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This is what an $8 million synagogue renovation looks like
(New York Jewish Week) — Ansche Chesed, a historic Conservative synagogue located in a large, Romanesque- and Byzantine-inspired building on the Upper West Side, has completed an $8 million, two-year renovation project.
The updates to the landmarked 53,000-square-foot building, which began construction in 1927, included adding an elevator, which will improve the building’s accessibility; tripling the size of the lobby, and adding bathrooms, a coat room and a lounge. Upgraded security measures include a security booth near the entrance, an updated camera system and an electronic seal on interior doors.
Located at 251 W. 100th Street, the 600-family congregation will have a rededication ceremony and celebration during services on Saturday.
“We’re feeling fabulous,” said Jeremy Kalmanofsky, the congregation’s senior rabbi who has been at Ansche Chesed since 2001.
“We have evolved the various ways in which we use it,” Kalmanofsky said of the 96-year-old building, and why the congregation, which was founded in 1829, decided to renovate. “It was dark and it was not terribly welcoming and now we’ve opened it up in so many ways — greater light, more welcoming and easier to get around, especially for folks who use wheelchairs and walkers.”
The ground floor main entry lobby tripled in size and was renovated with updated lighting and HVAC system. It also includes a coat room and updated bathrooms. (Courtesy of Studio ST Architects)
The synagogue partnered with New York-based Studio ST Architects on the project. “In our work, we tried to really capture and maintain the nature of that congregation. The word they used is heimish — a Yiddish word for homey and welcoming,” said the principal architect Esther Sperber. “They wanted it to be nice, clean and comfortable, but down to earth. They didn’t want it to be fancy and they weren’t looking for lots of marble or gold.”
“We shared a real sense about what it means to be building up Jewish ritual communal spaces,” Kalmanofsky said.
Both Sperber and Kalmanofsky noted that the largest improvement to the space — and the biggest undertaking of the renovation — was adding a small elevator from the lobby to the sanctuary, which seats 1,200 people. Before, congregants who needed it had to use a “clunky chairlift” that could only be used one at a time and required a second person to operate.
“It really was not a dignified way for people to enter the space and it made them feel as if they were potentially not welcome,” Sperber noted.
Another angle of the updated basement lobby. An elevator was added to get from the lobby to the sanctuary, which substantially improved the synagogue’s accessibility.(Courtesy of Studio ST Architects)
Nearly every part of the ground floor and basement levels was renovated — except for the sanctuary, Sperber said. “The sanctuary is a beautiful, historic space,” Sperber said, adding that it had recently been repainted. “We updated the fire alarm system, added the elevator which now reaches the sanctuary … but the design of the space was kept.”
The social hall was expanded with new flooring and lighting and will now be able to accommodate extra seating for High Holiday services and major celebrations. (Courtesy of Studio ST Architects)
Renovation on the building began in the winter of 2021, and it stayed open while undergoing construction, though Kalmanofsky noted that during 2021 the building was used far less due to the pandemic.
Sleek bronze signage was added to the exterior of the building with the name and address of the congregation. The architects also upgraded the building’s HVAC systems and relocated the office spaces from the first floor to the fifth.
The newly renovated offices (left) are on the fifth floor of the building, rather than in a windowless space off the lobby (right). (Courtesy of Studio ST Architects)
“Our offices, which were literally in windowless dungeons, are now much more filled with light,” Kalmanofsky said. “It’s easier for people to feel happy to be in them when our members come into the office to see us.”
The renovation also updated the lighting and floors of the social hall, which was last renovated in the 1980s, Kalmanofsky said. “We have a social hall space now that is worthy of larger and more elegant celebrations, both of our own members and maybe, if we’re so fortunate, other people will want to celebrate in our building as well,” he said.
Bathrooms were updated on the ground level. (Courtesy of Studio ST Architects)
“When you enter the building, it doesn’t feel like you’re entering an old building — it feels like you’re entering something contemporary,” Kalmanofsky said. “It’s nice and inviting and modern.”
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The post This is what an $8 million synagogue renovation looks like appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Coop votes to boycott Israeli products
(JTA) — Two-thirds of the famed worker-owned grocery store in Brooklyn’s Park Slope voted Tuesday night in favor of a boycott of Israeli products. The vote came after a years-long battle that divided coop members and the Park Slope community.
Of the 6,772 votes cast at a meeting that lasted for hours, 67% voted in favor of the boycott, 31% voted against, and 2% abstained, according to immediate results of the vote viewed by JTA.
Nearly 7,000 out of the 16,000 members of the Park Slope Food Coop signed on to participate in the vote, where two ballot questions decided the fate of under a dozen Israeli products sold at the neighborhood spot. Now, those Israeli products will be removed from the shelves.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions effort has been a hot issue at the Park Slope Food Coop for more than a decade. But since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel and the ensuing Gaza war, the coop’s stance on the sale of Israeli goods has become a flashpoint among its 16,000 members. Tuesday’s vote was so contentious that coop coordinators increased security measures around the coop itself and decided to hold the vote remotely.
Coop members first voted on a resolution lowering the required threshold to pass a boycott from a 75% supermajority of members to a simple majority of 51%. This vote passed 68% to 31%, with 1% abstaining.
Only after that passed did the group consider a resolution to boycott the sale of Israeli products. That resolution declared that, “Until Israel complies with international law, including by ceasing unlawful discriminatory practices in its treatment of Palestinians, the Coop will not sell goods produced in Israel (pre-1967 borders) or in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The boycott will affect nine Israeli products, including a variety of bell pepper sold only in the winter, persimmons, olive oil, sesame products, Dorot frozen herb cubes and Osem Bamba, the popular Israeli peanut-flavored snack, according to Park Slope Food Coop Members for Palestine.
The advocacy group PSFC Members for Palestine first proposed a boycott in 2024; Coop4Unity, the anti-BDS group, was founded in 2024 to prevent that.
Tuesday’s meeting was moved entirely online to accommodate the size of the “unprecedentedly large” guest list and also for security reasons, coop staff announced in an email days before the vote.
“Staff, presenters, Chair committee and other members have all raised explicit concerns about their safety, attending the meeting in-person,” PSFC coordinators wrote in their email. “We cannot guarantee their security even if supplemental security measures are introduced. Therefore, the safest way forward is to limit attendance to all virtual.”
The market’s fight over BDS has even entered the Democratic primary election discourse in the coop’s congressional district of NY-10, in which two Jewish candidates are facing off.
Incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman condemned the vote in a statement to the Forward last week. “Everyone is free to criticize the Israeli government — which I do not hesitate to do — but joining a movement that was founded on the principle of the elimination of Israel will have no impact on the Israeli government or the Israeli economy,” Goldman said. “Instead, it only succeeds at shifting the responsibility for the Israeli government’s actions to American Jews — which is quintessential antisemitism.”
Goldman’s opponent, former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, said he is not a member of the coop but would vote against the resolution if he were.
The rhetoric at the coop over the BDS effort has escalated in recent weeks. During an April meeting, a member stated that, “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country.”
Jewish Community Relations Council CEO Mark Treyger had called for an investigation into the incident. Coop4Unity has also filed a state human rights complaint, alleging antisemitic and anti-Israel harassment at the market.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Israel supporters rallied to stave off a boycott. The leadership of Park Slope synagogue Congregation Beth Elohim called on its more than 2,300 adult members to attend the general meeting and vote against the resolutions.
“This proxy war for the war between Israelis and Palestinians is now dividing our local community into two camps,” CBE’s Rabbi Rachel Timoner said during a sermon earlier this month. “Why is this petty, annoying fight in our neighborhood grocery store worth so much time and effort? Because it is part of something much larger. In the end, it is about antisemitism, a real and rising threat which ultimately carries existential danger both for Jews and for every society in which it takes hold.”
A group of progressive New York rabbis, however, wrote an open letter to the coop community condemning those who called the boycott “antisemitic.” The letter stated that not all the signatories endorsed the boycott.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Coop votes to boycott Israeli products appeared first on The Forward.
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Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with binational state, poll find
Almost half of American Jews under 35 say the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be solved by creating a single country in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza with a government elected by both Israelis and Palestinians, according to a poll conducted by the Jewish Voter Resource Center.
The findings signal a generational shift in U.S. support for a binational state in Israel, reflecting a core demand of anti-Zionist protests on college campuses and beyond — even as most major Jewish organizations classify calls for a single state as an expression of antisemitism.
“The growing disaffection of younger Jewish Americans from Israel is a direct consequence of the policies of Bibi Netanyahu and the way the American Jewish establishment has demanded an ‘Israel right or wrong’ loyalty,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, the liberal advocacy group. “They’re reaping the harvest of seeds they planted — this is what you get.”
Ben-Ami pointed to the destruction of Israel’s war in Gaza, in which it killed an estimated 70,000 Palestinians and destroyed more than 80% of the enclave’s infrastructure, and growing violence by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, among other actions.
The data also adds to a growing debate over what share of Jews in the United States are Zionist, The Jewish Federations of North America began circulating data earlier this year that shows that around 90% of American Jews continue to support Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, even as only 37% label themselves “Zionist.”
The Jewish Voter Resource Center poll, released on Thursday, challenges these findings. Twenty-four percent of Jewish adults polled support a one-state solution to the conflict, according to the survey, nearly double the 13% who said they preferred a binational state just two years ago. While age breakdowns were not available for the 2024 poll, an American Jewish Committee survey in 2022 found that 23% of American Jews ages 25 to 40 supported a binational state.
Half of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 — 51% — support a binational state, according to the new poll.
The Jewish Federations of North America declined to comment.
This abrupt turn comes amid a transformation in how Americans view Israel — favorability toward Israel has plummeted among almost every demographic group since 2022 — that has extended to Jews. A Washington Post poll found that 61% of Jewish adults said Israel had committed war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, while 39% said it was guilty of genocide.
The shift in public opinion also drives a deeper wedge between Israeli and American Jews. While many Jews in the U.S. have been alarmed by Israel’s conduct in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, Israeli Jews have expressed a sense of increased vulnerability, and some viewed the massacre as shutting down the possibility of Israel giving up control over the Palestinian territories or granting Palestinians equal rights.
A poll from Tel Aviv University last year found that only 15% of Israeli Jews supported a two-state solution, while 29% wanted to annex the West Bank and Gaza without offering citizenship to Palestinians living there. Only 1% of Israeli Jews supported “one binational state with civil rights.”
When asked in more detail about the possibility of a one-state solution, 3% of Israeli Jews said they would support it only if Palestinians were granted equal rights while 37% said they would support it if Palestinians were not given full rights.
Jeremy Pressman, who studies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the University of Connecticut, said that young American Jews have little experience of Israel as a vulnerable underdog, unlike older generations that witnessed the establishment of the state or its victory in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars.
Instead, they’ve largely come of age while Israel has been controlled by right-wing governments and have watched Israeli violence toward Palestinians on social media. “This creates a gap between the dominant Israeli Jewish understanding of the conflict and the center-left — or sometimes radical left — understanding of Jewish Americans,” Pressman said in an interview.
The Jewish Voter Resource Center, which is affiliated with the Jewish Democratic Council of America, polled 800 registered Jewish voters and the margin of error was +/- 3.5 percentage points and +/- 6.9 percentage points for Jews under 35.
Asher Kaplan Leba, a leader of the Massachusetts Synagogue Network on Israel/Palestine in Boston, said that many Jews had become disillusioned with a two-state solution as the Israeli government took steps that seemed to make it more difficult to implement, such as expanding West Bank settlements.
“It was my position for many years,” said Leba, 32. “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my adult life waiting for the authoritarian, ethno-nationalists in control of Israel — who I share no values with — to change.”
The post Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with binational state, poll find appeared first on The Forward.
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Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff
(JTA) — Sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia won the Democratic nomination Tuesday in Texas’ 35th Congressional District, defeating opponent Maureen Galindo following a race shaped by scrutiny over Galindo’s antisemitic rhetoric.
The runoff in the San Antonio race drew national attention after Galindo, a local housing activist and therapist, came under scrutiny for comments that included vows to turn a local immigrant detention center “into a prison for American Zionists” and claims that it was her “perception that Zionist billionaires run the world.”
Following Galindo’s surprise first-place finish in the march primary, national Democratic leaders and Jewish organizations condemned her rhetoric and urged voters to reject her candidacy, including Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, who revealed to JTA earlier this month that he would not back or campaign with Galindo.
The district, which stretches between San Antonio and Austin, was heavily affected by Republican redistricting this year, one of several factors that local political observers and Democratic Party leaders said contributed to Galindo’s earlier win.
The race also attracted outside spending, with Lead Left PAC, a newly launched super PAC apparently tied to a Republican donation platform, pouring over $900,000 on ads and mailers promoting Galindo. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a $35,000 ad buy against Galindo, an unusual step for the DCCC to take against a Democratic candidate.
“Republicans just spent weeks and almost a million dollars propping up an antisemite, and they should be ashamed and embarrassed — it was a disgrace,” the president of the Democratic Majority For Israel PAC, Brian Romick, told JTA in a statement. “Tonight is a victory for the voters of TX-35, for the Democratic Party, and for every Democrat who believes that antisemitism has no home in our coalition.”
Romick told JTA Tuesday night that he believed the results of the runoff signaled that Democratic primary voters “aren’t going to elect antisemitic candidates, and in the districts that we need to win, pro-Israel candidates are our best bet.”
Garcia will now face Republican nominee Carlos De La Cruz, who defeated opponent John Lujan, in the Nov. 3 general election.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff appeared first on The Forward.