Park East Synagogue, Congregation Zichron Ephraim

About this property

The Park East Synagogue is a Modern Orthodox Jewish synagogue originally called Congregation Zichron Ephraim at 163 East 67th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Built in 1890, the synagogue building was designated as a New York City Landmark in 1980 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. The building was built in 1889–1890. The architects were Schneider and Herter, who designed numerous tenements in Manhattan's Lower East Side and Hell's Kitchen neighborhoods. The building is built in the Moorish Revival style and features a prominent rose window. One of its most remarkable characteristics is the asymmetrical twin towers, as the eastern tower is taller. In comparison, most other synagogues of the period featured twin towers of similar height. The towers are also adorned differently. Each of the towers originally was also topped by a bulbous dome that has since been removed. It is one of fewer than one hundred surviving nineteenth-century American synagogues. The synagogue building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Over the doorway, engraved in granite and written in Hebrew, is a verse from Psalm 100. "Enter into His Gates with Thanksgiving and into His courts with praise." Congregation Zichron Ephraim was established by Rabbi Bernard Drachman and Jonas Weil to promote Orthodox Judaism as an alternative to Reform Judaism popular on the Upper East Side. Rabbi Drachman served as spiritual leader for fifty-one years. He died in 1945. Rabbi Zev Zahavy was appointed rabbi of the synagogue on September 1, 1952. He was known as a dynamic spokesman for Orthodox Judaism and many of his sermons were reported on in the New York Times. He and his wife Edith, a noted educator, founded the Park East Day School. On March 16, 1957, Robert Briscoe, the Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin, carrying his tallis bag, visited and prayed at the synagogue on Shabbos morning. Since 1962, the synagogue's rabbi has been Arthur Schneier. Rabbi Schneier serves Park East Synagogue full-time while also drawing a salary from the Appeal of Conscience Foundation he founded. This leadership structure was criticized in 2021 by Daniel L. Kurtz, former head of the Charities Bureau at the New York State Attorney General's Office, when he alleged that Park East has failed to hold regular membership meetings to ensure financial transparency. Kurtz also alleged that Park East's trustees are directly appointed not elected, in a process which he has called “blatantly illegal”. Rabbi Harold Einsidler is the religious spiritual organizer; his wife Toby is the office and youth leader. The synagogue's chief cantor is Yitzchak Meir Helfgot.

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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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