This is the Forward’s coverage of synagogues, Jewish houses of worship.
Synagogues
The Latest
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Opinion Victory!
The letter has been liberated. We’ve been waiting to write that for a long time, ever since our Paul Berger went on a national search for George Washington’s original, iconic 1790 letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, the one famously promising a new United States government that would give “to bigotry no sanction,…
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News Washington’s Iconic Letter To Be Displayed
After a decade hidden from view, one of the most important documents in American history is set to burst back onto public display, the Forward has learned. George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, in which the first president vowed that America would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution…
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News Forward Campaign Led to Letter’s Release
The Forward’s campaign to return to public view George Washington’s iconic letter on religious freedom started when reporter Paul Berger attended a lecture more than a year ago. Jonathan Sarna, one of the foremost historians of American Jewry, told the group that the original letter – one of the most important documents in American history…
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News Private Owner of Washington’s Letter
Richard Morgenstern just wants to be left alone. But when you are the multimillionaire owner of one of the most important documents in American Jewish history — George Washington’s Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, R.I. — avoiding the limelight is not easy. Especially when that document disappeared from public view 10 years ago…
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News Eldridge Street Shul Recalls Founding
Outside the Eldridge Street Synagogue, it was a regular Sunday on New York’s Lower East Side, as residents and tourists picked their way past stands piled high with Chinese greens and five-and-dime stores bearing signs written in Mandarin. Inside the historic sanctuary, visitors were transported back 125 years to the days when the signs were…
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News Pressure Grows to Display George Washington’s Famed Letter to Jews
An annual ceremony held on Aug. 21 in Newport, R.I., commemorated George Washington’s famed letter to the Jews of Touro Synagogue. Gov. Lincoln Chafee attended and Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, recited Washington’s text, all 337 words of it, considered the defining expression of religious tolerance in the new…
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Books How the Eldridge Street Synagogue Was Saved
Crossposted From Samuel Guber’s Jewish Art & Monuments Beyond the Facade: A Synagogue, A Restoration, A Legacy: The Museum at Eldridge Street By Roberta Brandes Gratz, Larry Bortniker and Bonnie Dimun Museum at Eldridge Street and Scala Publishers, 176 pages, $45.00 In “Beyond the Facade,” a history of the almost 30-year effort to restore New…
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The Schmooze Estee Lauder’s Synagogue Gets a Facelift
Estee Lauder and her parents once worshiped at Congregation Tifereth Israel in Corona, Queens — the borough’s oldest synagogue. So it’s about time that the century-old wooden shul is getting a makeover. The landmarked building, “a rare survivor of the earliest vernacular synagogues in the borough” according to Crain’s NY Business, will undergo a major…
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Opinion The terrifying Nazi precedent for Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension — and the reasons to stay hopeful
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Fast Forward Freed hostage Edan Alexander says he’s returning to the IDF next month
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Yiddish World How a Yiddish acting troupe fooled the Tsarist government
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Fast Forward After years of war, world’s oldest synagogue paintings are revealed as intact in Damascus
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