Synagogues in New York, Part 1

After visiting many interesting and beautiful synagogues in Bucharest and Budapest, I realized that I had never looked at any in New York.   So I began to plan to visit them.
My first stop was what is now called the Eldridge Street Museum.   It was built as a synagogue in the 1880's in the Lower East Side of New York, on Eldridge Street, when the neighborhood was the center of Eastern European Jewish immigration.    It was, at the time, a big deal, though gradually as the neighborhood changed over the years, it fell out of use, and was at the point of collapse in the late 20th century.   Luckily, it has been saved and totally restored, and is both a landmark and a museum.  The area around it now is all Chinatown (though, as New York changes, it may be something else in another 20 years). The interior and exterior are remarkable, done in the same wonderfully eclectic style as the synagogues we saw in Europe.   Though not as lavish, of course; the community that built it was not a rich one.   The building has a wonderful patina of age inside; you somehow can really sense how it might have looked and felt over a hundred years ago.   The building also contains various artifacts and exhibits relating to its history as well as exhibits showing the state of decay the building was in before it was restored.

Many pictures:

My second synagogue was the Temple Emanu-El, located at Fifth Avenue and 65th Street.  It's one of the largest synagogues around, built in the 1920's, and, as evidenced by its location, one of the more prosperous synagogues around.   I have walked by it many, many times, but had never been inside.   The synagogue is not exactly visitor friendly; you enter through a side door, through security, and then are personally escorted by a guard to the main part of the synagogue.  As a visitor you are restricted to a small area of the synagogue.   But this also means there are no crowds; there were virtually no other visitors while I was there.   It is a magnificent space, beautifully decorated with mosaics and stain glass windows.   The mosaics were designed by Hildreth Meière.  It is fascinating when you compare this synagogue with its neighbor down the street, the tourist mobbed St. Patrick's Cathedral.    This synagogue would surely deserve as much visitor interest as its neighbor, but I doubt they would want it.


Pictures: