Portal:Judaism

Beth Hamedrash Hagadol is an Orthodox congregation that was, for over 120 years, located in a historic synagogue building at 60–64 Norfolk Street in Manhattan, New York, on the Lower East Side. It was the first Eastern European congregation founded in New York City and the oldest Orthodox Russian Jewish congregation in the United States. Founded in 1852 by Rabbi Abraham Ash as Beth Hamedrash, it split in 1859, with the rabbi and the bulk of the members renaming their congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagadol. Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the first and only Chief Rabbi of New York City, led the congregation from 1888 to 1902 . The congregation's building, a Gothic Revival structure built in 1850 and purchased in 1885, was one of the largest synagogues on the Lower East Side, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. In the late twentieth century the congregation dwindled and was unable to maintain the building, which had been damaged by storms. Despite funding and grants, the structure was critically endangered. As of 2008^[update] the Lower East Side Conservancy was trying to raise an estimated $4.5 million for repairs, with the intent of converting it to an educational center. (Read more...)

Did you know...

• ... that the Jewish Orphanage of Berlin-Pankow (pictured) was originally intended to be a home for refugee children who escaped pogroms after the assassination of Alexander II of Russia?
• ... that some of the most active parents in the Orthodox Jewish day school founded by Rabbi David Rebibo in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1965 were members of the local Reform temple?
• ... that Da-Don took the office of chief rabbi of Croatia in 1998, more than fifty years since the last office-holder?
• ... that Peter Feldmann is the first politician of the Jewish faith to be elected mayor of Frankfurt since World War II?
• ... that about 40 Jews live in Mauritius as of 2006?

Rudolf Vrba was Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia in Canada. In April 1944, Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler became the second and third of only five Jews to escape successfully from the German death camp at Auschwitz and pass information to the Allies about the mass murder that was taking place there. The 32 pages of information that the men dictated to horrified Jewish officials in Slovakia became known as the Vrba–Wetzler report. It is regarded as one of the most important documents of the 20th century, because it was the first detailed information about the death camp to reach the Allies that they accepted as credible. Although the report's release to the public was controversially delayed until after the mass transport of 437,000 Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz had begun on May 15, 1944, it is nevertheless credited with having saved many lives. Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has called Vrba "one of the Heroes of the Holocaust". (Read more...)

• Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth and member of the House of Lords, dies (7 November 2020)
• The Pittsburgher Rebbe, Mordechai Yissachar Ber Leifer dies of COVID-19
• A peace agreement is reached between Israel and the UAE (13 August 2020)
• Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz dies, editor of the Steinsaltz Talmud (7 August 2020)

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