Park East Synagogue Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Park East Synagogue
Park East Synagogue in 2021
Religion
Affiliation	Modern Orthodox Judaism
Ecclesiastical or organizational status	Synagogue
Leadership	Rabbi Arthur Schneier
Status	Active
Location
Location	163 East 67th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York 10065
Country	United States
Location in Manhattan
Architecture
Architect(s)	Schneider & Herter
Architectural type	Synagogue
Architectural style	Byzantine Revival Moorish Revival Romanesque Revival
Date established	1890 (as a congregation)
Completed	1890
Dome(s)	2 (since removed)

The Park East Synagogue is a Modern Orthodox Jewish synagogue for Congregation Zichron Ephraim at 163 East 67th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Built in 1890, the synagogue building was designated as a New York City Landmark in 1980 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

Building
Clergy
Activities
- Curricular
- Notable events
Notable members
See also

Building

Domes were present in 1893

The building was built in 1889–1890. The architects were Schneider and Herter, who designed numerous tenements in Manhattan's Lower East Side and Hell's Kitchen neighborhoods.

The building is built in the Moorish Revival style and features a prominent rose window. One of its most remarkable characteristics is the asymmetrical twin towers, as the eastern tower is taller. In comparison, most other synagogues of the period featured twin towers of similar height. The towers are also adorned differently. Each of the towers originally was also topped by a bulbous dome that has since been removed. It is one of fewer than a hundred surviving nineteenth-century American synagogues. The synagogue building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Over the doorway, engraved in granite and written in Hebrew, is a verse from Psalm 100. "Enter into His Gates with Thanksgiving and into His courts with praise."

Clergy

Congregation Zichron Ephraim was established by Rabbi Bernard Drachman and Jonas Weil to promote Orthodox Judaism as an alternative to Reform Judaism popular on the Upper East Side.

Rabbi Drachman served as spiritual leader for fifty-one years. He died in 1945. Rabbi Zev Zahavy was appointed rabbi of the synagogue on September 1, 1952. He was known as a dynamic spokesman for Orthodox Judaism and many of his sermons were reported on in the New York Times. He and his wife Edith, a noted educator, founded the Park East Day School. On March 16, 1957, Robert Briscoe, the Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin, carrying his tallis bag, visited and prayed at the synagogue on Shabbos morning.

Since 1962, the synagogue's rabbi has been Arthur Schneier. Rabbi Schneier serves Park East Synagogue full-time while also drawing a salary from the Appeal of Conscience Foundation he founded. This leadership structure was criticized in 2021 by Daniel L. Kurtz, former head of the Charities Bureau at the New York State Attorney General’s Office, when he alleged that Park East has failed to hold regular membership meetings to ensure financial transparency. Kurtz also alleged that Park East’s trustees are directly appointed not elected, in a process which he has called “blatantly illegal”.

Rabbi Harold Einsidler is the religious spiritual organizer; his wife Toby is the office and youth leader. The synagogue's chief cantor is Yitzchak Meir Helfgot.

The October 2021 dismissal of Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, who had served as Park East's assistant rabbi for ten years, sparked a protest within the synagogue community and a public objection from Israeli Government minister Yoel Razvozov.

Activities

Curricular

The Park East Day School educates children from early childhood through eighth grade.

Notable events

In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI visited the synagogue in the midst of a visit to New York City. This was the third papal visit to a synagogue and the only such visit in the United States. In 2016, members of the synagogue heckled and jeered U.N. Director General Ban Ki-moon as he gave an address in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Notable members

Bernard Drachman
Yitzchak Meir Helfgot
Henry H. Minskoff
Tamir Sapir
Edwin Schlossberg
Arthur Schneier
Stuart Subotnick

Park East Synagogue facts for kids

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