Bialystoker Synagogue Celebrates 125th Anniversary, Honors State Assembly Speaker, Installs Rabbi

The Bialystoker Synagogue will celebrate its 125th anniversary on December 5, 2004 with a journal dinner at The Sheraton Center in New York. At the dinner, Rabbi Zvi Romm will be installed as the congregations spiritual leader and long time congregant Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the New York State Assembly, will be honored.

(PRWEB) October 19, 2004 -- On December 5, 2004, at a gala dinner in the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers at 811 Seventh Avenue, New Yorkers will celebrate the 125th anniversary of the founding of the congregation that for almost 100 of those years has been housed in the building now known as The Bialystoker Synagogue.

In 1873, a group of Jewish émigrés from the city of Bialystok in Poland arrived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Five years later, 25 of them gathered together to found the Chevrah Anshei Chesed of Bialystok. They met wherever they could -- in basements, rooming houses, anywhere there was space offered.

Over the next 30 years, three smaller congregations joined with it. Then, in 1905, the congregation merged with yet another shul and purchased the Willett Street Methodist Church building that has housed it ever since.

This marvelous fieldstone Federal-style edifice, made from Manhattan schist stones quarried only a few blocks away, formed much more than a house of prayer and study. It was -- and still is -- an architectural splendor, with magnificent frescoes on the ceiling and walls, brilliant crystal chandeliers and extraordinary stained glass windows.

The building is a historic landmark. Erected in 1835, it was used as a terminus for the Underground Railroad. The access panels and moveable floorboards remain intact and attract many tourists each year.

The lingering memories of the Underground Railroad had their effect on members of the synagogue, many of whom rose from their beginnings on the Lower East Side as wage slaves and sweat laborers. These people helped form the foundations of the Labor movement and the Civil Rights Movement.

Over the years, the synagogue was home to the famous and infamous, as attested to by the memorial plaques on its walls.

It was from the hand-carved pulpit of the Bialystoker that at least one public speaker" got his start: Sheldon Silver, the bar mitzvah boy who grew up to become Speaker of the New York State Assembly. He will be honored at the December 5th event at which Rabbi Zvi Romm will be officially installed as the congregations fifth spiritual leader.

Please join us in celebrating this auspicious milestone. Reservations for the dinner and forms for the journal are available on the synagogues website at http://www.bialystoker.org or by calling the synagogue office at 212-475-0165.

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