There Went a Schule

New York Magazine reports:

Thomas Nozkowski, a painter, and his wife, the sculptor Joyce Robins, stumbled across a cardboard for rent sign on Hester Street just as they were finishing their studies at Cooper Union. That the studio was a dilapidated former synagogue didn’t mean as much as the 25-foot ceilings and excellent light.



The property had other lives before the couple, who married in 1967 after art school, moved in. It had housed an underwear factory, a shower-curtain factory, the neighborhood still, a Chinese laundry, and a fabric store.

By Jove!

Chabad is having problems with their synagogue in Litchfield, Conneticutt.

They sought permission to renovate a 135-year-old historical Victorian home. The Star of David they wished to put up passed the Historic District Commission but the panel found a proposed addition to the home and several other architectural changes too much to bear and rejected the application.

And who defends the town's resticitve decision?

A Jew.

A Mr. Goldberg.

A Mr. Zeus Goldberg.

Here, read:-

...But the proposed installation of double doors on the front of the 2,656-square-foot house and a clock tower on its roof was deemed out of touch with the historical character of the building, and the “massive” proposed addition to its rear was said to destroy its residential nature.

...One longtime resident, Zeus Goldberg, 70, who is Jewish, said the commission’s rejection “wasn’t based on anti-Semitism. It’s based on the town trying to maintain its character. That’s why they don’t allow a McDonald’s there.”

Jove is a variation of Zeus, in case you missed it.

Whoa There Ladies!

Georgia women sentenced for disrupting services at temple

A mother and daughter from Georgia were each sentenced Monday to a three-year conditional discharge for disrupting services at two upstate New York temples.

Peggy Davidson and Judy Overby of McDonough, Ga., each pleaded guilty earlier this month to one felony count of falsely reporting an incident and two misdemeanor counts of disrupting a religious service. Onondaga County Judge Anthony Aloi sentenced the women over the objections of prosecutors, who wanted jail time.

Davidson, 44, and her 74-year-old mother were arrested for disrupting services Sept. 8 at Temple Adath Yeshurun in DeWitt and Young Israel-Shaarei Torah synagogue in Syracuse. Authorities said the women also threatened to blow up the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem.

The two women claimed they were missionaries who came to Syracuse in September because of dreams they had from God.

Ladies, ladies. Please. One temple at a time.

Miami CIS: Cadavered Invalid Synagogues

In an article on the former Jewish Miami Beach, For Shtetl by the Sea, Only a Few Fading Signs Remain, Abby Goodnough, notes the new uses the old Jewish area's synagogues are being put to:

The synagogue at 1415 Euclid Avenue had only a few members left when Daniel Davidson, a New Yorker seeking a standout South Beach retreat, bought it in 2003.
“I thought the space magical,” he said of the spare, white 16,000-square-foot building — now back on the market for $9,950,000 — “irrespective of religion.” And so the Orthodox synagogue, Kneseth Israel, became Temple House, where Mr. Davidson has not only lived but also allowed Budweiser to film a commercial, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and Al Gore to hold a Democratic fund-raising event and Jennifer Lopez to stage a listening party for her latest album, belting out love songs near where the Torah ark used to be.

...A few remain, like the Hebrew-inscribed doors of a deserted Orthodox shul being converted to condominiums and the old entryway to Wolfie’s, a beloved coffee shop demolished for a condo building that will keep the faded front as a relic...Its oldest synagogue, Beth Jacob, also closed that year after membership dropped to 22, from 1,200 in the 1950s. Its domed building is now the Jewish Museum of Florida, housing memorabilia like mah-jongg boards and anti-Semitic real estate ads promising “always a view, never a Jew.” (Residents with “Hebrew or Syrian blood” generally could not rent or buy north of Fifth Street until the 1950s.)

On Lincoln Road, the pedestrian thoroughfare at the heart of South Beach, Temple King Solomon has given way to Touch, a restaurant and lounge with occasional belly dancers and flame throwers. On Washington Avenue, the Cinema Theater, home to one of the longest-running Yiddish vaudeville shows in the world, is now Mansion, a club favored by Paris Hilton types.

...“It’s an entirely different story now,” said Mrs. Cooper, a Holocaust survivor who moved to a condominium in Pembroke Pines but still performs here now and then. “People from Hollywood, movie stars, come to stay in those hotels now. It has nothing to do with the Jewish people anymore.”

At Temple Emanu-El in South Beach, Rabbi Kliel Rose is striving to attract young Jews while keeping older, second- and third-generation members. The cavernous stone synagogue drew 1,200 families in the 1980s; it claims about 260 now.

...“We are truly experimenting,” said Rabbi Rose, 36, who wears an earring and was recruited from Congregation B’Nai Jeshurun, a booming conservative synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “We are trying to think outside the box.”

...Marcia Zerivitz, founding executive director of the Jewish Museum of Florida, said that while the decline of the Jewish population is an old story here, the rest of the country is surprisingly unaware. Filmmakers and writers still call her to say they want to document Jewish culture in Miami Beach, Ms. Zerivitz said.

“I get calls like that all the time, especially from California and up east,” she said. “I say: ‘Sorry, you’re many, many years too late. There’s nothing left.’ ”