The Lower East Side: Our Synagogues

The Stanton Street Shul (Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshe Brzezan), one of the last remaining tenement synagogues in New York City., was built in 1913, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The town of Brzezan is in southeast Galicia (now the Ukraine). The Shul is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and contains one of the few remaining examples of Mazalot in the Lower East Side.

Formed in 1906, this is the only remaining congregation of Romaniote Jews in the Western Hemisphere. They descended from a cluster of Jewish enclaves originally settled in Greece at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Their story is little known and fascinating. Enroute to Rome to become slaves,

The Sixth Street Community Synagogue is an important sacred site in the East Village today, with a history that has changed and shaped the community around it forever. They are a thriving, engaged, and welcoming Modern Orthodox Jewish community in a 169 year old building.

The second oldest remaining synagogue building in New York, this handsome red brick structure was built in 1853 by Congregation Rodeph Sholem, a Reform congregation established in 1842 by German immigrants. They occupied the building for almost 50 years, then moved to the Upper West Side where they are still located.

It is the oldest surviving building in New York City built specifically as a synagogue, and the first synagogue structure built on the Lower East Side. At its completion, it was the largest synagogue building in the United States, and could accommodate seating for 1200 people; 700 men on the ground floor and 500 women in the balcony.

At one time, this landmark building housed the oldest orthodox congregation of Russian Jews in the United States, and was the home of the only Chief Rabbi America has ever known.

Opened in 1887 as the first great house of worship built in America by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe,  this magnificent National Historic Landmark has been meticulously restored, and houses the Museum at Eldridge Street.

Congregation Beth Hachasidim De Polen (House of the Pious Men of Poland), organized in 1904 is one of just a few  shtieblach (one room house of prayer) that remains on the Lower East Side today.