Religion

Before Langston Hughes and Duke Ellington – and even before the Apollo Theater and the Savoy Ballroom – Harlem was a neighborhood of venerable synagogues, Yiddish theaters and overcrowded Jewish tenements.

Or at least for 30 years it was.

In 1921, Harlem boasted the third largest population of Jews in the world: nearly 178,000, according to the Jewish Communal Register, a census of the time. But by 1930, only 5,000 Jews remained north of 96th Street. And today, only one house of worship, the Old Broadway Synagogue in West Harlem, lives to tell the tale.

“ Harlem was only Jewish for a short period of time, but it was a rich time in Harlem’s history,” said Jeffrey S. Gurock, a professor of Jewish studies at Yeshiva University. “Both spiritually and socially, Jewish Harlem was a booming place.”

Jewish families began moving into Harlem in the late 1870s, when the elevated railroads were extended to Northern Manhattan and construction flourished, Gurock said.

“In Central Harlem, you had the businessmen who bought jewels for their wives and lived like alrightniks, Yiddish for people who succeeded,” Gurock said. “But in East Harlem, you had working-class Jewish immigrants who lived in a ghetto community. And the poor Jews really resented the rich Jews.”

Several photographs capture scenes from Jewish Harlem in black and white. The photographs, which now belong to the Union Theological Seminary, show young boys hocking Yiddish newspapers on street corners. Signs in Yiddish hang over doorframes. And synagogues stand proudly in the background. 

Dale Brown’s grandfather, for whom she was named, moved to Central Harlem from what is now the Ukraine in 1904. Although he was an aristocrat in his home country, he worked long hours in the United States as a tailor. He also fathered seven American children.

“It was really a community of hardworking people,” said Brown, 60, a paralegal and ballet teacher who lives on the Upper West Side. “My grandfather used to say that there was a great sense of camaraderie among them. They helped each other make it in America.”  

Harry Rubenstein’s cousins owned a newsstand on 125th Street after World War I. Rubenstein, 56, said his cousins described Jewish Harlem as a vibrant neighborhood, full of clothing stores and butchers. They convinced Rubenstein’s father, a native Pole, to move to Harlem from Austria in 1949.

“My cousins sold newspapers and candies – little things, really,” said Rubenstein, who grew up on Claremont Street in Harlem, but now lives in Teaneck, N.J. “The stand was something you’d put on the side of a wall. But they loved being on 125th Street.”

Spiritual life was also an important part of life in Jewish Harlem. Around the turn of the century, there were nearly 150 synagogues in Northern Manhattan, according to the Jewish Communal Register.

Of those synagogues, Old Broadway was one. Its congregation dates back to 1911, when a group of Orthodox Jewish men began worshiping together in storefronts and local churches. The men founded their own congregation, and erected a small synagogue in West Harlem in 1923.

But as the walls of the synagogue went up, Harlem was undergoing a rapid transformation. In 1921, Congress passed a law limiting the influx of Eastern European immigrants into the United States. As southern Blacks poured into Northern Manhattan, many of Harlem’s wealthy Jewish families moved to the Upper West Side. Other Jews relocated to working class neighborhoods in the South Bronx and Brooklyn. 

By 1930, Jewish Harlem had all but disappeared.

“It was not so much a matter of Jews not wanting to live with blacks as it was Jews with money wanting to move a step up on the economic latter,” said Gurock, the Jewish studies professor. “As the Upper West Side grew and developed, it became the new place to be.”

Today, Central Harlem boasts the largest population of Blacks in New York City: nearly 170,000 African-Americans and African immigrants, according to the 2000 Census. Soul food restaurants and African hair braiding salons now line 125th Street. And East Harlem has been nicknamed “El Barrio” for its predominantly Hispanic community.

Consequently, few traces of Jewish Harlem remain. Many of the neighborhood’s synagogues have been turned into churches. The synagogue that once housed Congregations Tikyvath Israel an Ansche Chesed on East 112th Street is now the Christ Apostolic Church of U.S.A. And Temple B’nai Israel on West 149th Street is now the Gospel Missionary Baptist Church.

Old Broadway claims to be the last mainstream synagogue remaining in Harlem. The one other Jewish congregation, the Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, is a non-traditional black congregation that does not have historical ties to Jewish Harlem.

Gurock disputes Old Broadway’s claim on a technicality; he says the Old Broadway Synagogue is in Harlem Heights, a neighborhood slightly southwest of Harlem. Regardless, Old Broadway remains a vibrant religious community. These days, roughly 20 people come to pray on Saturdays, the Orthodox holy day, said Paul Radensky, the congregation’s president. Some of the worshippers have been attending services since the 1940s. Others are students from nearby Columbia University and Barnard College.

On a recent Saturday night, as the sun sets over 125th Street, the Old Broadway Congregation gathers for prayer. Once they reach minyan – the 10-man quorum necessary to start the service – they begin to pray to the Torah, reciting melodic prayers in Hebrew. Three young women watch from the lady’s balcony above.

The lights are dim in the shul, Hebrew for synagogue. Everywhere, the buttermilk-colored paint is chipping, revealing the ornate designs that once adorned the walls. Several of the windows are cracked; they were sealed shut and painted over when the neighborhood was overrun with drugs and gangs in the 1960s.

After the 20-minute service has ended and the sun has set, the congregants go upstairs to share a meal. They sit at a long table covered in a plastic tablecloth, and pass around a fresh loaf of Challah bread and a bottle of diet Sprite.

The oldest man at the table, Hillel Rubenstein, is 101 and speaks little English. Next to him sits Israel Liberman, 85, who moved to Harlem from Poland in 1951. The two men are flanked by chatty college students, who talk about biochemistry and their upcoming exams. But all join in to say grace when the meal has ended.

“We certainly face a lot of challenges,” said Radensky, Old Broadway’s president, as he and his teenage daughter cleaned up after the service. For example, there has been no full-time rabbi for almost a decade – the congregation is looking for the “right fit,” Radensky said. And when it comes to recruiting, Old Broadway faces stiff competition from synagogues on the Upper West Side.

But things are shaping up. Volunteers come often to clean and repair the structure. And Radensky was recently awarded a $100,000 grant from the New York Landmarks Conservancy to replace the brilliant blue and gold stained-glass windows in the front of the synagogue. The windows had been bricked up after people threw bricks through them in the 1960s, he said.

“We have a very warm, loving group of people here,” said Radensky. “We love to laugh, but we also take prayer here very seriously. I’ve been told that praying here is easier than praying anywhere else for that reason.”

Still, Old Broadway, a small and unassuming white synagogue sandwiched in between two much taller apartment buildings, is only a minor glimpse into Harlem’s history.

“I do not think Jews made an enduring mark on Harlem,” said Gurock, the Jewish studies professor, “but Harlem made a mark on Jews. It was one of first times that Jews from East Europe started to learn how to live as American Jews outside the cocoon of the downtown enclave.”

To view the Immigrant America class website, including a slide show, click here