Activists cry foul after historic Brooklyn synagogue is demolished

• Published date: 30 March 2024
• Author: LEON KRAIEM
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The lot was home to Congregation Anshei Lubawitz, named for the Russian village that in the late 18th century spawned the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Chabad, a hassidic dynasty that, having barely survived the Holocaust, has since become one of the dominating forces of 21st-century Jewish life, is more associated with a different Brooklyn neighborhood, Crown Heights, where the movement's legendary headquarters sits at 770 Eastern Parkway

Whether the Anshei Lubawitz of today is in fact a Chabad congregation is a matter of dispute. If you ask Asher Gluck, who represents one side of the ongoing real estate controversy, the congregation's name is indeed an homage to the spiritual heritage of Lubavitch, but this is a shared lineage, from which the two both descend. Anshei Lubawitz was never an offshoot of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Gluck maintains.

Though a somewhat abstruse distinction, this internecine controversy is now tied up in a yearslong legal battle over who represents the synagogue, and who should determine its future.

Five years ago, a legal entity that presented itself as representing the membership of the congregation sold the property on which the synagogue sat to a real estate developer, in exchange for a promise to build the community a new, bigger, and better synagogue, complete with a ritual bath and a study hall, on the first two stories of a condo building.

Shul was dilapidated, says representative of the board

The synagogue was dilapidated, Gluck says, a relic of earlier times and unfit for current use. A full restoration would have been costly, he says, and the congregation was not in a financial state to invest that much money in a large-scale renovation project.

But the deal came under fire by a coalition of Chabad community leaders, who viewed the demolished synagogue as part of the movement's heritage, and a group of disaffected members of the shul, who say they never had a proper vote about whether to sell the property in the first place.

In 2019, the dissenters appealed to the City of New York to grant the synagogue landmark status, precluding its demolition and committing to its maintenance going forward, as a historic place in New York City history. The petition was rejected, but its 30 pages of synagogue history shed some light on why those who opposed the deal viewed the synagogue as more than just another old building.

The synagogue, which was originally built for a congregation called Temple Beth El, was believed to be one...