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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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Mistrial Declared in Case of Students Charged After Stanford Anti-Israel Protests
FILE PHOTO: A student attends an event at a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at Stanford University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Stanford, California U.S., April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in a case of five current and former Stanford University students related to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests when demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the school president’s office.
Twelve protesters were initially charged last year with felony vandalism, according to prosecutors who said at least one suspect entered the building by breaking a window. Police arrested 13 people on June 5, 2024, in relation to the incident and the university said the building underwent “extensive” damage.
The case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court against five defendants charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. The rest previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs.
The jury was deadlocked. It voted nine to three to convict on the felony charge of vandalism and eight to four to convict on the felony charge to trespass. Jurors failed to reach a verdict after deliberations.
The charges were among the most serious against participants in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest movement on US colleges in which demonstrators demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and Washington’s support for its ally along with a divestment of funds by their universities from companies supporting Israel.
Prosecutors in the case said the defendants engaged in unlawful property destruction.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. That is against the law,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement, adding he sought a new trial.
Anthony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, told the New York Times his side was not defending lawlessness but “the concept of transparency and ethical investment.”
“This is a win for these young people of conscience and a win for free speech,” Brass said, adding “humanitarian activism has no place in a criminal courtroom.”
Protesters had renamed the building “Dr. Adnan’s Office” after Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian doctor who died in an Israeli prison after months of detention.
Over 3,000 were arrested during the 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement, according to media tallies. Some students faced suspension, expulsion and degree revocation.
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Exclusive: FM Gideon Sa’ar to Represent Israel at 1st Board of Peace Meeting in Washington on Thursday
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will represent the country at the inaugural meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday, i24NEWS learned on Saturday.
The arrangement was agreed upon following a request from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will not be able to attend.
Netanyahu pushed his Washington visit forward by a week, meeting with US President Donald Trump this week to discuss the Iran situation.
A U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the Board of Peace and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza and build on the ceasefire agreed in October under a Trump plan.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said the board, with him as chair, would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.
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Two Men Jailed in UK for Islamic State-Inspired Plot to Kill Hundreds of Jews
Weapons seized from the home of Walid Saadaoui, 38, who along with Amar Hussein, 52, has been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on December 23, 2025. They are due to be sentenced on Friday. Photo: Greater Manchester Police/Handout via REUTERS
Two men were jailed on Friday for plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired attack on the Jewish community in England, a plan prosecutors said could have been deadlier than December’s mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were both convicted after a trial at Preston Crown Court, which began a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the city of Manchester, in northwest England.
Prosecutors said the pair were Islamist extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jews as they could in an attack in Manchester.
They were found guilty little more than a week after a mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in which 15 people were killed.
Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said on Friday that, had Saadaoui and Hussein carried out their plan, it “could have been very much more serious” than the attacks in Australia and Manchester.
Judge Mark Wall sentenced Saadaoui to a minimum term of 37 years and Hussein to a minimum term of 26 years, saying: “You were very close to being ready to carry out this plan.”
Hussein refused to attend his sentencing, having refused to attend most of his trial, which Wall said reflected Hussein’s cowardice, describing him as “brave enough to plan to threaten an unarmed group with an AK-47 but not sufficiently courageous to face up to what he did.”
POTENTIALLY ONE OF DEADLIEST ATTACKS ON UK SOIL
Saadaoui had arranged for two assault rifles, an automatic pistol and almost 200 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Britain through the port of Dover when he was arrested in May 2024, Sandhu told jurors at the trial.
He added that Saadaoui planned to obtain two more rifles and another pistol, and to collect at least 900 rounds of ammunition.
“This would likely have been one of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out on British soil,” Wall said.
Unbeknown to Saadaoui, however, a man known as “Farouk,” from whom he was trying to get the weapons, was an undercover operative who helped foil the plot.
Walid Saadaoui’s brother Bilel Saadaoui, 37, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism. He was sentenced to six years in jail.