Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 17, 2022

New York Jewish Week via JTA Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, who made headlines when he was abruptly fired from his position at Manhattans swanky Park East Synagogue, has officially launched a new congregation.

In a sermon Goldschmidt gave this past Shabbat, which he also posted to Medium on Tuesday, the rabbi announced that the name of his new congregation which hes starting with his wife, journalist Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt will be Altneu, a portmanteau of the Yiddish words for old and new.

The truth is, this is the closest I will ever get to feeling what it means to give birth to a child, he wrote.

The Goldschmidts started the congregation informally in the fall of 2021, shortly after the 34-year-old rabbi was unceremoniously dismissed from his post as assistant rabbi at Park East, a venerable Modern Orthodox congregation, in October, after a decade working there.

The firing followed what one well-placed Park East congregant described as an attempted coup by Goldschmidt, itself the result of simmering tensions between Goldschmidt and the synagogues senior rabbi, Arthur Schneier, 91. Goldschmidt denied the accusation.

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Goldschmidts supporters in turn said he was a talented rabbi who was popular with younger members, as the New York Jewish Week reported at the time. Some 70 members signed a petition saying they were shocked and disheartened by his firing.

Shortly after the brouhaha broke, the Goldschmidts began hosting Shabbat services in the neighborhood. In November, the New York Jewish Week reported that over 80 people RSVPed to an invitation to attend Shabbat services, some of them members of Park East. Chitzik-Goldschmidt said there ended up being over 200 in attendance that weekend. On a recent Shabbat, they welcomed Dr. Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

According to the shuls new website, the congregation meets on Shabbat Friday evenings and Saturday mornings at unique venues on the Upper East Side. Photos and videos posted online by the couple show the Explorers Club, a five-story mansion at 46 East 70th St., which Goldschmidt also mentions by name in his Medium post.

In a tweet Wednesday announcing the new venture, the rabbi and his spouse are seen entering wrought-iron gates, waving the viewer inside. Shehecheyanu, he writes, referring to the blessing commonly used when doing something for the first time. Welcome to the Altneu. On the old and the new. The dreams and the conditions of a 21st century Diaspora synagogue.

I feel like it is a tremendous opportunity to start a new synagogue in Manhattan; its not something that happens too often, Goldschmidt told The New York Jewish Week. Its given me an opportunity to rethink many things that were taken for granted. We now have an ability to figure out what format will work best for the next century.

For example, Goldschmidt said he plans to have community members introduce the Torah portion each week in a sermon a job traditionally assigned to the rabbi in order to allow his congregants to connect and learn with both the text and their community in a more personal manner.

Rabbi Arthur Schneier, President and Founder of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation and Senior Rabbi of Park East Synagogue, speaks at a tribute hosted by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in honor of his 90th birthday and six decades of leadership on behalf of religious freedom and human rights, March 12, 2020, at the United Nations in New York. (Diane Bondareff/AP Images for Appeal of Conscience Foundation)

The name, as Goldschmidt explained in his article, is a homage to the historic Altneuschul in Prague, the oldest operating synagogue in Europe. The congregations mission, he wrote, is to renew and reinvigorate its Judaism while still building on and learning from traditions and ways of life in the past.

The name also has a Hebrew meaning: al-tenai, which means on condition. [T]he synagogue will only thrive on the conditions of kindness, respect, and unity, among other values, he writes.

In an Instagram caption announcing the name, Chizhik-Goldschmidt described the diversity of people attending the new congregation.

Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt (center) teaches a class earlier this year leading up to the High Holidays. (Screenshot from LinkedIn via JTA)

I saw a Hasidish Jew from Williamsburg sitting near a Broadway actor; a young investigative journalist next to a group of long-time Upper East Side ladies; Jews who never went to shul before regularly next to Haredi Jerusalemites next to a beautiful young couple (Mexican-Persian & Russian) celebrating their wedding, she wrote.

In the last several years, weve had time to really think deeply about what communities need more of especially in urban areas like Manhattan, that have unique needs and unique voices, Chizhik-Goldschmidt told The New York Jewish Week. Were taking the learnings of the years weve accumulated and trying to put them into practice here.

Goldschmidt is the son of Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the chief rabbi of Moscow, and has studied at prestigious yeshivas in Israel and the United States. He does not have a university degree, which defenders of his firing said was a reason that he was not in line to succeed Schneier as Park Easts senior rabbi.

At Park East, Rabbi Goldschmidt focused on outreach to the Upper East Sides overlapping communities of young families and Russian-speaking Jews.

At Altneu, he plans to continue outreach towards young Jews in the formative periods of their life. Thousands and thousands of young, talented Jews from all over the world pass by [New York] a year, five years, 10 or 15, he said. But these are usually the years where they get their first job, where they choose who they marry, have a kid, and choose schools. Even as theyre passing through the Big Apple, if we could catch people and impact their lives and be a home for them, I think itd be a great accomplishment.

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Rabbi ousted from Park East Synagogue announces new Manhattan congregation - The Times of Israel

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