About Us

The Lower East Side is both a historical and living Jewish community. The Stanton Street Shul’s unique mix embraces continuity between the older population of immigrants and long-time Lower East Side residents on the one hand, and younger singles and couples just starting families on the other. Traditional services are held in an intact tenement synagogue building that embodies the hopes of those who came there a century ago. Constructed in 1913 at the height of Jewish immigration to the Lower East Side (over a million and a half immigrants came through New York before World War I), the synagogue housed a congregation founded in 1894 by immigrant Jews from the town of Brzezany (“Brzezany” is the Polish name, “Brzezan” the Yiddish name) in Galicia, Poland (now in the Ukraine).

The survival of this small shul (one of approximately a dozen functioning synagogues in the neighborhood today) is not only a testament to the perseverance of its remaining elderly, immigrant members, for whom it is a true home and living memorial to otherwise forgotten towns. It has become a symbol of the renewal of the Lower East Side as a neighborhood where younger Jews with their own traditions including a women’s prayer service are now moving in and forming connections, reweaving the chain of generations so nearly unraveled in the turmoil of the twentieth century.