The ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the West End Synagogue, 160 West Eighty-second street, will be celebrated for four days, beginning this evening. A dramatic pageant, a dinner dance, and special religious services at the Temple will mark the event.
A complete program of the celebration activities was made public yesterday by Walter E. Ernst, general chairman of anniversary celebration committee. A pageant, of Jewish post-Biblical history, entitled “The Eternal People,” written by Rev. Dr. Hyman Judah Schachtel, associate rabbi, will usher in the anniversary festivities tonight. A cast of more than seventy-five will participate in the pageant, which will be given in the Kaufman Auditorium, Ninety-second street and Lexington avenue. Martin I. Rosenthal and James S. Lyon directed the pageant, with Mrs. H. B. Ross as consulting director, and Miss Daisy Blau director of the dances.
GOLDENSON GUEST RABBI
Rabbi Samuel S. Goldenson of Temple Emanuel will occupy the pulpit of the Temple for the anniversary services Friday, as guest rabbi, and Judge Joseph Proskauer will also speak on that occasion. At Saturday morning services, Dr. Stephen S. Wise will be the speaker.
The anniversary program will reach its climax with a dinner to be held Sunday evening at the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria. Hon. Irving Lehman, justice of the Court of Appeals and brother of New York State’s Governor, and Charles S. Tuttle will be the principal speakers at the dinner. Rabbi Nathan Stern, Rabbi Hyman J. Schachtel and Harry Wessel, president of the Temple will speak.
The dinner will mark the launching of an effort to complete a fund required for the erection of a Synagogue House, adjacent to the Temple.
FOUNDED 1945
The building of the Synagogue House will be another forward step in the progress of the West End Synagogue, which came into being in 1845, as Congregation Shaary Tefila, and has become one of the foremost exponents of Reform Judaism in New York City at the present time. It is the third oldest Jewish congregation in New York and the oldest reform synagogue. Its first temporary house of worship was on Franklin street near Broadway and since that time it had occupied three buildings of its own, at Wooster street, West Forty-fourth street, and West Eighty-second street, each change of locale, following the trend of the city’s population. It has had three rabbis during the long course of its history. Rev. Samuel Meyer Issacs, Rabbi Frederick de Sola Mendes and the present incumbent, Dr. Nathan Stern, who was appointed assistant to Dr. Mendes in 1915, and succeeded him as rabbi in 1921.
The anniversary celebration is being directed by the following committees: Walter E. Ernst, general chairman; Simon Gottschall, Ben Marks, Louis Garfunkel, Irving Zucker, Emanuel Blum, and Mrs. H. Schachtel.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
