+ Brief History of Jews in Queens Prepared by Jeff Gottlieb

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Brief History of Jews in Queens
Prepared by Jeff Gottlieb, President, Queens Jewish Historical Society
1888 ✡ Hebrew Benevolent Society of Long Island City founded to “assist the sick and needy, bury the dead, care for the widows and orphans of deceased members.” 1896 ✡ Hebrew Union Veterans formed. They will become the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America. 1898 ✡ Consolidation of Greater New York City with the creation of the five boroughs. ✡ Temple of Israel in Rockaway Beach, organized in 1895, opens first Orthodox synagogue in Queens. ✡ Conservative Temple Gates of Prayer opens in Flushing and is incorporated as Congregation Shaarei Tefilla of Flushing, in 1904. 1899 ✡ Conservative Temple Beth-el of Richmond Hill has services in homes and Sabbath services in 1900. Their temple is built in 1915. 1903 ✡ Mount Hebron Cemetery opens in Flushing. Among the notables buried in this location are Yiddish Theatre superstars Maurice Schwartz and Boris Tomashevsky, developers Harry and Sam LeFrak and Conservative Jewish scholar/administrator Solomon Schechter. ✡ Organization of Sha’arei Tefilla Congregation. Purchase of land in Corona for use as a synagogue and school made in 1905. 1904 ✡ Orthodox Congregation Mishkan Israel of Astoria established. Their building goes up on 27-31 Crescent Street in 1905. ✡ Derech Emunoh congregation formed in Arverne, Rockaways with its edifice opening in 1905. 1905 ✡ Orthodox First Independent Hebrew Congregation of Jamaica opens on Washington Street (160th Street). ✡ Linas Hatzedek temple opens on Liberty Avenue, South Jamaica. ✡ Congregation Sons of Israel founded in Middle Village. ✡ First services of Maspeth’s Ohav Sholom Anshei congregation. Its synagogue is dedicated in 1906. ✡ Cornerstone of Smith Street Synagogue, Corona, put in place on June 23. 1906 1907 ✡ Congregation Sons of Israel formed in Middle Village. ✡ Reform Temple Israel of Far Rockaway begins services; its building opens in 1908.

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✡ Congregation Ahavith Achim (Wayne Street Shul) formed in Middle Village. A new building is constructed on 67th Drive in 1926. ✡ First Maspeth Jewish Center services. Its synagogue is built in 1910 and a permanent shul is constructed in 1926 on Grand Avenue. 1908 ✡ Russian-born Harry Lefrak marries Sarah Schwartz and begins a real estate dynasty. From Bayside to Woodhaven and from Astoria to the Rockaways Jewish developers Harry and his son Samuel Lefrak, Jack Goodstein, Jack Holland, Irving Minskoff, Joe Kalikow, the Wolosoff brothers, Harry Ossias, George M. and Alfred Gross and Lawrence Morton (the founders of Gross-Morton), and David Minkin will bring affordable housing to new Queens residents. Jewish architects Philip Birnbaum and Benjamin Braunstein, among others, will give a new look to Queens. 1910 ✡ Jewish population in Queens is 20,000; 7.0% of the total Queens population. ✡ Congregation Shaaray Tefila organized in Far Rockaway. It will dedicate its temple in 1915. 1911 ✡ Tifereth Israel of Corona opens. It will be, in 2003, the first Queens synagogue to be on the state and national register of historic places. ✡ Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 workers, mostly Jews, in lower Manhattan. The tragedy will lead to progressive fire safety laws. A group of the deceased are buried at Mount Zion Cemetery, Maspeth, Queens. 1912 ✡ Mishkan Israel of South Jamaica is organized. Helping out, later, on the Sabbath, will be Christian neighbor Mario Cuomo, who would mature into a three-term governor of New York State. 1917 ✡ Reform Free Synagogue of Flushing opens its doors on Kissena Boulevard. Architect Maurice Courland designs the new 1927 building in Greek Revival style. Rabbis Max Meyer and Charles Agin serve the synagogue from 1922 to 1990. 1918 1919 ✡ Reform Temple Israel of Jamaica has first services. It will move from Jamaica to Holliswood in 1953. ✡ Hebrew Institute of Middle Village is formed. ✡ The congregation later known as the Jewish Center of Jackson Heights is formed at 73rd Street and Woodside Avenue, Woodside. It is chartered as Adath Israel Congregation in 1920 and incorporated as the Jewish Center of Jackson Heights in 1925. The original site was used, with one interruption, until 1960 when the congregation moved to 34-25 82nd Street. The present synagogue site is 37-06 77th Street (2002) where it will have significant outreach to gays and lesbians. ✡ Congregation Agudos Achim Synagogue formed in College Point. Building of sanctuary at 24-01 21st Street begins in 1924. The shul merges with the Conservative Whitestone Hebrew Center in 1999. The College Point property is sold in 2000. 1921 ✡ Conservative Temple Beth-El opens its new building, on 121st Street, in Rockaway Park. The building is designed by Maurice Courland. ✡ Jamaica Jewish Center opens. It will eventually have a gymnasium, pool and lounge facilities for its Conservative congregants. Judge Benjamin Marvin is its first president. Prominent congregants are businessmen on Jamaica Avenue including the Gertz family.
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1922 ✡ Temple Sons of Jacob opens at 97-44 75th Street, Ozone Park. A $50,000 Hebrew School is dedicated on October 30, 1922. Many Brooklyn residents become congregants. Rabbi Morris Spitz is the last rabbi of the congregation, serving from 1948 to 1993. 1924 ✡ First services, in homes, of the Conservative Forest Hills Jewish Center. ✡ Congregation Agudas Israel of Ridgewood buys its Cornelia Street building from a church. It will endure and expand its membership in the face of local German-American Bund rallies in the 1930s. ✡ Richmond Hill Jewish Center opens on 117th Street and 103rd Avenue. Rabbi Mordechai Stern leads congregation for twenty-four years (1925-1949). Many worshipers own businesses on Liberty Avenue and 101 st Avenue. 1925 ✡ St. John’s College, founded by the Vincentian Fathers in 1870, opens a School of Law. Its first graduating class (1928) has over 20% Jewish students. ✡ Conservative Astoria Center of Israel (22-35 Crescent Street) is constructed next to Mishkan Israel of Astoria. ✡ Congregation Kneseth Israel of Far Rockaway buys Temple Israel building, which resembles a New England Congregational church. The congregation calls the temple “The White Shul”. Kneseth Israel moves to a new building in 1964. ✡ Ozone Park Jewish Center begins services above the Crossbay Movie Theatre. ✡ B’nai Israel Congregation of Woodhaven builds synagogue at 89-07 Atlantic Avenue. 1926 ✡ First meeting of Bayside Jewish Center in a store on 32nd Avenue and 201st Street, moving to 35th Avenue and 206th Street in 1939. The building of the Clearview Expressway forces the building of a new synagogue at 203rd Street and 32nd Avenue in 1960. 1928 ✡ Orthodox Woodside Jewish Center begins operation. It will have 400 worshipers in the 1960s. ✡ Orthodox Talmud Torah of Richmond Hill builds a synagogue at 109-25 114th Street. 1929 ✡ Kew Gardens Anshe Sholom Jewish Center begins in Columbia Hall in Richmond Hill. ✡ Laurelton Jewish Center is organized in new Laurelton community of 929 homes built by Gross-Morton. The community is almost completely Jewish in 1958. 1930 ✡ Queens Jewish population is 75,000; 6.8% of the total Queens population. ✡ Queens Jewish Center of Queens Village is constructed. 1931 ✡ Young Israel of Sunnyside organized. It has a new building constructed in 1944.

1933 ✡ The Rabbinical Seminary of America (Chofetz Chaim Yeshiva) opens in Williamsburgh, Brookyn. It is the third rabbinical yeshiva in the United States. It moves to Kessel Street, Forest Hills in 1955 and opens the first Jewish high school in Queens in 1956. Its new seminary opens in Kew Gardens Hills in 2003.
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1935

✡ Beth Israel Center of St. Albans is organized. ✡ Howard Beach Jewish Center is organized. It will merge with Temple Judea of Lindenwood, in 1979, to form the Howard Beach Judea Center. Rabbi Meier Kahane officiates at the Howard Beach Jewish Center in 1966-1967 before moving on to the Traditional Synagogue of Rochdale Village from 1967-1969. ✡ Beginning of Reform Temple Isaiah, under Rabbi Solomon Landman, in Kew Gardens. It will move to Forest Hills in 1953 and will be part of the merger which leads, in 1994, to The Reform Temple of Forest Hills located at 71-11 112th Street. ✡ Congregation Beth-El of Astoria organized and a new brick building occupied, in 1939, at 30-85 35th Street.

1936

✡ First yeshiva in Queens formed in Arverne: Yeshiva of the Rockaways. The yeshiva moved to Congregation Shaare Zedek in Edgmere and then to Far Rockaway in 1939, where its name was changed to the Hebrew Institute of Long Island (HILI). ✡ Jews numbered 36.64% of the population of Brooklyn and 43.5% of the population of the Bronx. ✡ Queens College opens with 369 students and 26 teachers. Its Jewish president, Paul Klapper, is an official at the Yiddish Scientific Institute-YIVO. He lives in Flushing on Sanford Avenue. ✡ Start of Rego Park Jewish Center in a private residence. It will find a permanent location in 1948 in an art deco structure at 97-30 Queens Boulevard.

1937

1939

✡ Hillcrest Jewish Center opened. ✡ Kew Gardens Adath Yeshurun Synagogue originates in the home of David Levine. It will open its new building, in 1949, on Abingdon Road, off Lefferts Boulevard, in the presence of the revered Dr. Samuel Belkin, President of Yeshiva University. ✡ Reform West End-Sinai Temple opens in the Rockaways. It will move to Neponsit, in 1949, and build a new edifice in 1954. Rabbi Joseph I. Weiss will lead the congregation from 1949 to 2002.

1941 ✡ Second yeshiva in Queens, the Yeshiva of Central Queens, opens in South Jamaica; it will move to Kew Gardens Hills in 1974. ✡ Jamaica’s Abe Simon loses to heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis in thirteen rounds. ✡ Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel are born three weeks apart. Growing up in Kew Gardens Hills and living across the street from each other, they attend the same primary and secondary schools, including Forest Hills High School, before achieving musical greatness. ✡ First services of Kew Gardens Hills Jewish Center are held in a Main Street store. 1945 ✡ End of World War II. Out of 5,000 Bukharians called to service in the Russian Army, 2,000 will die in combat. There were 11,000 Jewish American dead in the second world war; 52,000 decorations will be awarded to the Jewish American war contingent that numbers 550,000. Over 1,000,000 Jewish Americans will serve the United States in
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twentieth century conflicts. 1946 ✡ Tin Pan Alley’s Harry Von Tilzer (“Wait til the Sun Shines, Nellie”) dies and is buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery. ✡ New site for 99-07 66th Avenue Queens Jewish Center is purchased on 108th Street off of 66th Avenue. ✡ I. Usher Kirshblum, formerly of the Flushing Jewish Center begins term as rabbi of the Kew Gardens Hills Jewish Center. His tenure will be from 1946-1983. 1947 ✡ United Nations’ General Assembly, in Flushing Meadows, partitions the British Mandate of Palestine. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, on May 14, 1948, declares the new State of Israel. The United States is the first country to recognize Israel. ✡ Great Chazan Moshe Koussevitzky arrives in the United States. Son Alexander Koussevitzky will become cantor of the Utopia Jewish Center, Hillcrest. 1948 ✡ More Jews in the Bronx – 650,000 – than in the new State of Israel. ✡ Thirteen year-old Elvis Aaron Presley moves from Tupelo, Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee where he will have many Jewish friends and neighbors. He will, during the Sabbath, turn on the electricity and gas for upstairs neighbor Rabbi Alfred Fruchter’s Temple Beth El Emeth. Young Presley refuses compensation for the deed. “The King” would later donate money for a room at the local Jewish Community Center and will have a Star of David inscribed on his mother’s foot stone at her grave site in Graceland. An Elvis connection to Queens? The same Rabbi Fruchter, years later, officiated at the marriage of Eva Friedman to Stephen Scholle, great grandson of attorney Louis B. Marshall, in Westchester. Eva Friedman Scholle is the sister of Dr. Judith Friedman, Forest Hills resident, historian and former president and chair of the Board of the Central Queens YM-YWHA. 1949 ✡ New Jewish Center of Kew Gardens Hills opens on Main Street. ✡ New edifices of Forest Hills Jewish Center (Queens Boulevard) and Cambria Heights Jewish Center (222nd Street and 116th Avenue) open for business while the new Hillcrest Jewish Center (Union Turnpike) building is dedicated, thus ushering in an era of Conservative synagogue greatness. Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz is spiritual head of the Hillcrest Jewish Center. 1950 ✡ Queens Jewish population is 224,000; 14.5% of the total Queens population. ✡ Toras Emes opens in Kew Gardens Hills near the Parsons Movie Theatre, under Rabbi H. Joel Lax. ✡ Temple Beth Sholom (TBS) breaks away from the Free Synagogue of Flushing. First full-time female cantor in Queens is installed at TBS in 1971: Hilda Abrevaya. 1951 ✡ Rockwood Park Jewish Center is formed. ✡ Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld begins his fifty-five year tenure at the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills. New Young Israel building goes up in 1955. ✡ Beginning of the Bell Park Jewish Center.

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✡ Dedication of Congregation Ahavoth Torah of Sunnyside at 45-16 48th Street. Rabbi Alter Silverman is spiritual leader of the Orthodox temple. ✡ Young Israel of Queens Valley opens its doors at 78th Avenue, Vleigh Place, in Kew Gardens Hills. Rabbi Peretz Steinberg will assume the rabbinate in 1961. 1952 ✡ Young Israel of Hillcrest is founded in a store on Fresh Meadow Lane. ✡ Clearview Jewish Center is organized and will dedicate a permanent home, in 1957, at 16-50 Utopia Parkway. 1953 ✡ Bayswater Jewish Center is dedicated in Far Rockaway.

1955 ✡ Beginning of the Rosedale Jewish Center in a church basement. The first Rosh Hashana service will be in a tent and the building completed in 1971. It is known for its beautiful stained glass windows. 1960 ✡ Queens Jewish population peaks at 542,000; 30% of the total Queens population. Russian Jews begin arriving in increased numbers in the United States with the Bukharan segment having a heavy influx in the 1980s. 1962 ✡ Assemblyman Moses Weinstein becomes the first Queens Jewish Democratic Party Chair.

1967 ✡ Founding of Queens Jewish Community Council at Holliswood Jewish Center. The organization moves to the Hillcrest Jewish Center in 1968 and then to Forest Hills in 1978. It will be located in its own new quarters in Kew Gardens Hills in 2006. ✡ Nat and Maxwell Dorr Post #793 of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America begins its existence in Kew Gardens Hills. 1969 ✡ Sidney Leviss becomes the first Jewish borough president of Queens. ✡ New Young Israel of Far Rockaway synagogue opens. The congregation was formed in 1964. 1970 ✡ Touro College is chartered by the State of New York. Its Lander College for Men will open in 2000 in Kew Gardens Hills. Founder and President of Touro College is Dr. Bernard Lander who lives, on 69th Road, in Forest Hills. 1973 ✡ Abraham Beame is elected as the first Jewish mayor of New York City. ✡ The Vaad Harabonim of Queens is organized to supervise Kashruth standards. 1974 ✡ First eruv in Queens is established in Kew Gardens Hills,to be followed by similar designations in Hillcrest, Forest Hills and Briarwood. 1977 ✡ The award-winning Mesivta Chaim Shlomo High School is opened at 211 Beach 17th Street, Far Rockaway. Known for its exterior brick work, it is an educational mecca for students from Queens and Nassau counties. 1981 ✡ Havurat Israel Synagogue breaks away from the Forest Hills Jewish Center to form an Orthodox center at 106-20 70th Avenue, under Rabbi David Algaze.

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1983

Shulman. Dr. Arthur Flug is appointed Executive Director in 2005.

✡ Holocaust Resource Center and Archives begins at Queensborugh Community College by Dr. William

✡ Beth Elohim Synagogue founded by Chief Rabbi Levi Ben Levy. The Black Jewish congregation in St. Albans is now led by his sons, Rabbis Sholomo Ben Levy and Benyamin Levy at 189-31 Linden Boulevard. 1986 ✡ Rabbi Isaac Yehoshua arrives in the United States from Israel. He will become the Chief Rabbi of the Bukharan community, which now numbers over 50,000 people in Queens. ✡ Pope John Paul II greets Rabbi Elio Toaff at Rome’s main synagogue. 1987 ✡ Natan Rapoport’s bronze “Job” statue is donated to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. It is now in the Overlook area of Forest Park. ✡ Formation of the Queens Society for Humanistic Judaism at the Hilltop Coach Diner in Hillcrest. The organization is now called the Queens Committee for Cultural Judaism. ✡ First Jerusalem Stone synagogue in central Queens built by Bobby Jacobs and Archie Rabinowitz. It is for Rabbi Isaac Oelbaum (Congregation Nachlas Yitzchok, Kew Gardens Hills. 1988 1993 ✡ Rabbi Samuel Geffen retires after 45 year tenure at the Jewish Center of Forest Hills West (63-25 Dry Harbor Road, Middle Village). 1994 ✡ Lubavitch Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson dies and is buried at Montefiore Cemetery in Cambria Heights. 1997 ✡ Separate women’s prayer services banned by the Vaad Harabonim of Queens.

2000 ✡ Queens Jewish population is 186,000; 8.5 % of the total population in Queens as movement to the suburbs takes its toll. 2001 2003 ✡ First Menorah lighting in Station Square, Forest Hills Gardens. ✡ Founding of the Queens Jewish Historical Society. Founder and first president is Jeff Gottlieb. ✡ The merger of the Flushing Jewish Center and Fresh Meadows Jewish Center is followed in 2004 by the merger of three Conservative synagogues into the Israel Center of Conservative Judaism. Flushing Jewish Center is sold to a Korean church for $4 million. 2004 ✡ New Klal Nachlas Avos-EJC shul opens up on Myrtle Avenue and 114th Street in Richmond Hill with the support of the Elmhurst Jewish Center. 2005 ✡ Rabbi Shlomo Nisanov is the first Bukharan president of the Vaad Harabonim of Queens. ✡ Romiel Daniel, President of the Rego Park Jewish Center, leads American-(East) Indian efforts to save Beth-El Synagogue of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India. ✡ Opening of new Hatikvah Synagogue on Lefferts Boulevard, adjacent to the Kew Gardens Synagogue, under Rabbi Avrohom Hecht.
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✡ Three women rabbis are leading Reform temples in Queens: Jo David at the Free Synagogue of Flushing, Shelly Kuvan Bechat at Temple Sholom and Valerie Leiber at Temple Israel of Jamaica Estates. ✡ Merger of two Conservative synagogues: The Jewish Center of Bayside Oaks and the Jewish Center of Bayside Hills.

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