This fascinating article in The Forward by Jenna Weissman Joselit about the destruction of synagogues in New York has many resonances with the debate over the future (or lack of future) of the Jewish community’s Twarda 6 “white building” in Warsaw, which we posted on earlier (and which has drawn some comments). The plan by Jewish community leaders to raze that building in order to put up a larger, modern structure is opposed by preservationists and others, both within and outside the Jewish community.
Joselit writes:
The other day, I was researching an article about the razing, in 1927, of Temple Emanu-El, arguably New York City’s premier Reform congregation, when it was located in the very heart of Midtown Manhattan. I no sooner finished putting pen to paper — or its digital equivalent — when I learned that Lincoln Square Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation in my neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, was imminently facing the wrecking ball.
I was struck hard by the coincidence. Though separated by a span of 86 years, as well as by a radically different approach to Judaism, Temple Emanu-El and Lincoln Square Synagogue are bound together by their fate, which has little to do with heavenly matters and everything to do with the value of their respective properties here on earth. Caught up in the currents of New York’s real estate market — which then, as now, were nothing if not volatile — both congregations accepted an offer that was simply too good to refuse. The result, as The New York Times observed in a valedictory salute to Midtown’s Temple Emanu-El, was “change, change everywhere.” And therein lies my tale.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/170648/storys-the-same-only-the-shul-has-changed/?p=all#ixzz2KRMmThSP