USA: Newark's Former Oheb Shalom by William Lehman is 100 Years Old

Newark, NJ. Wells Cathedral, former Congregation Oheb Shalom. William Lehman, architect 1910-1911. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber (2006).

USA: Newark's Former Oheb Shalom by William Lehman is 100 Years Old
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) I've previously written about the centennial of the classical-style Temple Concord in Syracuse, dedicated in September 1911. Another impressive (Greco-Roman) Temple-like synagogue building celebrating its centennial this year is the former Oheb Shalom in Newark, New Jersey, designed by Jewish architect William Lehman (1874-1951) and dedicated on September 11, 2011. Since 1958, when Oheb Shalom moved to suburban South Orange, the High Street building has been home to Wells Cathedral, a Pentecostal church.

The building is a an impressive structure with a fine projecting portico of four Ionic columns, and some delicate decoration, including a Jewish Star within a wreath set into the pediment. The entablature carries an inscription in Hebrew, not English an indication that this was a Conservative synagogue, not a Reform. My guess is that this is one of the earliest full-blown classical-style Conservatives synagogues. But then again, most Conservative synagogues did not engage in big building campaigns until after World War I, so Oheb Shalom was prescient in many ways.

According to synagogue historian Mark Gordon, "Oheb Shalom had three locations on one block of Prince Street (rented quarters; 1863-64 frame synagogue; 1884 brick synagogue) before it moved to High Street in 1911. Woodrow Wilson was the keynote speaker at the High Street dedication. During Oheb Shalom’s 150th anniversary celebration in 2010, the congregation visited its extant Prince Street (1884) and High Street (1910-11) edifices in Newark and held an interfaith service with the Pentecostal Church which now owns the High Street building. Several older congregants who participated in the service were quite moved to be standing at the original reading table where they became b’nai mitzvah."

Photos of the building interior can be seen here, together with views of other former synagogues in Newark.

Lehman was apparently Jewish. David Kaufman also has several pages on the 1911 Oheb Shalom in his book on the Jewish Center movement Shul with a Pool. Lehman's New York Times obituary records that he was a trustee of B'nai Jeshurun in Newark, but Oheb Shalom is his only Jewish project that I've been able to identify so far. He appears to have been quite successful in Newark, and designed a lot of movie theaters and some important public buildings. There was/is quite a family dynasty, but one of the Lehman architects are listed in the Who's Who in American Jewry volumes of 1926, 1938-39 or 1972 The New Jersey Historical Society has 5,000 Lehman items in its archive. It appears that nothing significant has been written about Lehman, so his life and work could be a nice M.A. thesis.

Papers of Congregation Oheb Shalom that may relate to the construction of the 1910-11 building are housed at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

USA: 1952 Sale of Orthodox Synagogue to Black Church Provides Lessons of Religious Respect and Tolerance

USA: 1952 Sale of Orthodox Synagogue to Black Church Provides Lessons of Religious Respect and Tolerance
by Samuel D. Gruber

Former Congregation Tifereth Israel, Portland Oregon.Photo: Oregon Historical Society published in S. Lowenstein, The Jews of Oregon.

The recent misguided hysteria over the proposed creation of a mosque and Islamic Cultural Center in Lower Manhattan (on the model of a Jewish JCC) was in my mind when I was struck by a remarkable passage in a seemingly unrelated book I was reading last week – Steven Lowenstein's The Jews of Oregon 1850-1950 (Portland, OR: Jewish Historical Society of Oregon, 1987).

In his recounting the history of the Jewish congregations of Portland and their many synagogue buildings - which were often were recycled church buildings – Lowenstein tells of the 1952 sale of a synagogue by the Orthodox Northeast Portland Congregation Tifereth Israel (known as the "Alberta shul" and founded in a former house), which “inadvertently found itself involved in a difficult conflict.” The congregation was moving to a new home, the former Redeemer Lutheran Church at NE Fifteenth and Wygant and sold its former synagogue (through real estate agent Frank McGuire) to a Christian congregation - Mount Sinai Church. Mount Sinai Church was an African-American church, and some neighbors were upset and tried to block the sale. 

The congregation's letter to the real estate agent stated in part: 

At the time said agreement was entered into, this congregation had no knowledge of the purchasers other than their name and that they were a Christian congregation. Later it developed that the members of Mount Sinai Congregation are Negroes and pressures have been put upon us to back out of the deal for no other reason than that the purchasers, though Christian, are also Negro. We regard such pressures as being violative of the principles of Americanism, of Judaism, of Christianity and of common decency. ...Man has no dearer right than the privilege of worshiping God in his own way. To deprive any group of people of the right to meet and to worship merely because God chose to make them a part of the colored majority of mankind is repulsive to Americans who love their country and the great principles of democracy which distinguish our land from the totalitarian states wherein liberty and religion are destroyed. In welcoming our colored brethren to our old synagogue of blessed memory, we are mindful of the quotation from Hebrew scripture, "Have we not all one Father; hath not One God created us?" We hope that they also will find God within its walls and that He will answer their prayers and ours that He teach us "to love one another." In the event you refuse to close the sale, we desire to be released from our listing agreement so that we may ourselves consummate the moral agreement we have entered into.

The Portland Jewish community, and especially the ADL B'nai B'rith, led by its western regional director, David Robinson, unequivocally supported of the congregation. (How very different than ADL's recent waffling about religious rights over the Manhattan mosque).

The neighbors appealed the sale to the City Council, but it refused to block the sale. In November, 1952, the Mount Sinai Church was dedicated. Tifereth Israel remained a small Eastside congregation for seventy-five years, gradually evolving from Orthodox to Traditional. In September, 1986, it merged with Shaarie Torah.

Congregation Tifereth Israel's letter is a text we should remember well. The congregation's stance - hardly predictable in 1952 - should be remembered and emulated in regards to all areas of religious freedom and tolerance. We should be led by our pursuit of justice, not by fear (especially when all local zoning requirements are met).

Though the congregation did not refer to George Washington's famous lines penned to Moses Seixas of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790, that "All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support." To Washington's Constitutional position for religious tolerance, Congregation Tifereth Israel added an appropriate religious basis.

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The church as it appears today (courtesy google.maps)

Another aspect of the Tifereth Israel story is that it gives the lie to the common myth that Orthodox Congregations do not and cannot sell synagogues for use as Christian churches. It is well known that scores of former Orthodox synagogues in America (and elsewhere) are used as churches. There is common belief that a congregation cannot knowingly sell a synagogue for Christian use because Christianity is an idolatrous religion. No matter what some Jews may think, Christianity is not an idolatrous religion, and the Tifereth Israel story tells us clearly what was most often the case, that congregations knew to whom they were selling their synagogues. Congregation Tifereth Israel's letter tells us frankly that they were one congregation, at least, comfortable with the sale.

Tour: Synagogues & Sacred Sites in NYC's Lower East Side

Tour: Synagogues & Sacred Sites in NYC's Lower East Side

I frequently point out to the need to integrate Jewish heritage sites into broader heritage contexts, as there are relatively few places where Jewish sites can be sustained through Jewish visitorship and use alone. One growing movement is to provide walking tours based on themes in which Jewish sites are included because of history, art, music, location, etc.

These can be one-time events to better promote a building, or to strengthen ties with neighboring institutions and community organizations. They can be aimed to expose a non-Jewish audience to an interesting and important Jewish site, or they can be aimed to broaden the horizons, and offer greater programming options, to an already "captured" Jewish audience. This types of integrated programming also works in the development of permanent hertiage routes for hertiage tourism. Synagogues played many roles in Jewish communities and at communities at large. Thus, they can often take their place in tours devoted to historical themes other than strictly Jewish history - ethnic and immigration history, women's movement, labor history, etc. as well as tours devoted to art and architecture.

This Sunday the Museum at Eldridge Street on New York's Lower East Side offers an example of a varied tour of local sacred sites, putting Eldridge in a broader religious context, and focusing on the changing demographics of the Lower East Side as witnessed through synagogues, churches and (Buddhist) temples.

- SDG

Sacred Sites Walking Tour

Sunday, July 26 at 11am

Find sanctuary in the city on the Sacred Sites Walking Tour. On this tour—which begins at the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue—participants will stroll the streets of the Lower East Side visiting synagogues, churches and temples spanning 200 years of religious life in America. Discover many types of houses of worship, from early structures built by wealthy English landowners to historic houses of worship central to the Jewish, African American, Italian, Chinese and Hispanic immigrant experience.

$15 for Adults; $12 for Students & Seniors

RSVP to: hgriff(at)eldridgestreet.org

Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge Street
Between Canal & Division Streets

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The Museum at Eldridge Street presents the culture, history and traditions of the great wave of Jewish immigrants to the Lower East Side drawing parallels with the diverse cultural communities that have settled in America. The Museum at Eldridge Street is located within the Eldridge Street Synagogue, which opened its doors in 1887.

USA: Philadelphia's Society Hill Synagogue Receives Preservation Grant

USA: Philadelphia's Society Hill Synagogue Receives Preservation Grant
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) On February 7, 2009,The Philadelphia-based preservation organization Partners for Sacred Places has announced that Society Hill Synagogue, at 418 Spruce Street (between 4th and Lawrence Streets) in Philadelphia, has been awarded an $80,000 matching grant for critical repairs to the envelope of the 19th century sanctuary and annex. The money comes from Partners’ Philadelphia Regional Fund for Sacred Places, established three years ago. This is the Fund’s first grant to a synagogue. Over the course of the next two years, the congregation must raise at least $160,000 in matching funds to complete several restoration projects.

The massive granite, brick and stucco synagogue was designed by leading Philadelphia architect Thomas U. Walter (1804-1887) in 1829 as the Spruce Street Baptist Church, of which he was a member. In 1851, the church was enlarged and a new façade with an imposing attic story, was also designed by Walter. Originally there were cupolas over the side bays of the façade, which project slightly like towers, so the overall appearance of the building was loftier and less bulky. The Baptist Church left the building in 1908, when the area had become Philadelphia’s teeming Jewish immigrant neighborhood (my own grandfather was born just a few blocks away at 4th and Bainbridge). By 1910 the building was sold to a Romanian Jewish congregation, Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Nusach Ashkenaz.

The Society Hill Synagogue, a conservative congregation, was formed in 1967 during the early years of the revival, restoration and gentrification of what became known as the Society Hill Neighborhood. From 1968 on the congregation restored the building, including Walter’s façade, under the supervision of several architects Henry J. Magaziner (1968) and Cauffman, Wilkenson & Pepper, architects in association with John Milner (1971 ff.). The building is listed a Philadelphia City Landmark and on the state and National Registers of Historic Places. In 1985, architect James A. Oleg Kruhly designed a new addition and in 2007 planning began for an expansion into the building next door, to add classroom and administrative facilities.

In addition to the design of this unintended synagogue, Thomas U. Walter also designed the Egyptian Revival style Crown Street Synagogue in 1845. At that time Walter, who had been a pupil of William Strickland, was already well known as the designer of Philadelphia’s Classical style Girard College (1833-47) and the Egyptian style Moyamensing Debtor’s Prison, among other works. He would later go on to earn national fame as the architect of the dome of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

In past postings I have written about synagogues becoming churches, but early in the 20th century in American cities, the reverse was more likely to be true. Society Hill Synagogue is not the only synagogue in the neighborhood located in an historic church. Kesher Israel Synagogue at Lombard Street between 4th and 5th Streets was built as the First Universalist Church in 1794. It was transformed into a synagogue in the 1890s.

Society Hill Synagogue is open to the public weekdays from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm.
Best to call in advance (215) 922-6590. Kesher Israel can be visited by appointment. Call (215) 922-1776. Both congregations have regular services. Check for hours.