Congregation B'nai Jeshurun Synagogue and Community House

About this property

B'nai Jeshurun is a non-denominational Jewish synagogue located at 257 West 88th Street and 270 West 89th Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. The synagogue building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in June 1989. Founded in 1825, Bnai Jeshurun was the second synagogue founded in New York and the third-oldest Ashkenazi synagogue in the United States. The synagogue was founded by a coalition of young members of Congregation Shearith Israel, immigrants, and the descendants of immigrants from the German and Polish lands. It was the stated intention to follow the "German and Polish minhag (rite)." The order of prayers followed that of the Ashkenazi Great Synagogue of London, and the congregation sought the guidance of the British chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschell on matters of ritual. They first held services on Pearl Street, and dedicated their first building on Elm Street in Manhattan in 1829. The first rabbi, Samuel Myer Isaacs, was appointed in 1839, but a public notice from 1845 indicates that there were disagreements over who should lead B'nai Jeshurun. By 1850, the congregation had grown large enough to make it necessary to build a new synagogue. A building on Greene Street was dedicated on September 25, 1851, and the Jewish newspaper Asmonean described the edifice and its builders as admirable. Its rabbi in the 1850s and 1860s, when it was frequently called "the Greene Street Synagogue", was Morris Jacob Raphall, who delivered the famous "Bible view of slavery" discourse on January 4, 1861. By 1852, it had started a Hebrew school open to the entire city's Jews, of all varieties, and by 1854 had opened a separate school building a few doors down Greene Street. B'nai Jeshurun had a cemetery on 32nd Street, which was in use until 1851, when the city banned burials in the area. At that time, they jointly created a cemetery named Beth Olom in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, but continued to maintain the older cemetery. By 1875, the Manhattan cemetery was becoming derelict, and the congregation sold it to developers in 1875, moving those buried there to its new cemetery. The old location is now occupied by the back portion of the Hotel Pennsylvania, approximately where the loading dock and sports club entrance are situated. In 1864, the congregation moved yet again, to a new building on 34th Street, the parcel later became part of the site of the flagship Macy's store. Driven by the rapid expansion of the city, they moved yet again in the spring of 1885 to Madison Avenue at 65th Street. That building was designed by Rafael Guastavino and Schwarzmann & Buchman. Less than a year later, a fire did extensive damage to the building. Reports rated the damage at $35,000. B'nai Jeshurun was temporarily relocated to Congregation Ahawath Chesed, now Central Synagogue, on Lexington Avenue, which ironically had a fire of its own within the month, leaving both congregations homeless.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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