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    Jewish Communities of the Five Towns and the Rockaways
    Jewish Communities of the Five Towns and the Rockaways
    Jewish Communities of the Five Towns and the Rockaways
    Ebook187 pages57 minutes

    Jewish Communities of the Five Towns and the Rockaways

    By The Jewish Heritage Society of the Five Towns

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    The Five Towns--comprising the villages of Cedarhurst and Lawrence and the communities of Woodmere, Hewlett, and Inwood--is an area nestled on the South Shore of Long Island next to the easternmost part of Queens, known as Far Rockaway. Originally popular as a Jewish summer vacation spot near the Atlantic Ocean, the Five Towns and the Far Rockaway area grew to become a thriving, year-round Jewish metropolis, with thousands of families and scores of synagogues and Jewish educational institutions. A center for shopping and kosher restaurants, the Five Towns area has become one of the most popular locations for young, married Jewish couples. Jewish influence has expanded greatly in local government and education. The rich history of the early years of Jewish growth and development in the Five Towns and Rockaways lends a deeper understanding of this phenomenal change of demographics and influence that has occurred over the last few decades.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateAug 31, 2015
    ISBN9781439652992
    Jewish Communities of the Five Towns and the Rockaways
    Author

    The Jewish Heritage Society of the Five Towns

    The Jewish Heritage Society of the Five Towns has gathered images from its vast collection and artifacts from the Leiman Library, local citizens, and institutions to paint a broader picture of its history and culture.

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      Book preview

      Jewish Communities of the Five Towns and the Rockaways - The Jewish Heritage Society of the Five Towns

      States.

      INTRODUCTION

      A picture is worth a thousand words.

      The Jewish Heritage Society of the Five Towns is proud to present a treasure trove of images that depict the formative years of the Five Towns and Far Rockaway area.

      This image collection is unique, as it depicts an ongoing story—one that continues to emerge and develop, like a child growing stronger. Jewish life in many American cities is just part of the past; however, the Five Towns and Rockaways support the opposite. Jewish life and customs continue to thrive.

      The images in this collection are from a time when Orthodox Jewish life in the Five Towns was shaky at best, and the images captured within this book tell of the perseverance that led these communities to flourish, embodying traditional Jewish life within the modernity of life in the United States. Indeed, many communities in Brooklyn or Rockland County are also vibrant with Hasidic Orthodoxy, and they, too, emerged from the embers of the Holocaust. However, the Five Towns has maintained a certain modernity that is able to blend American life with hundreds of families who are strongly committed to the traditional values and observances as proscribed in the Code of Jewish Law yet are professionals with modern American lives. It took the concerted efforts of devoted men and women to create a community that would be committed to old values while adapting to American life.

      Most of the photographs came from a treasure trove gathered by Rabbi Benjamin Kamenetzky over the nearly 60 years he has been living in Woodmere. At the time of his arrival, it was difficult to find 10 men who would want to join a minyan. Only one coeducational day school existed in Far Rockaway, and the pioneers of Orthodoxy wanted to preserve their strong commitment to tradition and Jewish rituals by creating a community with many more choices. The plan worked, people kept their commitment to Judaism, and the rate of assimilation was far less than other communities across Long Island and suburban areas in the northeast whose Jewish populations dwindle through attrition and assimilation.

      Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky, a native of the Five Towns who has children and grandchildren, loves to point to the streets packed with strollers and children on a Jewish holiday and reminisce: I was the only boy who wore a yarmulke within six blocks of my house. His children and grandchildren look at him in wonder and are unable to comprehend that indeed there was such a time in the Five Towns. It is a sad contrast to towns across the United States that once had 9 or 10 kosher butchers and dozens of synagogues, though today not even a single piece of kosher meat or a minyan can be located in those towns.

      People who have heart and soul—but not necessarily cameras—build communities. This book is not a mere narrative of history; the images in this collection are specific to a certain period of time and a criteria established by the publishers of this series. And where there were no images, it would be almost impossible to tell a story, and thus, many people and institutions may not have been included in this volume. Sometimes, we were only able to avail ourselves of only a few pictures that depicted major institutions, such as the White Shul, whereas other institutions had many more.

      This volume focuses primarily on institutions that began in the 1960s or earlier. Unfortunately, we did not include every school or synagogue if we did not have proper photographs for them. A large collection that belonged to Torah Academy for Girls, which began in the early 1960s, was lost during Hurricane Sandy, and we were not able to obtain pictures from the era that fell into Arcadia’s criteria. Yeshiva Darchei Torah, founded in the early 1970s, actually began in Shaaray Tefila. Even though it is now perhaps one of the largest and most influential schools in the Far Rockaway area, we were unable to get pictures of its founding years, and the only ones available were of its modern campus that now occupies what was once the El Roche complex that had become Hebrew Institute of Long Island (HILI).

      Yeshiva of Far Rockaway was another early institution not covered in the book. Rabbi Nathan Bulman, who moved to Israel where he lived until his passing in 2002, was a powerhouse of a rabbi who served at the Young Israel of Far Rockaway and founded that school, which is still thriving under the leadership of Rabbi Yechiel Perr.

      The following were omitted from the book due to lack of space, time-era criteria, and the black-and-white imagery specific to this series: Agudath Israel of Long Island, Agudath Israel of West Lawrence, Agudath Israel of the Five Towns, Beis Medrash Ateres Yisroel founded by Rabbi Avraham Blumenkranz, and Rabbi Shmelke Rubin’s shteeble. Since the mid-1980s, the Five Towns has seen synagogues and yeshivas appear on almost every street corner, and we apologize for not including them.

      The Sephardic community has also burgeoned over the last 20 years, and there are quite a number of synagogues that cater to the unique customs and nusach (order of prayer) of those particular communities. The large Sephardic Temple on Branch Boulevard, under the longtime leadership of Rabbi Arnold Marans, was the only Sephardic synagogue that met the time period criteria. It is unique to most Sephardic synagogues, as it allows for mixed seating. The liberal nature of that rule did not appeal to the young Sephardic families who have moved into the neighborhood over the last 20 years, and thus, many new synagogues were opened to cater to their desires. However, they were established recently and did not fit the criteria for

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