Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Rhode Island Synagogue Welcomed By Episcopal Church

(JTA) — A small Jewish congregation in Rhode Island is moving into an Episcopal church.

Congregation Or Chadash will hold a procession next week, during which congregants will carry their three Torah scrolls out of their former building, which was recently consecrated as the first Hindu Temple in Rhode Island, the Jewish Voice newspaper reported.

The congregation, whose name means New Light, is made up of about 30 members of the former Temple Am David of Warwick, Rhode Island, which went bankrupt and had been using space in their former building for more than a year.  The ark from the former building will be coming with them to their new digs.

They will use a classroom in Trinity Church in Cranston, Rhode Island church and share other facilities such as the kitchen and meeting room. The synagogue also plans to use a small chapel and church hall at Trinity for Shabbat services, which won’t overlap with Trinity’s Sunday services.

“We do have a tradition within the Episcopal Church of providing hospitality for other faith groups within our buildings,” Rhode Island Bishop Nicholas Knisely told the Episcopal News Service.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.