Beth Hamedrash Hagadol

Beth Hamedrash Hagodol (Hebrew: , lit.'Great Study House') was an Orthodox Jewish congregation that for over 120 years was located in a historic building at 60–64 Norfolk Street between Grand and Broome Streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It was the first Eastern European congregation founded in New York City and the oldest Russian Jewish Orthodox congregation in the United States. Founded in 1852 by Rabbi Abraham Joseph Ash as Beth Hamedrash, the congregation split in 1859, with the rabbi and most of the members renaming their congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagodol. The congregation's president and a small number of the members eventually formed the nucleus of Kahal Adath Jeshurun, also known as the Eldridge Street Synagogue. Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the first and only Chief Rabbi of New York City, led the congregation from 1888 to 1902. Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, one of the few European Jewish legal decisors to survive the Holocaust, led the congregation from 1952 to 2003. The congregation's building, a Gothic Revival structure built in 1850 as the Norfolk Street Baptist Church and purchased in 1885, was one of the largest synagogues on the Lower East Side. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. In the late 20th century the congregation dwindled and was unable to maintain the building, which had been damaged by storms. Despite their obtaining funding and grants, the structure was critically endangered. The synagogue was closed in 2007. The congregation, reduced to around 20 regularly attending members, was sharing facilities with a congregation on Henry Street. The Lower East Side Conservancy was trying to raise an estimated $4.5 million for repairs of the building, with the intent of converting it to an educational center. In December the leadership of the synagogue under Rabbi Mendel Greenbaum filed a “hardship application” with the Landmarks Preservation Commission seeking permission to demolish the building to make way for a new residential development. This application was withdrawn in March 2013, but the group Friends of the Lower East Side described Beth Hamedrash Hagodol's status as "demolition by neglect". The abandoned synagogue was "largely destroyed" by a "suspicious" three-alarm fire on May 14, 2017.

Beth Hamedrash Hagodol was founded by Eastern European Jews in 1852 as Beth Hamedrash (literally "House of Study", but used colloquially in Yiddish as the term for a synagogue). The founding rabbi, Abraham Joseph Ash, was born in Siemiatycze (then in Congress Poland) in 1813 or 1821. He immigrated to New York City in 1851 or 1852. The first Eastern European Orthodox rabbi to serve in the United States, Ash "rejected the reformist tendencies of the German Jewish congregations" there. He soon organized a minyan (prayer quorum) of like-minded Polish Jews, and by 1852 began conducting services. Though the membership consisted mostly of Polish Jews, it also included "Lithuanians, two Germans, and an Englishman." For the first six years of the congregation's existence, Ash was not paid for his work as rabbi and instead earned a living as a peddler. The congregation moved frequently in its early years: in 1852 it was located at 83 Bayard Street, then at Elm and Canal, and from 1853 to 1856 in a hall at Pearl between Chatham and Centre Streets. In 1856, with the assistance of the philanthropist Sampson Simson and wealthy Sephardi Jews who sympathized with the traditionalism of the congregation's members, the congregation purchased a Welsh chapel on Allen Street. The synagogue, which had "a good Hebrew library", was a place both of prayer and study, included a rabbinic family court, and, according to historian and long-time member Judah David Eisenstein, "rapidly

Synagogue data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).