The Synagogues of New York's Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View, 2nd Edition

W. Kehila Kedosha Ahavat Shalom de Monastir

w. kehila kedosha ahavat shalom de monastir (Congregation of the Holy Community Love of Peace of Monastir) (Demolished and Replaced with Housing) 173–175 Eldridge Street (between Delancey and Rivington Streets) until the late 1970s, there was a Sephardic congregation on the LowerEast Side named Kehila Kedosha Ahavat Shalom de Monastir(Peace and Brotherhood of Monastir). ThecityofMonastir,inwhatwasthensouthernYugoslavia, had been a major center for Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jews. This synagogue was located in the inter-building courtyard, and was reached by walking through the tenementbuilding ’sgroundfloorhallwaytotheback.Thebuilding housed a Kehila (sanctuary forthe congregation), with an outside and an inside stair to the women’s gallery. An upper floor housed the Talmud Torah (religious school for boys), called Ohr Torah, which had been founded in 1918 and survived until around 1950, when there were too few students to maintain its existence. The very first Sephardic immigrants in New York were the first Jews to arrive in America, back in 1654 when Peter Stuyvesant ruled New Amsterdam. While Sephardic immigrantsdidimmigratetoNewYorkinthenineteenthcentury , thesecondmajorSephardicimmigrationtookplaceroughly from the beginning of the twentieth century to about 1914, withincreasinglylargernumbersarrivingbetween1912and 1913 during the Balkan Wars. In 1907, there were enough Monastirlis,fromwhatwasthentheOttomanEmpire,living in New York City to found a mutual aid society, which was incorporated in 1910. By February 1911, the group had 120 members representing about 600 Monastirlis, who met at 197 Chrystie Street. On April 14, 1911, New York’s Judeo175 18317-Wolfe_Synagogues 9/24/12 12:05 PM Page 175 176 the “lost” or endangered synagogues Spanish newspaper, La America, reported that the Monastirlis held a great ceremony to celebrate the dedication of a new seferTorah (Torah scroll) fortheirsynagogue. A band played music, a children’s choirperformed, people danced inthestreets,andAmerican,Ottoman,andJewishflagswere flown. Emigration from Monastirto New York appears to have been brisk compared to other Sephardic communities. In the fall of 1912, when twelve Sephardic societies held High Holiday services in New York, the MonastirJews were one of only three groups that had a permanent synagogue, which was then located at 98 Forsyth Street. In 1915, 200 members attended a meeting of the MonastirSociety, representing a community of about a thousand. Changing future prospects forthis community and others , in 1921, the United States Congress passed laws limiting the numberof immigrants to the United States. Yugoslavian immigration was limited to 6,405 people. In 1924, an additional law was passed, allowing only 2 percent of the numberof those who emigrated from a certain country in 1890 to enter the United States. This effectively curtailed the expansion of the Monastircommunity in the United States as well as that of Eastern European Jews and Southern Italians. The Love & Peace MonastirInc. Society was founded in 1907 and continued to operate formany years. It branched out into otherparts of New York City, including New Lots, Brooklyn where a hospital and a home for the aged were created. As the Monastirlis from the Lower East Side and those from the New Lots area of Brooklyn moved “up and out,” they established a new facility in Cedarhurst, New Kehila Kedosha Ahavat Shalom de Monastir (1975) 18317-Wolfe_Synagogues 9/24/12 12:05 PM Page 176 York,locatedinNassauCountyonLongIsland.Afteratime, the congregation could no longermaintain its synagogue on Eldridge Street, so it was sold to a church. The site was later cleared and no trace of the earlierbuilding remains. Today, an apartment house occupies the site. Since the closing of Kehila Kedosha Ahavat Shalom de Monastir on Eldridge Street, the few remaining Monastirlis in the Lower East Side neighborhood joined the Romaniote congregation at Kehila Kedosha Janina on Broome Street. kehila kedosha ahavat shalom de monastir 177 18317-Wolfe_Synagogues 9/24/12 12:05 PM Page 177 Former Bialystoker Center Building 18317-Wolfe_Synagogues 9/24/12 12:05 PM Page 178 ...