New York – A historic 179-year-old Conservative synagogue in New York’s Upper West Side is moving forward with plans to house a 14-story apartment building.
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The proposed project for the Shaare Zedek synagogue includes 20 condominiums, with a community center for the synagogue in the building’s first three floors, The Real Deal, a website focusing on New York real estate news, reported last week.
Some community members, concerned about issues such as increased traffic in the area, had asked the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to consider naming the synagogue’s building a city landmark, but the commission issued a decision in October that the building didn’t “rise to the level of an individual landmark,” The Real Deal reported.
Synagogue president Michael Firestone said in September during a community board member meeting that the congregation could not remain solvent without partnering with a developer, as several New York synagogues have done in recent years, The Real Deal reported, citing DNAinfo.
The synagogue, the third oldest in New York City, was established in 1837 by Polish immigrants, according to its website. It started on the Lower East Side and moved to Harlem before building at its current location. The current synagogue building was dedicated on April 15, 1923, and in 1944 the congregation paid off the mortgage.
Wonderful. It will restore the finances of the congregation and (at least mostly) preserve a fins old building.
iyh soon we wont have to say the 19th bracha in the amida
even with no mtg. it not possible to cover the cost of running a large syn.
So sad.
I don’t care. The conservative leaders led them on a false dereck. It was started by the reform to combat the orthodox. Yes where tzitzis but inside your pants. It was strict halacha. Then in the 50’s they said you can drive on Shabbos and it went down from there. I know the movement there were 40 kids in my afternoon hebrew school and not one is Shommer Shabbos and Kashrus except me. Bar Mitzvah were done in the shul and then a treife meal, square dancing or barbeque that night or the next day. The bar mitzvah boy did not even daven mincha on the Shabbos of his bar Mitzvah. Myself and a friend were the only kids to lay tefellin. As you sow so you will reap. The conservative everyday is more and more reform and they are losing their congregates. The reform are bleeding and so is the conservatives while the ultra orthodox are expanding.