Rockland County Reform Temple Goes on Auction Block for $6.7M
NEW YORK (JTA) — A 51-year-old Reform temple in New York’s Rockland County — an area whose liberal Jewish population has plummeted in recent decades as its haredi Orthodox community has rapidly grown — is closing its doors.
Temple Beth El will in June vacate its building in Spring Valley, 3 miles from the Hasidic village of New Square, as part of a merger with Temple Beth Torah in Upper Nyack, the Journal News Thursday. For the past year, the two had been alternating worship services between the two buildings.
The 32,000 square foot building, built in 1965, will be sold at auction early next month, with bidding expected to begin at $6.7 million.
Once over 1,000-members strong, the congregation reached its peak in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, according to the Journal News.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO