Synagogues Fade in the Northeast Bronx

Deborah Pardo

September 1, 2003

The 35 seats remain empty, but the aging rabbi and his 41-year-old son continue to parade their sacred scroll around the synagogue sanctuary on Saturday morning, as though worshippers were still extending their hands to touch it.

The time of crowded services has long passed for many of the Jewish congregations in the Northeast Bronx. Throgs Neck Jewish Center has joined the list of synagogues in the district whose membership is dwindling. In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of Jews packed the rows of these congregations, several hundred children filled the Hebrew school classrooms and the bills were paid with ease. But today spider webs cling to the base of the chairs, storage boxes fill the spaces where children learned and the rent poses an ongoing hurdle.

"I call it the three Ms," said Rabbi Solomon Berl, 79, both rabbi and cantor of Young Israel of Co-op City, an Orthodox synagogue. "Moveouts, mortality and Miami." Rabbi Berl has lived in Co-op City since it was built in 1968 and remembers when Jews made up more than 80 percent of its residents. Today only ten percent, or 6,000 Jews remain.

Many Jews moved out of Co-op City in the 1970s after a 14-month-long rent strike -- sparked by increasing rents -- enabled tenants to make down payments on homes elsewhere, said Berl. Also, senior citizens, who migrated from the Bronx's Grand Concourse after their children had moved away, comprised the majority of the population in Co-op City's first days. Thirty-five years later, most have died, he said. Others decided Miami was a better option.

Overall Jewish population figures for the Bronx show a decline. Today, only 45,000 Jews live in the entire borough, mainly in Riverdale. The Bronx lost 45 percent of its Jewish citizens over the last ten years, according to 2002 figures from the United Jewish Appeal-Federation, the Jewish community's national fundraising organization. In addition, the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000 recorded only 10.1 percent of people in the Bronx as 65 years and over. A 2003 United Jewish Appeal study showed that Jews make up 29 percent of that category.

Throgs Neck Jewish Center on Lafayette Avenue, the only Jewish synagogue in Throgs Neck, currently consists of four members: the rabbi, his son and two black converts to Judaism, said Alan Paul Katz, rabbi Henry Katz's son and co-rabbi. Eleanor Schreder, 75, who was raised in Georgia as a Baptist, converted when she was 73, after coming each week for two years to the synagogue for lessons. She attends the congregation because she said she enjoys learning about Jewish history and customs.

Alan Katz expressed disenchantment with the descendants of congregation members who have died. "Their children expect favors from you, but they don't want to support or attend the congregation," he said.

Rabbi Henry Katz has led services without ever taking a holiday since 1975, his son said. The congregation was built in 1925 to seat 120.

"I do it for the souls," the rabbi said pointing to a list of 541 names of those he customarily prays for on the anniversaries of their deaths. Rabbi Katz plans to conduct services until he dies: "I'm the captain of the ship and it will go down only when I do," he said. He does hope, however, that his son will take over after he's gone, he said.

Both father and son insist that Jews who live in the nearby community could easily fill the synagogue seats, but because they fear anti-Semitism prefer to disguise their identity as Jews. They also maintain that potential congregants prefer to distract themselves with television and sports instead of attending services.

Forty percent of the Jewish population in the Bronx holds membership in a synagogue, according to a recent United Jewish Appeal survey of its 40 Bronx congregations.

Berl's orthodox synagogue, hidden away in a basement corner of the Dreiser Loop shopping center, remains the only one out of five synagogues in Co-op City -- that meets the quorum of men (i.e. ten) needed for the daily prayer service. The number of Jews who regularly attend the five remaining synagogues totals 150 people, or 2.5 percent of the Jewish population of Co-op City, said Berl.

"We have more Torah [Bible] scrolls than people," said Sydney Weinberg, 71, ritual chairman of the Co-op City's Conservative synagogue.

Even with an influx of Russian Jews to Co-op City in the 1990s, most of the 250 Russian families that live within Co-op City's borders have little interest in Jewish religious life, said Berl. "They have no points of reference. They can't recognize anything in that [display] case," he said, pointing to an arrangement of Jewish ritual artifacts.

Morris Halfon, 83, president of Congregation Sha'ar Rahamin, Co-op City's Sephardic (Jews of Spanish origin) group said, "Every synagogue is hurting because not all Jews [in Co-op City] are viably observant." Sha'ar Rahamin members join Young Israel for Friday evening services, he said, but the rest of the week it and the other congregations cling to their own highly priced spaces.

Meeting the $1,100 a month rent for its 400-seat location poses the greatest challenge for Young Israel of Co-op City. Because congregants pay annual dues not exceeding $100, each synagogue tries to raise money to cover its expenses. The elderly take trips to Atlantic City, dine at luncheons, sell their wares at flee-markets and celebrate the Jewish holidays to raise some cash.

Alan Paul Katz said he has written letters to Jewish community organizations for assistance, but has been rejected. His father, whose $8,000 yearly salary has not been met since the 1980s, lives off the charity of long-time friends, he said. Although the Katz family owns the somewhat dilapidated building, yearly expenses reach $10,000.

Laurie Pine, director of communications for the United Jewish Appeal, said she could not find Alan Paul Katz's request for funding, but that last year her organization granted several synagogues funding for programs. The Appeal gave $40,000 to the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale for a Bible study program, and $168,000 over four years to Toret Emet Center for Jewish Studies, which draws people from all over the Bronx to its Spanish language program.

The Appeal handles many competing priorities for its funds. For its 2003 annual campaign it raised $131 million and has commitments to assist 1.4 million Jews in New York City and the surrounding boroughs, as well as 3 million in Israel and in 60 other countries, Pine said. In New York alone, her organization contributes to 104 agencies, including the Bronx Jewish Community Council, a social service agency, to help sustain social services, she said.

After a study commissioned by the United Jewish Appeal in 2002 revealed that the number of Jews living in poverty has doubled in the last ten years, United Jewish Appeal has been targeting the needs of the poor and homeless, said Pine.

Lynn Levine, 60, a social worker for the Jewish Community Council in Co-op City, said the United Jewish Appeal gives money to assist the Jews of the Bronx in general through its head office. But the small percentage of that funding she receives at her location then goes towards practical needs such as the disbursement of food stamps.

Although the Jewish Community Council began in the 1970s as an anti-poverty group serving the Jewish community, Jews make up 60 percent and black and Latino 40 percent of Levine's 800-client base. Because of the rapidly diminishing Jewish population in Co-op City, the council's headquarters mainly supports the Pelham Parkway branch, its busiest site, she said.

Co-op City social service organizations receive state funding because of the co-op's NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community) status, which requires that, in order to receive aid, 50 percent of the population of a community be over 60 years of age. These funds mainly cover social service programs like "Meals on Wheels," said Levine.

Levine acknowledged the challenges for the Jewish synagogues left in Co-op City, noting that the Jewish Community Council sends out Chanukah baskets to residents and holds a traditional Passover dinner each year.

Mayer Waxman, 34, director of community services for the Orthodox Union, the umbrella organization for orthodox synagogues in North America, said the Union supports synagogues politically with programs and with advice, but "they can't create people or money," he said. "Over time, communities change and people move out."

Rabbi Berl remembers a time when his congregation spilled over into the outside square of the Dreiser Loop shopping mall to march the sacred scrolls around for "Simchat Torah," the annual holiday to express thanks for the giving of the Jewish law. Crowds of people would hang over the upstairs railings to watch the festivities, he said.

Today, Young Israel of Co-op City reaches a membership of approximately 75. About 50 men and women attend Saturday services and a little more for the high holidays. The rabbi said he thought 15 years ago that his synagogue would close within five years. When asked what he plans for the future, he said, "To hold out until the last Jew is left."

Reporter Deborah Pardo may be reached at dep2103@columbia.edu.

(Updated April 26, 2004)