5774 High Holiday Letter from our President

Elul 5773

August 2013

Dear Friends,

I hope this letter finds you and your families well.

You may have noticed that the High Holidays begin very early this year. This is because the Jewish calendar is largely a lunar calendar and is about eleven days shorter every year than the solar calendar. In order to make sure Passover falls in the spring (as the Torah mandates), the rabbis established that every once in a while (seven times in a nineteen year cycle to be exact), an additional month be added, making a total of thirteen months.  Our new year will have such an additional month.

Today, the Jewish calendar has been calculated for the foreseeable future, but in antiquity, the addition or intercalation of a new month was decreed by a Jewish court. The Gemara in Sanhedrin 11a-11b discusses the conditions under which a month could be added. Among these were allowing time for roads and bridges to be repaired, allowing time for the ovens to dry, and giving Jews travelling from outside Judea time to make it to Jerusalem for Passover. All of these made it easier for Jews to celebrate the holiday.  In Hebrew, a year with an additional month is called a shanas me’uberes a “pregnant year.” Our liturgy suggests that it is pregnant with blessings. In the Kedushas Ha-Yom (Sanctification of the Day) blessing of the Rosh Chodesh Musaf Shemoneh Esreh, six pairs of blessings – one blessing for each month – are listed: goodness and blessing, joy and happiness, salvation and consolation, livelihood and sustenance, life and peace, forgiveness of sin and pardon of transgression. During a shanas me’uberes, we add another blessing:  atonement of iniquity.

As we begin the New Year – a shanas me’uberes – we would be wise to remember that the additional month was proclaimed out of consideration of others. So too should we strive to be considerate of others. Moreover, the additional month brings additional opportunities and an additional blessing. As this particular blessing demonstrates God’s patience and love for us, we should emulate His example when we ourselves deal with other people. In this way we will hopefully merit all the blessings listed above.

We are excited as the High Holidays approach. As we have done for decades, we will be holding our Selichos service with the students from Columbia/Barnard Hillel. The service will take place on Motzoei Shabbos, August 31/September 1, 2013 and will be led by Orrin Tilevitz, as he has done for many years. This year we will celebrate our eleventh annual Rosh Hashanah dinner. I am delighted to note that our outstanding High Holiday baalei tefilah, Yosef Tannenbaum and Rabbi Reuven Hoff will be back again to lead us in davening this year.

I am also delighted to report that the New York Landmarks Conservancy has awarded us a $25,000 Jewish Heritage Fund matching grant to help pay for repointing of the exterior of the building, replacing the rear exit doors, repainting the fire escapes and restoring the rear stained-glass window. We anticipate the total cost for this project to be $60,000.  In order to be eligible for the grant, we have to raise at least $10,000 for this purpose (of which we have already raised $2,000) by June 2014.  We will have to make up the remaining $15,000 from savings. Please help us reach our immediate goal of raising at least the minimum $10,000 needed to receive this grant. Your support for this effort will be deeply appreciated and will enable us to move on to restoring the interior of the building.

We have had a good spring and an equally good summer. Thanks to the generous support of an anonymous donor, we were able to accommodate everyone who wished to join us for our popular Passover Seder.  Daniel Fridman, who has completed his rabbinical studies at Yeshiva University this year, continues to give his excellent shiur every Sunday morning after Shacharis.  This year he taught also on Shavuos and Tisha Ba-Av. Thanks to Dale Brown’s energetic efforts (with the help of Tashia Amstislavski and others) our garden in the back provides a beautiful and welcome place for contemplation. Dale also led us this past June on another very successful visit to the Old Broadway section of the Riverside Cemetery, where we weeded the graves of our deceased members and recited Kel Male in their memory. Looking forward, we have arranged to have Ben Elton, a talented rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, present a Kiddush-Luncheon series this fall. I am also happy to say that over the last few months, we have attracted a small but growing number of new congregants. We are looking forward to further growth and success in the New Year!

Your generous help has enabled us to welcome people and provide them with beautiful davening and a warm community.  You have also enabled us to maintain and restore our historic building. As the New Year approaches, we turn to you again. We hope that we continue to be worthy of your support so that we may continue to be a beacon of Yiddishkeit and Torah to many Jews in Harlem, Morningside Heights and the Upper West Side.  May Hashem inscribe and seal you and your families for good health, happiness and success for the New Year.

לשנה טובה תכתבו ותחתמו,

א גוט געבענטשט יאר,

Paul Radensky

Dr. Paul Radensky

President 

P.S. Mazel tov to Benjamin Waldman and Bracha Rubin and Sheyna Radensky and Eli Ehrenreich on their weddings this summer! 

100 Years of the Chevra Talmud Torah Anshei Marovi, Inc.

On June 11, 1911, a group of Jewish men in the West Harlem neighborhood of Manhattanville incorporated their newly created minyan as the Chevra Talmud Torah Anshei Marovi, Inc. After nine years of meeting in rented spaces, the congregation bought a small, two story house at 15 Old Broadway. In 1923, the congregation constructed their house of worship, the Old Broadway Synagogue. This is the building that we daven in today. In this post, and God willing in the ones that follow, I hope to examine aspects of our shul's history during its first century.
  

A visual focal point for our synagogue has long been the large stained glass window the dominates the facade of the building. Of course, from the late 1960s until 2003, there was no window and in its place, was a bricked in arch with a marble Star of David in the center. While we take the stained glass window for granted, this was not always the case. In the 1960s, it was a liability. Teens would through stones through it from the street, and children from the congregation would sometimes push the panes of glass through their leading so that they would fall on the sidewalk. Consequently, the window always let in a lot of air and it kept the Kiddush Room breezier than one would like. A few years ago, I proudly told Mrs. Kret that we had restored the stained glass window. She was horrified - the old one was so drafty! I assured her that the new window was well sealed (it has safety glass in front of it), but I think she was still a little skeptical.

Since the original window did not exist anymore, recreating it was a challenge. We have some black and white photos that have the window in it, including one of the Ladies Auxiliary in which Mrs. Kret appears, and we have the tax photo of the facade that was taken by New York City in 1939 or 1940. These are great photos but they were challenging to use in determining the original color scheme of the windows. Fortunately, some of the original glass remained in the transom window (the small  window over the front door) and we were able to extrapolate from the remaining glass and the black and white photos what the original scheme really was.

Coming up with the design for the stained glass window was a bit tricky. The tax photo and the Ladies Auxiliary photo showed one design, but in the old dinner journals, we found a photograph of the shul in which the window had a different design, which I am including in this blog posting. The photo is from the thirtieth anniversary celebration of the congregation in 1942, but I assume the photo is actually much older. The design in the tax photo matches that of the Ladies Auxiliary, so this must be the later design. When recreating the stained glass facade (paid for by the Upper Manhattan Fund for Historic Preservation, which was administered by the New York Landmarks Conservancy), we had to decide which design to recreate, the older, possibly original, one and that of the 1940s and 1950s. Ultimately, we chose the latter scheme, which the Gil Studio beautifully executed.  I think you will agree it was a good choice.

Selecting the glass for the new stained glass window

Passover Message, 5771

Nissan 5771

April 2011

Dear Friends,

I hope this letter finds you and your families well.

We often take for granted Passover’s connection with spring. The holiday always takes place in the spring, and of course the Seder includes spring symbols such as the karpas and the egg. That Passover should take place in the spring is not a forgone conclusion. If we had a pure lunar calendar, Passover would start about ten days earlier each year, and over a few decades, would actually take place in every season of the year. Our sages created a calendar with a lunar foundation, but with the provision of an additional month (Adar sheni) added seven times in a nineteen year cycle. Why all the effort? The Torah states explicitly that God brought us out in chodesh ha-aviv, “the month of spring.” Rashi explains that God treated us with special kindness by bringing us out of Egypt at a time that was “neither hot nor cold nor rainy.” It has been a long and hard winter here in New York. I am grateful, at long last, to feel the warmth of the new season, the trees beginning to the flower and to see the sun finally coming out. As we enjoy spring, we should remember that this too is a kindness from God and we should use it to recall how God rescued us long ago, but ultimately, enabled us to be here today.

We are proud to report that thanks to your generous response to our emergency roof appeal and the help of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, which has agreed to loan us the reminder of the money on favorable terms, the work on the new roof is almost done. We are thrilled that the new roof will protect the shul for the next generation and will allow us to continue restoring the building.  Our next projects are installing emergency exit hardware on all the doors in the sanctuary and repairing and repainting the tin ceiling. After that, we hope to take down the paneling, upgrade the electrical system, rebuild the plaster walls and restore the decorative stenciling.

We have had an impressive array of learning programs this year. Daniel Fridman a rabbinical student at Yeshiva University, continues to give his excellent shiur every Sunday morning, and since the fall, we have been fortunate to have had a series of thoughtful Shabbos lectures given by Wendy Amsellem of the Drisha Institute, Mishael Zion of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Raphy Rosen of Columbia University, and Professor Rabbi David Flatto of Pennsylvania State University.

Under Rhonda Taylor’s leadership, we now have women’s group that meets every month on the Sunday before Rosh Chodesh. Funded by a grant from New York State, and led ably by Dr. Eliott Kahn, we are hosting a phenomenal Jewish music series. The most recent program was a wonderful concert with the Avram Pengas Ensemble, which featured Sephardic and Israeli music. We look forward to future events.

This year is the one hundredth anniversary of our founding, in June 1911. We are organizing a gala anniversary dinner, which will take place, G-d willing, on October 30, 2011. I am proud to announce our honorees: Gloria Landy, Dale Brown, Avi Terry, and myself. Please save the date for the dinner. We hope you will join us.

As you may know, Mrs. Chana Kret passed away in November 2010. She was a wonderful person in her own right – warm, outgoing and optimistic - and also a true ezer kenegdo, a partner with Rabbi Kret in everything that he did. Together Mrs. Kret and Rabbi Kret led our congregation, officially for forty eight years and also informally for many years after Rabbi Kret’s retirement. They are both deeply missed.

Although Rabbi and Mrs. Kret are no longer with us, we are striving to maintain their spirit of welcoming newcomers, warmth, and Torah. We are also working to keep our building safe and usable for generations to come. Please continue to support our efforts, and with your help the Old Broadway Synagogue will continue to be a very special and very holy place for years to come.

Warm regards for a happy and kosher Passover,

Paul Radensky

President