The Bialystoker Synagogue

A Photo-Essay on Dual Locality in the Jewish Diaspora

The Bialystoker Synagogue is on Willett Street/Bialystoker Place between Broome and Grand Streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City.

The Bialystoker Synagogue draws its name from the particular communal origin of its founding Congregations, which consisted of Jewish immigrants from Białystok. At the turn of the 20th Century, Białystok (“white slope”) was in Imperial-Russian Poland, then part of the Pale of Settlement, and today is in the Republic of Poland. The Synagogue’s edifice is one of only four extant fieldstone buildings in Lower Manhattan from the early 19th Century and is the oldest building used as a synagogue in New York City.

The Synagogue as seen from the northeast. The edifice consists of Manhattan mica schist that came from a nearby quarry on Pitt Street. The attached annex at the right is The Daniel Potkorony Building, which houses Congregational offices and the Bialystoker Education Center.

The principal facade as seen from the east across Willett Street/Bialystoker Place, crowned with a Star of David (Magen David), rimmed with a wooden cornice, and featuring a triple array of arched portals and windows. Its conventional pediment frames a lunette window in the tympanum.

Designed in late Federal style, the edifice was built in 1826 and initially served as the Willett Street Methodist Episcopal Church. The larger site had been the former estate of James de Lancey, who had his property confiscated after the American Revolution as he was a Loyalist of the British Crown. By the 1880s, the Church’s congregation was in decline due to demographic shifts on the Lower East Side. Ashkenazi Jewish migrations from Białystok and other areas of the Pale began in the second half of the 19th Century due to anti-Semitic pogroms, which only grew more severe into the early 20th Century.

A wide perspective on the downstairs Beis Midrash, used for weekday prayers and classes, as seen from its northwestern corner.

Left: The Bimah of the Beis Midrash. Right: The Ark (Aron HaKodesh) of the Beis Midrash.

The Bialystoker Synagogue was formed from two earlier Bialystoker Congregations: Chevrah Anshei Chesed of Bialystok, founded in 1865, and Adas Yeshurun, founded in 1893. In 1905, Chevrah Anshei Chesed purchased the edifice from the Church to accommodate communal growth and merged with Adas Yeshurun to form Beth Haknesses Anshei Bialystok. This proved timely in light of the Białystok Pogrom of 1906 that brought a large influx of new Bialystokers into New York City. The conversion of churches into synagogues was explicitly addressed early on by Rabbinic authorities in Poland, who first gave Halakhic approval regarding the purchase of the Norfolk Street Baptist Church by Beth Hamedrash Hagodol in 1885.

Three notable items in the upstairs vestibule before the Sanctuary. Left: A mural on the southern side depicting Jews of Bavel being forbidden to play music while monitored by a Roman soldier. Center: An original engraving listing early Synagogue benefactors, featuring their names in Hebrew and respective contributions. Right: A mural on the northern side depicting the port of Tel Aviv, thematically portraying the transition from exile to redemption.

Left: One of two Memorials on the eastern, rear wall of the Sanctuary, featuring plaques for Annual Remembrance (Yahrzheit in Yiddish) that include the English and Hebrew names of the departed with their dates of death. Right: A section of the Memorial in detail, featuring the name of Max Siegel above that of his son Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, one of the most infamous mobsters of American history. Bugsy was killed just two months after his father died.

The first accounts of Jewish settlement in Białystok date back to the mid-17th Century and the city featured a Jewish-majority population by the late-19th Century. The demographic balance between Jews and ethnic Poles in Białystok roughly equalized following the collapse of Imperial Russia and the formation of the interwar Second Polish Republic (1918–39). As was true for all European Jewry, World War II and the Holocaust (HaShoah) were devastating turning points for the Jews of Białystok.

A wide perspective on the Sanctuary, featuring a conventionally basilican floor plan with Aisles and a mezzanine Women’s Gallery.

Left & Right: The southern and northern halves of the Sanctuary. Longstanding narratives have held that the Sanctuary was beautified during the Great Depression, but anecdotal evidence to the contrary has indicated that the beautification likely occurred after World War II.

Following the joint invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, Białystok came under Soviet occupation, which brought its own severe restrictions and deportations upon the Jewish population. The launch of Operation Barbarossa on June 21, 1941 soon brought Białystok under German occupation. On June 27, German forces locked around 2000 Jewish men, women, and children in the Great Synagogue of Białystok and burned it to the ground, with over 1000 more Jews perishing that same day from executions around the town square.

A wide perspective on the Sanctuary ceiling, featuring a perimeter adorned with the 12 Signs of the Western Zodiac inscribed with the Hebrew monthly cognates. However, what is supposed to be a crab representing Cancer is instead a lobster. It has been assumed that the designated painter simply did not know the difference between the two creatures.

The apex of the ceiling in detail, representing the skies over Israel.

The remaining Jews from Białystok and its environs, amounting to over 50,000 individuals, were then confined to the newly-formed Białystok Ghetto, living in squalid conditions with minimal rations and subjected to forced labor. The Białystok Ghetto Uprising of August 1943 proved to be the second-largest ghetto uprising in Nazi-occupied Poland after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising earlier that year. The Nazis liquidated the Białystok Ghetto in November 1943 and sent its denizens to the concentration camps at Majdanek and Treblinka, where the vast majority were eventually exterminated.

Two perspectives on the Bimah.

Two perspectives on the two-story Ark (Aron HaKodesh) as seen from the southern Gallery and the Bimah. The Ark was manufactured in Bialystok, made of wood and plated with 18 karat gold. As the edifice was acquired, the Ark is pragmatically placed on the western wall rather than what would otherwise be a traditional placement on an eastern wall. Given the natural limitations of most properties, many if not most Manhattan synagogues do not have their Arks placed on eastern walls.

The Ark and flanking stained glass windows in detail. The two candlesticks in front of the Ark represent the candles lit weekly for Shabbos.

Half of the over 6 million Jews that perished in the Holocaust were from Poland, with the mere hundreds of Bialystoker survivors migrating to the Americas and Israel after the War. Today there is no organized Jewish community in Białystok, but there are Polish political and civic leaders keen on elevating its Jewish history, including Białystok President (Mayor) Tadeusz Truskolaski, who visited the Synagogue in February 2013. The Synagogue still follows the Eastern Customs (Minhag Polin) of the Ashkenazi Rite (Nusach Ashkenaz), but is no longer communally Bialystoker, as the last true Bialystoker Congregant passed away in the 1950s.

The Ark in its three iterations: fully shrouded, its curtain drawn, and its pocket doors opened revealing the Sifrei Torah.

Left: The upper segments of the Ark in detail, with the symbolic Crown of the Torah as a recurring feature. The Crown is held by the Tablets of the Law (Lukhos HaBrit) and the Lions of Judah at the apex, followed by the hands of a Priest (Kohen) blessing the congregation and an Eagle in the segments below. Right: The Sifrei Torah in detail, adorned with Mantles (Mappah), Breastplates (Choshen), Finials (Rimmonim)/Crowns (Keter), and Pointers (Yad).

The Bialystoker Synagogue underwent extensive exterior and interior restorations in 1988, with simultaneous renovations to the attached Hebrew school that became The Daniel Potkorony Building. Presently home to 300 families, the Synagogue maintains an Orthodox orientation and has been led by Rabbi Zvi David Romm since 2002. It is one of about 15 active synagogues on the Lower East Side, though Kahal Adath Jeshurun at Eldridge Street Synagogue lapsed in mid-2019.

A wide perspective on the Women’s Gallery as seen from its northeastern corner. The fine seam at the northwestern corner is of a hidden door leading to the attic, indicating that the edifice was likely a stop on the Underground Railroad while it was a Church.

Left: The mural at the southwestern terminus of the Gallery depicting David’s Castle, also known as the Jerusalem Citadel. Right: The mural at the northwestern terminus of the Gallery depicting Jews praying at the Western Wall (Kotel HaMaaravi). Below these murals are two others depicting the Mount of Olives and the Temple Mount, with all intentionally rendered on the western wall to compensate for the Ark’s non-traditional placement.

The Sanctuary floor as seen from the eastern terminus of the Gallery. The stained glass windows were refurbished by Mel Greenland and his assistant in the years after the renovations of 1988, with the last work completed in 1999. Some work was restorative, but the bottom panels of the Ark windows are new, as they used to be identical to the lateral windows.

The Jewish experience of Diaspora necessitated the creation of homes beyond the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael), locales often linked in multiplicity via communal migrations like those of the Bialystokers. The decimation of Jewish Białystok and the Synagogue’s communal shift represent the great fragility of community formed, then altered or even lost, and perhaps found again elsewhere in the future. The conditions of temporal life often prove tumultuous and this has been especially true for the Jewish people, but what those conditions can never erode or destroy are the great spiritual legacies that remain everlasting.

A reverse perspective on the Sanctuary.

These photos were taken on a single day utilizing both a wide-angle lens and a standard zoom lens. Exterior photos were taken just after sunrise to avoid asymmetrical shadowing and obstructions, but were still tightly cropped due to cars already parked in front of the Synagogue. Acknowledgment and heartfelt gratitude go to Rabbi Zvi David Romm for graciously approving the production of this photo-essay from initial email contact through to the review of its draft.