Anshei Glen Wild Synagogue
The Anshei Glen Wild Synagogue is a synagogue on Glen Wild Road ( Route 58 ) in Sullivan County in the unstatuted settlement of Glen Wild in New York , United States. It is a small Orthodox synagogue built in the early 1920s for a congregation that had formed the decade earlier.
It was started by a local family and never had its own rabbi . The synagogue has remained virtually unchanged from the time it was built and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
building
The synagogue is a one-story building with three by four bays and stands on a concrete foundation. The sides are plastered , the gabled roof with tar paper verschindelt . A side wing with four yokes protrudes from the rear front. On the western front facade is a veranda with a bell-shaped roof supported by two round wooden pillars that protrude from a concrete base. The ornamental gable of the veranda bears the name of the synagogue and a Star of David . The windows on the two side facades and the rear wall have large round arches with colored and opaque glass.
Colored door skylights sit above the ornamented wooden doors . They open into a small vestibule . The rest of the main wing is taken up by the sanctuary , a square room with barrel vaults . A chandelier hangs from the intersection of two iron tie rods at the base of the vault. The plan of the sanctuary follows the orthodox tradition: the centrally arranged bima is surrounded on three sides by benches, all of which are aligned with the Torah shrine on the back wall. Two or three of these benches are set apart and serve the women.
Turned wooden posts on the carefully crafted arch support an ornamental gable, which is adorned by two carved and gilded lions of Judas, a scroll with the Ten Commandments and a crown above. Both the Bima and the platform under the arch are made of wooden planks.
history
As in the other areas of Sullivan County, Jews first came to the region for vacation stays in the late 19th century and later permanently. Among the early Jewish residents of Glen Wild and the surrounding area were Simon Jaffe and his family, who, like their co-religionists, were descended from Lithuanian Jews. He was a slaughterer and was involved in building up the small Jewish community, which in 1913 consisted of 13 members.
Believers met in his home for over a decade before building a synagogue was considered. The community bought a small piece of land and laid the foundation stone in 1921. The construction was carried out by the local construction company by Jim Couch and his sons. The building was completed in 1923 and refers to some of the distinctive features of Christian churches in Sullivan County, such as the roof, windows and plastering, but reminiscent of other synagogues that were built in the area at the time, such as the Hebrew Congregation of Mountaindale Synagogue and the South Fallsburg Hebrew Association Synagogue .
Louis Rosenblatt, a member of the parish, provided money to build the rear wing in 1955, the only change to the building since 1923.
Since the Jewish community in Glen Wild was small, it did not have its own rabbi. Simon Jaffe, who was a school teacher by profession, held the service and taught the children of the parishioners the Hebrew language . His family still maintains the synagogue today, but services are held irregularly. The roughly two dozen members of the community also maintain the nearby Jewish cemetery.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Kathleen LaFrank: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Anshei Glen Wild Synagogue ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . October 1998. Archived from the original on May 24, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 29, 2009.
- ↑ Tracie Rozhon: Borscht Belt's Spiritual Survivors; Resilient Catskill Synagogues Enter Historic Register (English) . In: The New York Times , The New York Times Company , May 16, 1998, p. 2. Retrieved April 29, 2009. “Although the Anshei Glen Wild synagogue has not had any services this summer, it has two dozen members who pay for its upkeep - and a cemetery. "
Coordinates: 41 ° 39 ′ 0 ″ N , 74 ° 35 ′ 19 ″ W.