America. At the end of the program someone in his 60’s or 70’s, without a Yarmulka makes a statement that sums up the whole problem. He says “My Zaidy went to Shul because he was Jewish, My Grandchildren go to Shul to Become Jewish”.
I read the New York Times article as well as everything here. I am writing a book about this topic– “ex-shuls” of Brooklyn. I also had a photography exhibit about these ex-shuls at the Brooklyn Historical Society.
I am trying to research and preserve the bits of Judaica on this topic that I can. I have identified nearly 100 such ex-shuls.
I am still interviewing anyone who went to a Brooklyn ex-shul (as I did as a child– Shaare Torah, which is now a Baptist Church on East 21st Street). Contact me if you can provide an interview or information about Brooklyn ex-shuls. I am especially interested in hearing from anyone who went to an ex-shul at 35 Blake Avenue or at Saratoga Avenue– can’t find the names of these and a few other ex-shuls.
Sincerely,
“elev”
You see these sad things all over the world. In Minneapolis Minnesota there is a bowling alley that has Magen Dovids all along the back wall!
Sammygol, will you please consider teaching history to high school/ seminary students as your next career? History must be taught with proper interpretation, and many of those currently involved in its transmission are not doing it the slightest bit of justice.
sammygol,
you make a good point for places like Newark, unfortunately most US shuls dissolved like Yiddishkeit did
Gevalt!!!!! At least it is not a mosque (like the shul on Coney Island Avenue (between H and Newkirk) in Flatbush>
there are (former) shuls all over the world. why should this be any different?
and by the way, the igros moshe is full of t’shuvot describing how to sell a shul to a church.
Jews in the US have been blessed with incredible affluence which enabled them to move out of the inner cities and ghettos. stop complaining every time Hashem does anything good for you.
#16, either way it’s bad but at least in a mosque there aren’t any getchkes.
A mosque is not as bad as a church — while worships avoida zora (unlike a mosque.)
Of course sometimes it works the other way. Jews move into a neighbourhood, goyim move out, and a church becomes a shul.
The history of the building that is now the Brick Lane Mosque in the East End London is a particularly good example. The East End, like the Lower East Side of NY, was always the cheap part of town, where new immigrants first settled; when they became established and could afford it, they would move somewhere better. So it has a long history of changing demographics.
The building was originally built in 1742 as a Huguenot church. When the Huguenot refugees became wealthy and moved out of the neighbourhood, they sold it to a missionary group which wasn’t very successful, and it soon became a Methodist church. In 1898 it became a shul, Machzikei Hadass, and it was one of the biggest shuls in London until the War. The East End bore the brunt of the Blitz (the Duke St Shul, which was the oldest shul in the UK and the headquarters of the United Synagogue, was destroyed by a German bomb), and most Jews left the area and never came back. Eventually the shul was sold, and in 1976 it became a mosque.
Shuls will continue to become houses of other religions, daycare centers and others,,since our future has been ensured as a nation in Eretz Yisroel and NO WHERE else. We can keep taking photos and publish archives as a memory for our grandkids.
On Sunday I took my children on a drive through Paterson, NJ where my Grandparents O’BM and my Mother O’BM were born and raised. The synagogue where my Mother was married has a large for-sale sign out front.
I drove by what used to be the Shul that I would go to with my Grandfather when I would visit him… it is no longer a Shul – very sad. Like so many other communities, the children moved away – in this case Fairlawn, Passaic and elsewhere.
outside of the Yeshiva Gedola of Paterson, there are not many Yidden residing in Paterson anymore.
25# BTW Would love to hear the fat lady sing Hatikva. From what I recall from my baisyaakov days, the beis hamikdesh will be in Yerushayalim which is where the Yidden will rise again as a nation of kohenim and kings, is that not the facts!!
sammygol – it is sad for the following reason: Paterson once had a Chief several butcher shops, many Shuls (some that were literally built by my Great-Grandfather) even a Chief Rabbi and a Kosher Hospital, but, like so many communities of that bygone era, they didn’t have Yeshivas for the kinder. if there were Yeshivas for the children and grandchildren, perhaps Paterson would still be flourishing like other communities. it is a sad story played throughout America.
Both of the shuls founded by my elter-zeide are still used for Jewish purposes today. The Brooklyn Jewish Center is now Oholei Torah/Oholei Menachem, one of the Lubavitch boys’ schools; Cong. Bnai Israel in Fleischmanns, NY, is currently affiliated Conservative.
i was wondering if anyone knows of aguda israel of ridgewood .is it still there? onething is still true we jews run away fron our own faster then we ran from bad areas