Uncategorized
6 spectacular synagogues from a new book on Manhattan’s houses of worship
(New York Jewish Week) – In the mid 1990s, New York-based photographer Michael Horowitz wandered into the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a historic synagogue that is now dedicated to preserving the history of the Jewish Lower East Side.
At the time, the synagogue was undergoing a massive, $20 million, 20-year restoration. Horowitz, who is Jewish but said he is “not religious,” was moved by the resilience and perseverance of the congregation. Even more so, he was attracted to the building’s architecture and the dedication the community poured into preserving it.
Horowitz returned to Eldridge Street over the years to document each stage of the building’s renovations. It was in 2013, while looking for a new photography project, that Horowitz realized his impulse to document Eldridge Street could be translated to houses of worship throughout the city. He spent the next decade photographing Manhattan’s churches and synagogues — 95 of which are spotlighted in his new book “Divine New York: Inside the Historic Churches and Synagogues of Manhattan.”
Together, these buildings tell a fascinating New York story of immigration, architecture, faith and progress. “I wanted to open the doors to the public,” Horowitz, 71, told the New York Jewish Week. “I wanted to show everyone what was going on inside these buildings and show them how beautiful they are.”
He worked his way from Lower Manhattan through Harlem to some of the most notable houses of worship in the borough — from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown to the First Roumanian American Congregation, a now demolished Orthodox synagogue on the Lower East Side once known as “The Cantor’s Carnegie Hall.” Since beginning the project, a dozen of the buildings Horowitz photographed have been demolished, he said.
“Everyone should take the time and view them — even if you’re not religious,” added Horowitz, who has been interested in ecclesiastical architecture since he was a student at Queens College. “Then people will get an idea of what makes that specific group of people interesting and beautiful regardless of the dogma.”
According to writer Liz Hartman, who wrote the text to accompany Horowitz’s photos, these buildings tell the story of New York itself: When immigrant groups first came to the city with few resources, the structures were small and unassuming. Synagogues were built to serve one particular community — the Lower East Side’s Bialystoker Synagogue, for example, whose congregants were new immigrants from Bialystok, Poland. As the Jewish community began to prosper — and as immigrants began to arrive from all over Europe — synagogues became grander, more confident and diverse in membership.
“New York is the story of immigration, and the churches and synagogues are the story of immigration as well,” Hartman said. “Immigrants — New Yorkers — projected themselves through their houses of worship, and in a way that’s what made the city work. I hope that we can look at this project and see a story of immigrants — and see that we can support this with different groups going forward.”
Eleven of the houses of worship featured in “Divine New York” are synagogues. The New York Jewish Week tasked Horowitz and Hartman with selecting the most historically or architecturally significant synagogues of the bunch —no easy task because every house of worship in the book is a historic and notable one. Keep reading to see their selections and to learn more about these important Jewish sites.
Eldridge Street Synagogue (12 Eldridge St.)
A prominent stained glass window at Eldridge Street was destroyed in a 1938 hurricane — it wasn’t replaced until 2010, with a design from artist Kiki Smith (right). (Michael Horowitz)
This historic Lower East Side synagogue, dedicated in 1887, was the first synagogue building in New York erected specifically as a Jewish house of worship. “Right from the start, it distinguished itself from other synagogues by welcoming Jews from all over Eastern Europe while other congregations were defined by the towns or cities from which they came,” Hartman writes in the book. “It was also economically diverse; migrants right off the boat, peddlers, sweatshop workers, bankers, and entertainers were among its members.” The synagogue was also Orthodox at a time when New York’s grandest synagogues were being built by Reform congregations.
Eldridge Street Synagogue as seen from the balcony. (Michael Horowitz)
For decades, the synagogue thrived as Jewish immigrants filled the Lower East Side. However, by 1940, facing a dwindling membership, the congregation could no longer maintain the main sanctuary and closed it down. By 1970, the building was in danger of collapse and demolition. Students, journalists and historians teamed up to save the synagogue; the restoration began in 1986 and continued to 2007. Today, the building is known as the Eldridge Street Synagogue and Museum, which features exhibits, history and lectures on immigrant life in New York.
The Bialystoker Synagogue (7-11 Bialystoker Pl.)
The Bialystoker Synagogue is found in a Lower East Side building with an unassuming exterior, a holdover from the Methodist Church that was once there. (Michael Horowitz)
Founded on the Lower East Side in 1865, the Bialystoker Synagogue made its home in 1826 church building, purchased from a Methodist congregation, made with schist from Manhattan bedrock. The congregation maintained the austere exterior — though the interior was updated dramatically and boasts a grand ark and floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows. Curiously, an image of a lobster is featured on the elaborately painted ceiling murals — with little explanation for how the non-kosher crustacean might fit into the synagogue’s mission or Jewish identity. One hint is that the panel marks the Hebrew month of Tammuz, which corresponds with the astrological sign of Cancer, the crab. “It was bought from the Methodist Mariner’s Church, and there were a lot of fishermen that belonged to that church,” Horowitz told the New York Jewish Week. Or perhaps a kosher-keeping muralist didn’t know the difference between a lobster and a crab.
An image of a lobster is on the ceiling of the synagogue, in a mural marking the Hebrew month of Tammuz. (Michael Horowitz)
The synagogue, built in a traditional Orthodox style, has a balcony for women worshippers. In one corner of the balcony, a hidden door leads to an attic, which Hartman writes was allegedly a stop on the Underground Railroad.
The synagogue underwent a renovation in 1988 and is still an active traditional Orthodox congregation.
Central Synagogue (652 Lexington Ave.)
Central Synagogue moved into its Lexington Avenue location in 1872. While most congregations face east, towards Jerusalem, Central faces west. Hartman explains that the real estate was “too good to pass up,” and the congregation decided to have an entrance on Lexington. (Michael Horowitz)
Completed in 1872, the building that houses the renowned Reform congregation in Midtown East seats nearly 1,500 people — a fraction of the congregation’s approximately 2,600 members. That’s a long way from the original 18 members from Bohemia, a region of the present-day Czech Republic, who started the congregation in 1846 in a remodeled church in the East Village.
Central Synagogue was built around the same time and in the same neighborhood as the Episcopal St. Thomas Cathedral and the Catholic St. Patrick’s Cathedral — some of New York’s grandest churches, which are also featured in the book. “Each of the groups were saying, ‘We’re here and we’re proud and we have prosperity.’ They were showing off, but in a really beautiful way,” Hartman said. “For Central, it was very much a message of assimilation. They were as interested in liberty, inclusion and reform as they were in Jewish ritual.”
Congregation Shearith Israel (8 West 70th St.)
Congregation Shearith Israel, also known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, was the only synagogue in New York for nearly a century and a half. The congregation moved several times before finding a permanent home on the Upper West Side. (Michael Horowitz)
Congregation Shearith Israel, also known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, was the first Jewish congregation in the United States, made up of Sephardic Jews who had arrived in New York in 1654 via Recife, Brazil. The congregation was the only Jewish one in New York for a century and a half before a faction of Ashkenazi members grew big enough to split off and form B’nai Jeshurun in 1825. While the congregation was housed in several different buildings throughout its history, it has been in its current home on the Upper West Side since 1896.
Temple Emanu-El (1 East 65th St.)
Temple Emanu-El was named one of eight “religious” wonders in the United States by CNN, writes Hartman. (Michael Horowitz)
Founded by a small group of German Jews in 1845, Temple Emanu-El has become one of the grandest and more well-known synagogues in New York, boasting prominent members like ex-mayors Ed Koch and Mike Bloomberg, as well as hundreds of other influential Manhattanites.
Considered one of the leading synagogues in the Reform movement, Emanu-El made waves throughout the 19th century for translating all-Hebrew services into German, then English, as well as for installing an organ and for abandoning the mechitzah, the traditional divider between men and women during prayer. After several spots downtown, the congregation moved into its current building on 5th Avenue — the former site of John Jacob Astor’s mansion — in 1927. It can hold 2,500 people, making it one of the largest synagogues in the world.
Park East Synagogue (163 East 67th St.)
The architects Schneider and Herter “took a no-holds-barred approach to the elaborate Byzantine-Moorish design of the synagogue,” writes Hartman of the arches, colors, stained glass and ark at Park East. (Michael Horowitz)
Built in 1890 by brothers Jonas and Samuel Ephraim in honor of their late father, Zichron Ephraim, this Orthodox synagogue has elaborate and eclectic arches, cupolas and stained glass throughout its design, reflecting its prominence in the New York Jewish community. “The design of the synagogue is anything but subtle and so, too, is its spiritual leader for more than 50 years, Rabbi Arthur Schneier, who is outspoken in his advocacy of religious freedom, human rights, and mutual respect,” writes Hartman.
It was Schneier who invited Pope Benedict XVI to Park East in 2008, marking the first ever papal visit to a synagogue in the United States. Schneier, who is currently searching for a successor, was conferred a papal knighthood for interfaith effort for religious freedom. For many decades, Park East was a haven for Jews who immigrated from the Soviet Union.
—
The post 6 spectacular synagogues from a new book on Manhattan’s houses of worship appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Bob Dylan is changing his lyrics and his set list; what is he trying to tell us?
Nobel Prize-winning rock poet Bob Dylan once famously wrote, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” (in his 1965 song “Subterranean Homesick Blues”). That may have formerly been the case, but it didn’t stop Dylan from kicking off his “Lights of Autumn Tour” in Oslo on Saturday, Oct. 17, with a setlist chock full of warnings about floods and extreme weather — a veritable apocalypse of natural disasters. He even rewrote some lines in one of his most famous and beloved songs, “Tangled Up in Blue,” to make the weather a new character in the song.
Playing “Tangled Up in Blue” in concert for the first time since 2018, Dylan revised a few verses. Where he originally sang “I had a job in the great north woods working as a cook for a spell” to kick off the third verse, Dylan instead sang “Way up in the frozen woods, teardrops touch the sky / The leaves are falling one by one, and the moments passing by,” in keeping with the “Lights of Autumn” theme. (It should be noted that Dylan has been rewriting and changing the lyrics to “Tangled” at least since 1984, when he also included the song on his opening concert of a European tour.) “Way up in the frozen woods” may also refer to Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, which is so far north that you can practically see Canada from there.
On Saturday, Dylan continued to rewrite that third verse with the line “Sometimes I get so tired, sometimes I’m getting away / Lucky you found another, tomorrow’s another day.” In a clever twist, Dylan inserts the new word “lucky” into the number, which recalls the phrase “I can’t help it if I’m lucky” from the song “Idiot Wind,” also found on the 1975 album Blood on the Tracks where “Tangled Up in Blue” originated. “Lucky” also resurfaced as a cryptic moniker for Dylan himself when, in the superstar group the Traveling Wilburys that included George Harrison, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison — all of whom took new names ending in “Wilbury” — Dylan opted for “Lucky Wilbury.” He can’t help it, indeed!
Dylan kicked off another rewritten verse with the phrase, “Things were gettin’ to cost too much,” leaving one to wonder if this was a pre-midterm election reference to the state of the U.S. economy and therefore an implicit criticism of the MAGA leader and his acolytes. Dylan also revised the music somewhat, slowing the tempo of what was once a mid-tempo rocker to a rubato ballad; he also inserted a minor chord that doesn’t exist in the original.
As noted, Dylan’s 19-song setlist included copious references to weather disasters. “The Man in the Long Black Coast” opens with the line “Crickets are chirpin’, the water is high,” and refers to trees that are “bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze.” The aptly titled “Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood),” which he performed for the first time in over two decades, includes the lines:
Crash on the levee, mama
Water’s gonna overflow
Swamp’s gonna rise
No boat’s gonna row….
If you go down in the flood
It’s gonna be your own fault…”
Even Dylan’s choice of cover tunes seemed oriented toward the apocalyptic theme. For the first time ever, Dylan sang a Randy Newman song in concert. Keeping with the flood theme, he chose Newman’s “Louisiana 1927,” which recounts one of the worst floods ever to strike the U.S.
What’s happened down here is that the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north, and it starts to rain
Rained real hard, it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline
River rose all day, the river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood, some people got away all right
Dylan also covered “Share Your Love” — originally recorded by Bobby “Blue” Bland in 1963 but also recorded and performed by Dylan’s former backup group, The Band — which kicks off with the line “Well, it’s an ill wind that blows no good.”
But Dylan didn’t have to go far from his own catalog to rack up mentions of climate insanity. He performed “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven,” which includes the lines “The air is getting hotter, there’s a rumbling in the skies / I’ve been wading through the high muddy water, with the heat rising in my eyes.” In “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” Dylan sang, “Clouds so swift, rain won’t lift / Gate won’t close, railings froze / Get your mind off wintertime, you ain’t goin’ nowhere.” And on “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,” the seasonally appropriate narrator says, “I saw the first fall of snow, I saw the flowers come and go.”
Dylan’s tour continues tonight (Oct. 19) in Gothenburg, Sweden, before making its way through Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, and Austria, and concluding in the UK in November and early December. The forecast for Sweden tonight is clear, but later in the week, the weather report says there’s a chance of a hard rain.
The post Bob Dylan is changing his lyrics and his set list; what is he trying to tell us? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Argentina’s Jewish gauchos museum vows to stay open amid leadership feud
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES – A museum dedicated to the history of Argentinian Jewish ranchers, farmers and the cowboys known as gauchos remains open and operating despite months of tension between its former director and the local government, the head of the Entre Ríos Jewish community confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
The Villa Domínguez Jewish Museum about the Jewish Colonies drew international attention late last year after visitors reported water damage affecting walls, documents and historical objects. The concerns arose months after the resignation of Osvaldo Quiroga, the local historian who had led the museum for nearly 40 years and was widely associated with its preservation.
In an interview, community head Marina Garber acknowledged the tensions that led to Quiroga’s resignation in January 2025, and that since then a successor has not been named.
“We are resolving the situation with an agreement in which the building belongs to the municipality, while the Jewish community is in charge of safeguarding the objects. The museum is still operating,” Garber told JTA, and the partnership between the local municipality and Jewish community would continue.
Villa Domínguez is a rural town of around 2,000 inhabitants located 225 miles north of Buenos Aires, where international tourism centered on the country’s earliest Jewish agricultural colonies brings considerable visibility to the area.
The fate of the museum matters far beyond Villa Domínguez’s nine remaining Jews. The Jewish agricultural colonies of Entre Ríos are a defining chapter in Argentine Jewish history, tracing how immigrants from Eastern Europe built new lives as farmers and gauchos. Its future is a test of whether a legacy that belongs to Argentine Jewry as a whole can be safeguarded.
Although its director was a municipal employee, the museum itself belongs to the Jewish community. This hybrid arrangement, with no clear responsibilities divided between the two, created tensions when the images of damage were spread online. Suggestions that the Jewish museum had fallen into a state of neglect circulated online as far as Europe.
According to some sources, tensions appear to stem from a combination of the government’s limited attention to the site and the apparent resentment by some government officials that Quiroga had received inordinate media attention.
The Jewish colonies of Entre Ríos, established in the late 1890s by Jewish immigrants mostly from Eastern Europe, represent one of the largest waves of Jewish agricultural settlement in the Americas.
The Jewish Colonies Museum was founded in October 1985 to safeguard the region’s documentary and material heritage. Since 1996, it has been housed in the town’s former pharmacy building.
The museum attracts Argentine and international visitors interested in the stories of the Jewish gauchos — the immigrants who blended their Jewish and Eastern European roots with Argentine ranching culture. Heritage tours, family-history trips, academic researchers and Jewish community groups contribute to a steady flow of visitors exploring the landscapes where the Jewish gauchos built their rural lives, a journey that began more than a century ago.
For the descendants of the gauchos — many now scattered across Argentina, Israel and beyond — the institution serves as a touchstone for genealogical research and family history. Its stability is also of concern to Jewish communal organizations and Argentine officials who have promoted the Jewish colonies circuit as a pillar of religious and cultural tourism in the province.
The first ship carrying Jewish immigrants from Europe to Argentina, the SS Weser, arrived in 1889 after sailing from Hamburg to Buenos Aires. Its arrival inspired Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a German Jewish financier and philanthropist, to recognize the potential of agricultural migration and, in 1891, to create the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) to institutionalize, fund and organize the colonies.
A tourist trail linking the various Jewish settlements has been operating for more than 20 years, made up of four communities: Basavilbaso, Villa Domínguez, Villa Clara and Villaguay. Two- and three-day tours of the area’s main Jewish sites include visits to synagogues, cemeteries, cooperatives, and local museums. Villa Clara — or simply Clara — is a small town founded in 1892 and named after Hirsch’s wife. Its Jewish museum is located inside an old railway station. Another settlement, Lucienville, is named after the couple’s son, Lucien.
The last agricultural colony founded in Entre Ríos by the JCA is Colonia Avigdor, visited regularly by students of Fundación Judaica, a major Buenos Aires network of schools and synagogues, which brings groups there for educational programs, supports local schools, and works on community development.
The national government includes the tourist trail as part of a religious tourism program, and the Buenos Aires Jewish center AMIA has a site dedicated to the colonies’ history in Entre Rios, including Villa Domínguez.
The national government and some local municipalities also include the Jewish colonies among their cultural offerings.
According to Pablo Soskin, the representative in Entre Ríos of the Argentine Jewish political umbrella organization DAIA, the museum’s director stepped down on Jan. 24, but municipal officials initially declined to accept his resignation. He subsequently took an extended leave to use up a large balance of accrued vacation days, with the municipality’s approval. When that time ran out, he was reassigned within the museum to a different, non-directorial role. The director position has remained vacant since then.
“We maintain a close relationship with the government, which has expressed its commitment to making the museum and the Jewish circuit part of the province’s tourist attractions for locals and foreigners,” Soskin told JTA. “We will continue to coordinate community, public, and private mechanisms to ensure the preservation of our heritage sites.
“This is key to understanding the contributions that the Jewish community has made to Argentina,” he added.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Argentina’s Jewish gauchos museum vows to stay open amid leadership feud appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israeli police arrest suspects in Washington Post journalist attack
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israel Police arrested 10 people on Monday on suspicion of involvement in violent acts over the weekend against journalists, foreign diplomats and Palestinians in the West Bank during the annual olive harvest.
The arrests came after international condemnation of the attacks, including by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who is generally supportive of the current Israeli government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted it is just a handful of individuals and not representative of Israelis who live in the West Bank settlements.
“Following reports of acts of violence over the weekend, including the suspected assault of a foreign journalist and the suspected assault of foreign diplomats, the Judea and Samaria District and the Israel Security Agency (ISA) carried out a pre-dawn arrest operation as part of the ongoing investigation,” the police said in a statement, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.
The statement said the suspects were arrested during a special pre-dawn operation conducted by the district’s Central Investigations Unit and transferred to police stations in the area for questioning.
“Following questioning, and subject to the findings of the investigation, they will be brought before a court for a hearing,” the police statement said.
The arrests come after Heidi Levine, a veteran photojournalist for The Washington Post, was attacked on Friday while photographing Palestinians harvesting their olive trees in the West Bank, an annual event that often sees violent clashes between Palestinian farmers and Israeli settlers who have increasingly moved into the same areas.
Video footage from the scene shows a group of masked settlers surrounding and attacking Levine before ripping off her camera and other personal gear. Palestinians can also be seen throwing stones at the settlers before another journalist arrives to help Levine leave the area.
The photographer was taken to a Palestinian hospital near Ramallah and later transferred to Beilinson Hospital near Tel Aviv, which reported that she was in moderate condition with lacerations across her body, a broken rib and four broken vertebrae. She also underwent surgery on her finger, the hospital said.
On Saturday, European diplomats from France, Belgium and Poland came under assault by masked settlers who forced their convoy off the road in the area of Taybeh, near Ramallah. Bernard Baudoux, a leftist mayor of Aulnoye-Aymeries, a town in northern France, was beaten, according to witnesses who spoke to international media.
Data collected by Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din and published on Sunday showed some 538 alleged incidents of settler and soldier violence over the 20-day period from Sept. 27 to Oct. 16, across 181 Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Some 269 of the incidents were directly related to the olive harvest, the organization said.
Israeli right-wing legal-aid organization Honenu confirmed the arrests on Monday and said its criminal law department would be providing the suspects with “initial legal assistance.”
“At this stage, it is unclear what the detainees are suspected of,” the organization said in a statement.
The Israel Police said that “items linking the suspects to the alleged offenses were seized, and several vehicles were confiscated.”
“The law in Judea and Samaria applies to everyone, regardless of identity or affiliation. The Israel Police is committed to professional, equal, and impartial law enforcement, based on evidence and in accordance with the law,” Israel Police Commissioner Daniel Levy said in the statement.
The issue of settler violence in the West Bank falls into a gray area of law enforcement between the Israel Police and the Israeli military, the latter of which is responsible for civilian matters in parts of the territory that are not legally under Israeli sovereignty. Israel’s police force is under the authority of the National Security Ministry headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right nationalist who has not made clamping down on settler violence a priority.
Levy said that the ambiguity over which agency is responsible for what must be addressed.
“At the same time, a distinction must be made between responsibility for preventing incidents in the field and responsibility for investigating and enforcing the law after they occur,” Levy said.
“We will continue to coordinate with all security agencies to strengthen security and the rule of law and ensure that anyone found to have violated the law is brought to justice,” he added.
Huckabee on Saturday called for a full investigation into the attack against Levine and for the perpetrators to be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Attacking a female photographer is a despicable act of terror carried out by masked cowards. Dishonorable act of senseless violence,” he wrote on X.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also condemned the “shocking violence” and said he had called Levine to apologize.
“I expressed my deepest sorrow to Heidi and apologized for what she went through. The despicable behavior of the perpetrators of this attack does not represent the citizens or the values of the State of Israel,” he said in a statement.
Netanyahu, who is in the midst of a closely contested election campaign to retain power, condemned violence generally, but also stated that the circumstances of the attack “remain unclear.”
“We will not allow disputed incidents to be exploited to demonize the hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria,” he said in a statement, using the biblical names for the West Bank.
Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, however, stated on CNN on Friday “unambiguously and unequivocally, that gratuitous violence perpetrated by anyone, be they Jews or Arabs, is completely unacceptable.”
He added, “If we have not yet reached a passing grade to bring Jewish vigilantes to justice, then we’ve got to do a better job. But I’m convinced that we are going to do it. I’ve been in government meetings. I’ve heard the prime minister speak emphatically about putting a stop to this.”
In a statement Monday following the arrests, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that it was time for the Israeli police to handle such crimes.
“The IDF should not and cannot be engaged in civilian law enforcement. Its role is to fight Palestinian terrorism and defend the country’s borders and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and along the seam line,” he said, adding that he was preparing, in coordination with the prime minister, “a comprehensive plan to regulate civilian law enforcement activities in Judea and Samaria.”
“The plan distinguishes between the IDF’s authority in the field and the transfer of responsibility for carrying out civilian law enforcement in practice to the Israel Police’s Judea and Samaria District,” Katz said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israeli police arrest suspects in Washington Post journalist attack appeared first on The Forward.
