Former synagogue in Manhattan, New York
The First Roumanian-American Congregation, also known as Congregation Shaarey Shomayim (), or the Roumanishe Shul (Yiddish for "Romanian synagogue"), was an Orthodox Jewish congregation at 89–93 Rivington Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The congregation was organized in 1885 by Romanian-Jewish immigrants, serving the Lower East Side's large Romanian-Jewish community. The Rivington Street building, erected around 1860, switched between being a church and a synagogue and was extensively remodeled in 1889. The First Roumanian-American congregation purchased it in 1902 and again remodeled it.
The synagogue became famous as the "Cantor's Carnegie Hall", because of its high ceiling, good acoustics, and seating for up to 1,800 people. Yossele Rosenblatt, Moshe Koussevitzky, Zavel Kwartin, Moishe Oysher, Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker were all cantors there. Red Buttons sang in the choir, George Burns was a member, and Edward G. Robinson had his Bar Mitzvah there. The congregation's membership was in the thousands in the 1940s, but by the early 2000s had declined to around 40, as Jews moved out of the Lower East Side. Though its building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, the congregation was reluctant to accept outside assistance in maintaining it. In December 2005, water damage was found in the structural beams, and services were moved to the living room of the rabbi's mother. In January 2006, the synagogue's roof collapsed, and the building was demolished two months later.
Origins.
First Roumanian-American/Congregation Shaarey Shamoyim.
From 1881 through 1914, approximately 2 million Jews immigrated to the United States from Europe. An estimated three-quarters of them settled in New York City, primarily in the Lower East Side. Over 75,000 of these immigrants were from Romania, where Jews faced antisemitic laws, violence and expulsion. These hardships, combined with an economic depression influenced by low crop yields, resulted in 30 percent of the Jews in Romania emigrating to the United States.
Romanian Jewish immigrants in New York City gravitated to a fifteen-block area bounded by Allen, Ludlow, Houston and Grand streets. This "Romanian quarter" became the most densely populated part of the Lower East Side, with 1,500 to 1,800 people per block. These immigrants founded the First Roumanian-American congregation, also known as Congregation Shaarey Shamoyim.
The origins of the congregation are disputed; its establishment in 1885 may have been a re-organization of a congregation founded in 1860. Located initially close to the Romanian quarter at 70 Hester Street, and later situated at the heart of it with the move to Rivington Street, the synagogue was the preferred house of worship for the quarter's inhabitants.
Rivington Street building.
The Rivington Street building was constructed as a Protestant church around 1860 by the Second Reformed Presbyterian Church, which served the area's large German immigrant community. In November 1864 the building was sold to the Orthodox German-Jewish Congregation Shaaray Hashomayim ("Gates of the Heavens"), which had been founded in 1841. Though its Hebrew name was essentially the same as that used by the First Roumanian-American congregation—Congregation Shaarey Shamoyim—which later purchased the building in 1902, the two congregations were unrelated.
By the late 1880s, the German-Jewish community had mostly moved from the Lower East Side. In 1889, Congregation Shaaray Hashomayim moved to 216 East 15th Street, near Second Avenue, selling the Rivington Street building to the New York City Church Extension and Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which built or purchased churches, missions, and Sunday schools in New York City.
The Church Extension and Missionary Society engaged J. Cleaveland Cady to design major alterations to the structure. Cady was, at the time, New York's most famous church architect, and had designed many other public institutional buildings, including university buildings, hospitals and museums. His work included the original Metropolitan Opera building (since demolished), the Richardsonian Romanesque West 78th Street wing of the American Museum of Natural History, and several other buildings for the Church Extension and Missionary Society. The renovations cost approximately $36,000 (today $), and included an entirely new Romanesque Revival facade in the reddish-orange brick that Cady also used on several other churches.
Renamed the Allen Street Methodist Episcopal Church (or Allen Street Memorial Church), the Rivington Street building's new purpose was to "attract Jewish immigrants seeking conversion". It was, however, unsuccessful in this endeavor. In 1895, the church's pastor stated, "The existence of the church here attracts few. Our audiences are small, and contain almost no Jews."
Purchase and renovation by First Roumanian-American.
In 1902, the First Roumanian-American congregation/Congregation Shaarey Shamoyim purchased the Rivington Street building from the Church Extension and Missionary Society to satisfy a need for a larger building to serve the Lower East Side's rapidly growing Romanian-Jewish population. At the time, the property was valued at $95,000 (today $). The funds for the purchase were raised from the members of the congregation, and to honor those contributing $10 or more, names were engraved on one of four marble slabs in the stairway to the main sanctuary. The most generous gift was $500, at a time when $10 was two weeks' pay. The congregation also took out two mortgages; one for $50,000 (today $) with the Title Insurance Company, and a second for $30,000 (today $) with the Church Extension and Missionary Society.
The congregation commissioned Charles E. Reid for extensive renovations, at a cost of $6,000 (today $). The "eclectic Byzantine" remodeling involved converting it for Jewish use by removing Christian symbols and adding a Torah ark and "bimah" (central platform from which the Torah is read) at the sanctuary's north end. The renovations retained the original "horseshoe-shaped gallery supported by twelve Ionic columns" and wooden pews with reading shelves (likely from the 1889 Cady renovation), but a number of structural changes were made. Steel beams were added to support the weight of the ark and "bimah", the rear wall was re-built and the gallery extended to meet it, two skylights were added (a concave stained glass one and a clear glass one over the ark), and at the front of the building, on top of the shallow (14 feet deep) fourth-story attic, an equally shallow fifth-story attic was added.
The completed structure filled almost the entire width of its approximately by lot, and seated 1,600 to 1,800. Dedicated in late December 1902, it was the Lower East Side's largest synagogue and only Romanesque one, and it became an "architectural and public showpiece".
Early activities.
By 1903 the synagogue was well established on Rivington Street, and, due to its capacity and prominence, was often the site of significant or mass meetings. In April 1903 a service to honor the memory of Reform rabbi and Zionist leader Gustav Gottheil was held there, and a similar service was held for Theodor Herzl the following year. At the latter service, which was boycotted by Orthodox rabbis, Herzl was not eulogized, nor was his name mentioned.
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA) held its third annual convention at the synagogue in June 1903, attended by around 100 delegates, and presided over by the organization's president, Rabbi Henry Pereira Mendes. The most important resolutions adopted at that meeting were one that deprecated the granting of a "get" (religious divorce document) to—or allowing subsequent re-marriage by—people who had not first obtained a civil divorce, and the request that congregations with mostly foreign-born members "secure an English-speaking rabbi". At the meeting Albert Lucas also spoke out strongly against attempts by Christian groups to proselytize Jewish children in nurseries and kindergartens. Ostensibly to combat this proselytization, in 1903 the congregation was one of several New York City synagogues that allowed Lucas the use of its premises for free religious classes, "open to all children of the neighborhood".
In December 1905 a mass meeting was held at the synagogue to protest massacres of Jews in Russia and mourn their deaths, and the congregation donated $500 to a fund for the sufferers. In March 1909 Orthodox groups held meetings there to organize opposition to the constitution and make-up of Judah Leon Magnes's "Kehilla", an overarching organization intended to represent all of New York's Jews, which lasted until 1922. A mass meeting of local residents and businessmen to combat Lower East Side gangsters was held at the synagogue in 1913.
The Rivington Street synagogue was also a preferred venue for airing issues relevant specifically to Romanian-American Jews. In 1905 it was the site of New York City's only memorial service honoring United States Secretary of State John Hay, who had worked on behalf of oppressed Jews in Romania. In 1908, the synagogue hosted a meeting of over 30 religious organizations representing Romanian-American Jews, at which the formation of a federation of those organizations was proposed, and again in 1916 hosted a similar meeting of "two hundred delegates representing thirty-five organizations ... to plan incorporation of the American League of Rumanian Jews". At the latter meeting steps were taken to raise $1,000,000 (today $) for oppressed Jews in Romania, and to campaign for their "equal rights and their emancipation from thralldom".
The congregation carried out extensive charity campaigns during the Passover season; by 1905 the congregation was distributing wagon-loads of "matzos" to poor Jews so they could celebrate the holiday. By 1907–1908 membership had risen to 500 (up from 160 in 1900), the Talmud Torah had 250 students, and the synagogue's annual revenues were $25,000 (today $). The congregation ran into financial difficulties of its own in 1908, and in October of that year raised funds by selling a number of its Torah scrolls in a public auction.
Members who would become famous included George Burns and Bucharest-born Edward G. Robinson, who had his Bar Mitzvah there in 1906. Robinson would later laugh that his propensity for taking the stage was demonstrated when he gave the longest Bar Mitzvah speech in the history of the congregation—"but the men sat still and listened". In 1911 First Roumanian-American celebrated its ten-year jubilee at the synagogue. Guest speakers included United Synagogue of America president Solomon Schechter, Congressman Henry M. Goldfogle, and the principal speaker was William Jay Gaynor, then Mayor of New York City. Membership had grown to 350 families by 1919. The congregational school held classes daily, and had 4 teachers and 300 students. The American Jewish Year Book listed the synagogue's rabbi as Abraham Frachtenberg, a well-known cantor.
"Cantor's Carnegie Hall".
The synagogue's sanctuary had a high ceiling and "opera house" characteristics, and was renowned for its "exquisite" or "magnificent" acoustics. Known as "the Cantor's Carnegie Hall", First Roumanian-American became a center for cantorial music, and many of the greatest cantors of the 20th century led services there. Yossele Rosenblatt, Moshe Koussevitzky, Zavel Kwartin and Moishe Oysher all sang there, as did Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker before they became famous opera singers. Having a reputation for good cantorial singing had a positive impact on a synagogue's finances; congregations depended on the funds from the sale of tickets for seats on the High Holy Days, and the better the cantor, the greater the attendance.
Red Buttons sang at the synagogue with Rosenblatt in 1927, and when visiting the synagogue almost 70 years later could still remember the songs. Though his family actually went to a "small storefront synagogue", Buttons was discovered, at age eight, by a talent scout for Rosenblatt's Coopermans Choir, who heard him singing near the intersection of Fifth Street and Avenue C, at a "pickle stand". Buttons would sing in the choir for three years. Eddie Cantor has also been claimed as a choir member, though this is less likely.
Oysher—"the greatest of all popularizers of cantorial singing"—became the synagogue's cantor in 1935, and the congregation's membership peaked in the 1940s, when it numbered in the thousands. In a 1956 interview by Brendan Gill in "The New Yorker" magazine, Oysher described First Roumanian-American as "the most orthodox Orthodox synagogue in town". Oysher died of a heart attack two years later "at the young age of 51". The week of his death, he had said, "half-jokingly", that he wanted only one person to deliver his eulogy: Chaim Porille, rabbi of the First Roumanian-American Congregation. Porille had been born in Uścieczko (then in Austria-Hungary) in 1898, and moved to the United States in 1927, to serve as rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Providence, Rhode Island. He became rabbi of First Roumanian-American in 1932, a post he filled until 1962, and was a member of the executive board