Century-Old Boston Synagogue Receives $500K For Preservation
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
BOSTON (JTA) – A century-old synagogue that serves as a Jewish cultural center will receive $500,000 from the city for historic preservation of the once-abandoned building that is now a landmark and tourist destination.
The restoration is important to the history of Boston’s immigration, according to Boston City Councilor Josh Zakim. “It tells a story through its walls, artifacts and location,” said Zakim, the son of the late Lenny Zakim, the prominent Jewish civil rights advocate who led the New England Anti-Defamation League for 15 years, until his death at age 46.
Dating back to 1919, the Vilna Shul, located at 18 Philips Street, is nestled in to the north slope of the city’s historic and affluent Beacon Hill, in what was once an immigrant enclave of tenements and in earlier times, a historic African-American neighborhood.
The Vilna, the last of the area’s 40 synagogues from the early twentieth century, was the religious home for Congregation Anshei Vilner, founded by Jews from Vilnius, in present-day Lithuania.
The building was eventually abandoned and structurally condemned in the mid-1980s. In 1995, a non-profit formed to reclaim the Vilna Shul was allowed to purchase the building and land at fair market value.
It has since been rejuvenated as a thriving Jewish cultural center with some 10,000 visitors annually, including participants in Jewish programs, tourists and school groups, Kessel told JTA
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
