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A Queens synagogue is moving, and the fate of its storied ark is in limbo
(New York Jewish Week) — Crafted of bronze and gold-leaf plaster, and topped by a bejeweled crown, the astonishing 26-foot-tall ark of the Forest Hills Jewish Center fills its cavernous sanctuary with an imposing presence.
When Temma Kingsley joined the congregation as a newlywed in 1965, she was taken aback by its style.
“I thought it was really quite fancy, overdone,” she recalled recently, comparing it to the traditional wooden ark in the modest Philadelphia synagogue where she grew up. “But I’ve since learned what it’s all about, and I’ve become attached to it.”
The ark, which houses the synagogue’s Torah scrolls, is the work of artist Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), a Polish-born artist who rose to fame in the United States with vivid, technicolor drawings on the covers of influential magazines, in the pages of high-profile newspapers and in fine galleries and museums around the world. When the synagogue dedicated its minimalist post-war building on Queens Boulevard in 1949, Szyk’s opulently designed ark stood out as entirely different.
Now, with the impending sale of the Forest Hills Jewish Center building, Kingsley is concerned about the ark’s future. So too are current synagogue leaders, as well as art historians and museum curators, who are scurrying to find it a new home. Meanwhile, the ark’s fate remains in question.
The Conservative synagogue announced last year it was selling its building and would look for a new home in the same area in Queens. In August, an investment partnership led by Joseph Yushuvayev and Uri Mermelstein of Top Rock Holdings announced it was in contract to buy the building and develop the site.
Fully acknowledging the value and importance of the Szyk ark, the congregation is seeking to find it a new home. At least one art dealer has expressed interest in acquiring the ark, but this route has been rejected as it would not come with any guarantee of where it might eventually land.
Arthur Szyk was known for his vivid Jewish art, including “David and Saul” (1921), left, and his political cartoons and illustrations, including “Madness” (1941). (The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley)
“What if the buyer decides to disassemble the ark and use its beautiful bronze doors as the entrance to their home?” Deborah Gregor, executive director of the Forest Hills Jewish Center, asked rhetorically, her voice tightening.
Taking into consideration this theoretical scenario, the board has agreed to prioritize keeping the ark intact to honor its legacy. Several museums have been contacted. Thus far none have come forward.
Simona Di Nepi, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Curator of Judaica at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, traveled to Forest Hills last month to see the ark and “fell in love.”
“I see it as a tour de force of Jewish art,” she said — a unique and spectacular “show-stopper.”
On her recommendation, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts explored the possibility of acquiring it, but the height ultimately presented logistical challenges that could not be overcome. Di Nepi has now turned her attention to several large synagogues with the hopes of finding one that might adopt it.
“I can’t bear the thought of what will happen if it does not find a home,” she said.
Born in Poland, trained in Paris and influenced by the brief time he spent at Bezalel Art School in British Mandate Palestine, Szyk was known for his vivid Jewish art, biting political cartoons and his portraits of American heroes and European figureheads. In 1941, The Times Literary Supplement wrote that his illuminated Passover haggadah was “worthy to be placed among the most beautiful books that the hand of man has produced.” Reprinted many times in the decades since, it remains a staple in Jewish homes today.
While Szyk’s oeuvre is described by critics as “exquisite,” “masterful” and “marvels of technical skill,” the artist did not view his own creations as ends unto themselves. Instead, he used his work to influence politics and world opinion. Irvin Ungar, editor of the 2017 study “Arthur Szyk: Soldier in Art,” wrote that Szyk employed pen and paintbrush as tools to wage war against the Nazis, attack racism, promote Zionism and preserve freedom.
His work caught the attention of two leading rabbis of his day: Abba Hillel Silver in Cleveland and Ben Zion Bokser in Queens. Both led growing congregations that would reach well over 1,000 family members. Separately, the two commissioned Szyk to create significant objects for their respective synagogues.
The baroque form of Szyk’s ark at the Forest Hills Jewish Center, left, is reminiscent of the arks of Eastern European synagogues that were destroyed in the war; Szyk’s stained glass “Warrior Windows” at Cleveland’s Reform Temple Tifereth Israel feature the biblical figures Gideon, Samson and Judah Maccabee. (Courtesy of Irvin Ungar)
Szyk’s stained glass “Warrior Windows” were dedicated in Cleveland’s Reform Temple Tifereth Israel on the last day of Hanukkah in 1947. Commissioned to honor congregants who fought in World War II, the 15 windows include the names of fallen soldiers and showcase the biblical figures Judah Maccabee, Samson and Gideon, resplendent in sumptuous battle dress.
In a letter to Silver, Szyk explained that he would have ordinarily charged $15,000 for the project (the equivalent of $200,000 today). But because Szyk aligned so closely with the rabbi’s ideological mission — Silver was a leading proponent of Zionism — he viewed the job as “a personal favor,” and agreed to a much lower sum of $4,500.
Bokser, a social justice activist whose edition of the Jewish prayer book was a staple of Conservative synagogues for decades, was also drawn to Szyk’s bold, innovative style for the sanctuary of his congregation’s sleek new building on Queens Boulevard. Art historian and Cleveland State University Distinguished Professor Samantha Baskind calls it “sui generis”: Like Szyk’s illuminated manuscripts, the ark’s design packs in a dizzying array of abstract ornaments woven together with Jewish emblems. Scrolls, flowers, acorns and leaves are interspersed with holiday symbols, lions of Judah and representations of the Israelite tribes.
Its baroque form is reminiscent of the arks of Eastern European synagogues that were destroyed in the war. But Szyk was neither mournful nor nostalgic. Forward looking and hopeful, his ark doors are flanked by birds that can be read as either eagles or doves. With their wings spread wide, the figures stretch toward the biblical and Talmudic passages that border the work, invoking God’s judgment and heralding freedom.
Ungar assesses the ark as “an American and a Jewish icon” and a “culmination of [Szyk’s] prayers” as expressed through his art. Gregor refers to it as the artist’s “ark de triomph,” quite literally: “It is Szyk’s own statement of triumph, celebratory and grand,” she said.
The Forest Hills Jewish Center has been a fixture on Queens Boulevard since the late 1940s. (New York Jewish Week)
Ironically, its grandeur is precisely the source of its uncertain future.
When the Jewish Center’s current building was dedicated in 1949 in the presence of 5,000 guests, its scale was meant to accommodate a growing membership. Its main sanctuary held 1,200 seats, and its religious school would eventually accommodate some 900 students. Now the hulking space has become too large and costly for its 300-400 member families to maintain. The congregation has not yet announced relocation plans. But their hope for the future is an intimate space with a cozy aesthetic, where the monumental scale of the Szyk ark will likely not fit in.
Art historian Samantha Baskind has been preoccupied with the issue. “A logical solution would be to unite it with Szyk’s Warrior Windows” in Cleveland’s Temple Tifereth Israel,” she said. “Bringing the works into conversation with each other in the same sacred space is conceptually brilliant and would honor the memory of Rabbi Silver at the same time that it beautifies the synagogue.”
Whatever the future holds for the ark, some Forest Hills Jewish Center members are finding it hard to say goodbye. Kingsley recalled the central role the synagogue has played in her life since she moved to Forest Hills 57 years ago. For her, the ark is not just about its aesthetic details, or the artist who created it.
“That was the ark Rabbi Bokser commissioned,” she said wistfully. It holds his spirit, too.
Alanna E. Cooper serves as the Abba Hillel Silver Chair in Jewish Studies at Case Western Reserve University. Her book “Disposing of the Sacred” is forthcoming with Penn State University Press.
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Iran’s Leadership Draws Up Contingency Escape Plans Amid Widespread Anti-Government Protests: Reports
Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Dec. 29, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
As anti-government protests continue to rage and spread across Iran, the country’s leadership is reportedly preparing for a potential collapse of the regime, with senior officials said to be drawing up contingency escape plans and stockpiling resources.
On Thursday, British Conservative Member of Parliament Tom Tugendhat said intelligence reports indicate that Iranian senior officials are putting contingency measures in place, “which suggest that the regime itself is preparing for life after the fall.”
“We’re also seeing Russian cargo aircraft coming and landing in Tehran, presumably carrying weapons and ammunition, and we’re hearing reports of large amounts of gold leaving Iran,” the British lawmaker told Parliament.
Amid growing domestic unrest, the regime’s leadership has reportedly applied for French visas for their families in recent days, while also taking steps to secure assets abroad.
“In the past 24 hours, high-ranking dignitaries from the reformist clan — including the president of the Islamic Assembly — have been attempting to obtain French visas for their families via a Parisian lawyer,” Iranian-French journalist Emmanuel Razavi told the French news outlet Le Figaro.
Razavi also told the Nouvelle Revue Politique in a separate interview that the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, is one of the leaders seeking a visa. The journalist added that the nephew of former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani applied for a visa to France.
There have also been reports that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has a backup plan to flee the country if security forces fail to suppress the protests or begin to defect.
“The ‘plan B’ is for Khamenei and his very close circle of associates and family, including his son and nominated heir apparent, Mojtaba,” an intelligence source told the British newspaper The Times.
The Iranian leader would reportedly flee to Moscow, following the path of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
However, some experts have cast doubt on reports that Khamenei, who has not left Iran for decades, plans to flee, arguing the 86-year-old leader will likely die in the country.
As anti-regime protests continue to sweep Iran and security forces struggle to contain them, Iranian officials are increasingly blaming one another and foreign enemies, laying bare growing fractures within the regime.
All eyes on Iran. Widespread protests in Iran. Call for freedom
pic.twitter.com/9ONJUsb8U9
— Masud Gharahkhani (@MasudGh) January 8, 2026
The nationwide protests, which began with a shopkeepers’ strike in Tehran last week, initially reflected public anger over the soaring cost of living, a deepening economic crisis, and the rial — Iran’s currency — plummeting to record lows amid renewed economic sanctions, with annual inflation near 40 percent.
Increasingly, however, the protests have turned against the government itself, with demonstrators shouting slogans against the regime.
For nearly two weeks, widespread demonstrations have shaken the Islamist regime, with violent clashes between protesters and security forces drawing international attention and increasing pressure on the government to refrain from using violence against peaceful demonstrators.
Khamenei last week accused “enemies of the Islamic Republic” of stoking unrest and warned that “rioters should be put in their place.” Then on Friday, he described the demonstrators as a “bunch of vandals” who were trying to “please” US President Donald Trump, vowing authorities will “not back down.”
Iranian rights group HRANA said on Friday it had documented the deaths of at least 62 people, including 14 security personnel and 48 protesters, since protests began on Dec. 28.
As regime forces intensify their crackdown on protesters and opposition figures in an effort to maintain stability, the government has cut internet access and telephone lines — a move experts warned could signal an imminent violent escalation — though videos of the demonstrations continue to circulate online.
This week, US Trump reiterated his threat to strike Iran if security forces kill protesters, warning that any violence against demonstrators would carry “serious consequences” for the regime.
“I have let them know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots … we’re going to hit them very hard,” Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt.
According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights NGO (IHRNGO), dozens of protesters, including eight children, have been killed since the protests began, with more than 340 demonstrations reported across all 31 of Iran’s provinces.
According to media reports and social media videos from Iran, anti-riot forces — including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij militia, local police, and the army — have used violent tactics such as live fire, tear gas, and water cannons to suppress demonstrations.
In widely circulated social media videos, protesters can be heard chanting slogans such as “Death to the dictator” and “Khamenei will be toppled this year,” while also calling for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to step down.
The ongoing demonstrations are the largest since the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, which erupted nationwide after Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in a Tehran police station following her arrest for allegedly violating hijab rules, sparking calls for human rights and individual freedoms across Iran.
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Employees of Popular NYC Bakery Move to Unionize Over Company’s Support for Israel, ‘Zionist Projects’
A Breads Bakery location in New York City. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Staff members at the extremely popular New York City establishment Breads Bakery announced they are unionizing over working conditions, unfair wages, and the company’s support for Israel.
Over 30 percent of workers across the company’s locations in New York have signed authorization cards to join the newly formed Breaking Breads Union, which will be represented by United Auto Workers. They compared their hardships as staff members of the company to so-called “genocide” taking place in the Middle East and are demanding that the bakery sever all ties with Israel.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the workers said they refuse to participate “in Zionist projects” such as fundraisers that support what they claim is Israel’s “occupation of Palestine.”
“We demand a future with a redistribution of profits, safer working conditions, more respect, and an end to this company’s support of the genocide happening in Palestine,” they previously said in statement released on Jan. 2. “We cannot and will not ignore the implicit and explicit support this bakery has for Israel. We see our struggles for fair pay, respect, and safety as connected to struggles against genocide and forces of exploitation around the world. There are deep cultural changes that need to happen here, and we need to see accountability from upper management.”
Staff members supporting the union said they delivered the same statement as a speech in front of the bakery’s owner and Israeli founder Gadi Peleg as well as its CEO, fellow Israeli Yonatan Floman, inside the bakery’s Union Square flagship location and also outside of the establishment.
The New York City bakery produces artisan, handmade breads and pastries, but is most famous for its babka. It has five locations across Manhattan, has been featured on television, and has done collaborations with high-profile figures including chefs and cookbook authors Martha Stewart, Padma Lakeshmi, Katie Lee Biegel, and Molly Yeh, as well as Israeli chef Ben Siman-Tov. The bakery regularly sells pastries or breads inspired by the Jewish holidays, such as Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah, and Purim. It is reportedly a spinoff of a Tel Aviv bakery, and its menu includes challah, bourekas, and other traditional Jewish foods.
Following the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Breads Bakery launched a project called “Strand With Us,” in which they sold special heart-shaped challahs on Fridays and sent all profits to support Magen David Adom emergency medical services in Israel. The bakery raised more than $20,000 as part of the project. The company also donated its signature black-and-white cookies to a bake sale fundraiser that raised $27,000 to help a Tel Aviv-based organization preparing meals for displaced families and hospital workers in Israel. The bakery additionally sold cookies featuring the Israeli flag, according to Breaking Breads, and annually participates in the Great Nosh, a Jewish food festival on Governor’s Island that is supported by some pro-Israel groups that donate to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
In November 2023, one location of Breads Bakery in Manhattan was vandalized after someone spray-painted with red graffiti the message “Free Gaza” on the store’s window.
In a statement on Wednesday, Breads Bakery said it is concerned about “divisive political issues” in its bakeries.
“Breads Bakery is built on love and genuine care for our team. We make babka, we don’t engage in politics. We celebrate peace and embrace people of all cultures and beliefs,” the company said. “We’ve always been a workplace where people of all backgrounds and viewpoints can come together around a shared purpose, the joy found at a bakery, and we find it troubling that divisive political issues are being introduced into our workplace.”
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Emma Goldman, superstar? The Jewish anarchist has a surprising role to play in American musical theater
Lately I’ve been thinking about Emma Goldman, the Russian-born Jewish anarchist who attracted droves of followers in her 30-plus years in the United States. I’ve not really been focused on her place in history writ large, more her surprisingly robust soap box in the world of musical theater. For all her import to the American left, on Broadway she’s mostly a bit part. And that bothers me.
Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s Ragtime, now in a lauded revival at Lincoln Center, devotes a song to her 1906 speech at Union Square. From there she interprets the subtext of a meeting between the WASPy, rich character “Younger Brother” and Black pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr. As a featured player, minus ensemble numbers, she’s in the mix for less than 10 minutes — she features more in E.L. Doctorow’s novel.
When I saw the Encores production at New York’s City Center last year, I remembered that Goldman has a cameo in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins; in a brief encounter that would later haunt her, she hands a pamphlet to William McKinley’s future assassin Leon Czolgosz. Her role there, played by a member of the ensemble who doubles other parts, is even smaller.
While on vacation in Colorado over New Year’s (I skied; the chair lift conked me in the head), I got an email about an upcoming production of a chamber opera called E.G.: A Musical Portrait of Emma Goldman. I had to know more. Was she finally getting her due?
The piece, which began performances at Theater for the New City on Jan. 8, is by composer Leonard Lehrman and librettist Karen Ruoff Kramer. It’s actually not new at all, just the most recent production of a story they’ve been telling — or gospel they’ve been spreading — for over 40 years. To date they’ve presented the piece, together with educational slides, in five countries, at universities and synagogues, for groups like the Workers Circle and to mark important anniversaries, like the centennial of the Haymarket Riot that helped radicalize Goldman. They believe the work is more topical than ever.
“She’s talking about how war drains the economy from everything else, and militarism, to stay alive, will look for an enemy or even create one artificially,” said Lehrman, whose piece features him on piano and acting as Goldman’s lover, friend and partner Alexander Berkman. (Caryn Hartglass plays the title role.)
“It’s happening right now,” added Lehrman, “the creation of an enemy in order to distract from domestic failure.”
Lehrman and Kramer began work on the musical in 1984, first basing it on historian Howard Zinn’s play Emma. As the pair researched Goldman’s life, the story took a different tack. The pair met as expats in Germany, and, given that connection, gravitated toward her life in exile, which began in 1919 when the U.S. deported her as a radical “alien.” The action of the piece tells her life story through the various parts of a visa application she filled out from St. Tropez in 1933. (The section on the form for “name” deals with identity and her marriages for which she took other surnames; for “sex” she offers the Austin Powers “Yes, please” — though Lehrman and Kramer wrote it first — and goes on like that, even covering her 1916 arrest at the Forward building for giving a talk about birth control.)
“I need America,” she says in the opening moments. “And I need to know: Does America need me now?”
It makes a certain sense for Goldman to express her ideas through song. Les Miserables, if nothing else, has shown the anthemic potential of staging a revolution. (Its signature anthem shows up in real-world protests with some regularity.)
Goldman is credited with saying, “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution,” a quotable that gets its own number in Lehrman’s musical. Speaking over Zoom, Lehrman wore a shirt with those words and a portrait of Goldman.
Lehrman noted that in addition to his opera, there are two other ones about Goldman they know of — one by Elaine Fine, made in collaboration with Zinn, and another by Canadian composer Gary Kulesha.
Given her radical bona fides and thoughts about capitalism, some may wonder if Goldman might clash with the format of musical drama. We don’t have too much to go on for musicals, as the form as we now know it arguably wasn’t established until around 13 years before her death, with Showboat (it debuted in 1927, after her deportation; one suspects she would approve of how it addressed racial prejudice).
In her time, opera for the bourgeois and Vaudeville for the masses were popular musical entertainment. While Goldman turned down offers to appear on Vaudeville stages, Samantha M. Cooper, professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Kansas, observed in a 2023 lecture, Goldman was a fan — if also a critic — of opera, writing about it with some frequency in her magazine Mother Earth, and even in a lecture notes in admiration of Richard Wagner.
Cooper argues that perhaps Goldman’s most pivotal reference to opera comes in her memoir, Living My Life. In it Goldman recounts how, after watching a performance of Carmen at the Met, her mentor Johann Most asked her to recall her first experience at the opera in Königsberg.
She vividly recounted seeing Il trovatore as a school girl, where she “first realized the ecstasy music could create in me.” Hearing her impassioned reflection, Most told Goldman she had talent and must “begin soon to recite and speak in public.”
“He grinned and emptied his glass to my ‘first public speech,’” Goldman recalled.
Could it be that we have opera, then, to thank for Emma Goldman’s oratory, and so, her future presence in musicals?
E.G. makes clear that the firebrand activist is not so uni-dimensional as Ragtime and Assassins make her seem. Her life was limned with contradictions. She enjoyed the finer things — and also railed against fatcat industrialists up to the point of attempted murder.
Drawing from letters historian Candace Falk found in the back of a record store — the owner showed them to her when she learned her dog was named “Red Emma Goldman” — Lehrman and Kramer’s piece reveals Goldman as a sexual creature with a biting wit. And it makes the case that while she was condemned to a life away from America for her so-called subversion, she was nonetheless a patriot.
“It’s important that people see that there was a courageous way of being very much American that was not the same thing as just buckling under when McCarthy comes and says, ‘You guys have to shut up now,’” said Kramer.
Though the portrait in E.G. makes for a more comprehensive profile than the one now at Lincoln Center, it also presents something larger in its invitation to consider her legacy.
“E.G. means ‘For example, take this example,’” said Kramer. “Not in the sense of cloning Emma in all respects, but certainly the insistence on understanding and the courage to push for things that are right, even if they’re not popular, and that others should do that too.”
In the canon of musical theater, there are many examples to choose from. I like the one who dances. Sign me up for a shirt.
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