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Where
Synagogues Once Stood:
A Tisha B'Av Exploration
By Judah S.
Harris
Tisha
B'Av the world over is observed through
fasting, expressions of mourning, the
reading of Megillas
Eicha,
and the recitation of the Kinos.
In
our times, at least, communities and
individuals have often supplemented these
activities with additional experiences,
hoping to communicate added meaning and
relevancy to a day that has been with us
for so long. I remember in the early '90s
photographing the annual torch-lit
procession that takes place the night of
Tisha B'Av at Camp Morasha in Lake Como,
Pennsylvania; I've attended day-long
learning programs in Brooklyn and some of
the other boroughs; I've sat together with
others in air-conditioned synagogue halls
and multi-purpose rooms watching films
(often taped interviews) produced
especially for the day.
But
one Tisha B'Av afternoon in the late '80s,
just a few years after I had graduated
college, I decided I would wander around
parts of Harlem and look at the structures
that used to be synagogues. My grandfather
was born in Harlem in 1900. As a young
child and then a young man, Harold Harris
attended Congregation Ohab Zedek at an
earlier location, north of where it is
today. Its full name was First Hungarian
Congregation Ohab Zedek and Yossele
Rosenblatt, as he always liked to mention,
was the esteemed cantor.
My
grandfather would proudly volunteer that
information in the 1920s and 1930s during
countless job interviews, when asked at
some later stage of the meeting, after his
credentials had been readily confirmed,
"And, Mr. Harris, what church do you
attend?" His response was always: "I
belong to Congregation Ohab Zedek, Yossele
Rosenblatt is the cantor..." I heard from
him this story numerous times, along with
the same ending sentence: "I'm sorry Mr.
Harris but we don't hire Jews."
Decades
later, I walked through Harlem on many
shabbosim and yomim tovim --
probably more than 100 times over a number
of years --
trekking from my apartment in Washington
Heights, where I was then living, to the
Upper West Side, sometimes
three miles, sometimes five, and sometimes
doubling that with a return trip. I had
even organized a final Rosh Hashana minyan
at a shul on 157th Street. This also took
place in the late '80s and was thoroughly
inspired by my Tisha B'Av afternoon walk
to see the synagogues that once were. I
wrote an eloquent message and papered the
walls of Yeshiva University's main campus
with photocopied signs inviting students
to be a part of the last synagogue in
Harlem's very last minyan. In actuality
the synagogue was just outside the
boundaries of Harlem, two blocks north of
the Hamilton Heights-Washington Heights
border. It also wasn't the very last
synagogue in Harlem, but it was the
southernmost of what's referred to as
Northern Manhattan. It had held on the
longest and now with nearly zero
congregants the shul was closing its doors
for good.
Indeed,
Harlem still has one active synagogue,
which has received some nice press
attention for just that reason, and which
I have frequented on many occasions. The
Old Broadway Synagogue, located a block
east of the intersection of Broadway and
125th Street, is in fact the last
remaining synagogue in Harlem (I'm
focusing on the heart of Harlem), and a
reminder of a time, as coined in the title
of one comprehensive book on the subject,
"When Harlem was Jewish" -- very much so.
The heyday was during the first two
decades of the 1900s, and towards the
latter part of this period the Jewish
population, derived from the many who had
emigrated from the Lower East Side,
reached as high as 178,000. But as the
Jewish migration away from Harlem began
and quickly grew -- relocating to locales
such as the Bronx, Brooklyn, and the Upper
West Side just to the south -- the
synagogues relocated too. Over the short
span of nine years, the population dropped
to only 5000 Jews by the year 1930. For
Jews, Harlem was over and the houses of
worship were abandoned. As any Tisha B'Av
afternoon walk similar to mine will
reveal, many former synagogues are now
churches, some are empty, and some, whose
large buildings are no longer existent,
have been replaced by other constructions.
Visiting
the places where synagogues once stood,
where Jewish communities once thrived, can
be one way of internalizing the meaning of
Tisha B'Av, especially if the structures
-- their exterior architecture and Hebrew
inscriptions --
still remain visible but the life within
them does not. Each of our synagogues in
all the generations has been a "mikdash
me'at," a smaller version, a model of
sorts of the Temples that stood once in
Jerusalem. Tisha B'Av mourns the
destruction of the Temples, and as the
Talmud says it is "a day of crying for the
generations" that also laments the other
calamities and trials of Jewish history.
The Temple functioned then as a concrete
sign of God's presence, of His
relationship with the Jewish people, and
its destruction continues to suggest His
absence, even as we've grown well
accustomed to the long exile.
We're
able today to visit the place where the
Temple, the grandest of synagogues, once
stood. In fact we can do so any day,
whereas our parents or our grandparents,
or great-grandparents, who lived prior to
1967, could not have had that opportunity
even once (access was available before
1947-48, and during Jordanian rule,
non-Israeli Jews did have opportunity to
visit). We're all familiar with the
euphoria that surrounded the unification
of Jerusalem, the capture of the Temple
Mount during the Six-Day war; Mordechai
Gur's declaration that "the Temple mount
is in our hands;" the sounding of the
shofar; the recitation of the blessing of
Shehechianu. But today the actual site of
the destroyed Temple is a place almost too
alive to truly feel the destruction and
abandonment. I've found at least. During
the daytime it's often bustling with
people of all types, ringing with the
sounds of prayer and conversation, and
nearby traffic. It's a destination now and
familiarity has softened its impact. In
our times, the Kotel must be one of the
most iconic of Jewish images, its looming
presence, the strength and size of its
stone, and even the knowledge that we are
gazing at only a smaller section of the
total expanse of the Western Wall.
I
was more moved, admittedly, when I took a
tour once of the archaeological
excavations along the Southern Wall. The
guide pointed out the stairs that led up
to the Temple mount via Hulda's Gate,
commenting that these were the stairs that
the people of Israel used when being oleh regel, visiting the Temple during
the appointed holidays. For me, these
stairs made it all the more real. It was a
sunny day. The sounds of the crowds and
the noises of the buses and cars, though
recessed, could still be heard in the
distance, but the steps that led up to the
Temple mount, I thought, contained more of
the narrative. There was a time when tens
of thousands, even more, came to
Jerusalem... to a Temple that was
functioning, a combination of the
miraculous and, as we know from ample
descriptions, of the glorious. It was all
so long ago, and some have the custom in
the synagogue the night of Tisha B'Av to
announce the number of years that have
passed since the destruction of the Second
Temple almost 2000 years ago.
In
the synagogue a number of years ago on the
Shabbos before Tisha B'Av, the rabbi
spoke. He expressed the wish that this
sorrowful day, which would fall on a
Thursday, will in fact be transformed into
a holiday, a day of celebration. This
Thursday? I thought... Five days from now.
Really...? And yet an essential belief of
Judaism is that we actively await the
redemption. We believe it will yet come
and we wait for it each day. As listed by
the Rambam (Maimonides), this basic tenet
is understood to mean that each and every
day we are hopeful of the redemption that
God will bring to the Jewish people, "at
the appropriate time." And no matter in
which generation it actually does occur,
the entire nation, past and present, will
benefit. We are all connected to the
destiny of the Jewish people; each Jew is
a necessary point on the continuum of
Jewish history.
Indeed,
this essential belief of awaiting the
redemption conveys that just as Judaism as
a religion is dynamic and not static, so
too our history. There is more in store
for us as a people, for sure, and also for
the world at large. Much remains
unresolved, as we well know. To believe in
the imminent redemption is to feel a
desire today for a closer relationship
with God. It's to feel each day the
absence of His presence, and like a child
awaiting the return of a parent, who runs
to the window to peek out from time to
time, to know that something is missing,
something is not complete. That year,
Thursday was mighty soon, and this year, a
Sunday observed, is the same. But what
about the question that faithful Jews
probably wonder about on multiple
occasions: "Will the Temple actually be
rebuilt in my lifetime?" "In my lifetime,"
provides a little more room for
opportunity, but it still sounds not much
different, and perhaps no less a fantasy
than "this Thursday... this Sunday."
But
still the promise: "Those who mourn for
Jerusalem will merit to see it in its
joy," says the Talmud (Taanit 30B),
basing its assurances on a phrase in the
last chapter of Isaiah that encourages all
lovers of Jerusalem and all who've mourned
for her to now rejoice in her revival and
her rebirth.
Within
the sadness of the Tisha B'Av day coexists
a future holiday, a time of rejoicing.
Within the mourning and sorrow, lives the
promise of happiness and of joy. The
abandonment feels real, but the trajectory
is more so.
Judah S. Harris is a photographer,
filmmaker, speaker and writer. He photographs family
celebrations and a wide range of corporate,
organizational and editorial projects in the US,
Israel and other countries. Judah's photography
has appeared in museum exhibits, on the Op-Ed
Pages of the NY Times, on the covers of more
than 40 novels, and in advertising all over the
world. For more information about his work or
photography workshops, visit www.judahsharris.com/visit.
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