Happy Hanukah!

[jjkrkwood]

Tonight is the first nite of Hanukah...

 

As Roy Moore's wife would say "Happy Hanukah to All My JEW friends"....

 

 

[samhexum]

Hats off to Eliad...

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[samhexum]

The congregation of a burned-out Brooklyn synagogue has received a heartwarming Hannukah gift — more than $20,000 in donations.

 

Rabbi Baruch Yehudah stood outside his charred Bnai Adath Kol Beth Yisrael synagogue Wednesday to hail the community and promise to restore the red-brick house of worship.

 

“I am thankful to you all,” Yehudah said, standing beside several congregation members.

 

“Here we are on the first day of Hanukkah, and we want you to know we have rededicated ourselves ...We don’t plan to be gone long.”

 

The Patchen Ave. temple in Bedford-Stuyvesant went up in flames Nov. 14 after workers trying to repair a leaky roof inadvertently ignited tar with a blowtorch.

 

The fast-moving inferno raged through the roof and attic of the nearly 150-year-old building, leaving gaping holes and raining debris into the synagogue.

“No matter how cold it may seem when a fire of this magnitudes guts a historical location ... the warmth of this borough has really wrapped around members of this synagogue,” said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

 

The congregation is still a long ways away from raising the $1.5 million listed as the goal on a GoFundMe page dedicated to the temple’s rebuilding.

 

The weekend after the accidental fire that devastated a Brooklyn synagogue, members of the congregation drew together and labored through the night.

 

The congregation at B'nai Adath Kol Beth Yisrael on Patchen Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant bought sheets of plywood and hammered it up to cover entries and secure the damaged 150-year-old building, as required by the city.

 

“We all gathered at the templ and just prayed,” said Kalelah Cooper, who works for the Department of Probation. “I said, 'Dry your eyes. Roll up your sleeves. We have to rebuild.’”

 

In some ways, the moment was instructive of the often rich, sometimes tattered history of the predominantly black synagogue.

 

"The history of the building ranges from horror to absolute joy," said Rabbi Baruch Yehuda, 47.

 

It all started in Harlem in 1919 by Wentworth Mathew, an immigrant from the West Indies. He founded a rabbinical college in 1926 to teach rabbis, and eventually produced more than 40 who found homes in synagogues around the country.

 

Mathew believed that his movement was returning blacks to a religion that they had practiced long before. He was also influenced by the black nationalist teachings of Marcus Garvey.

 

But his movement was never accepted by the European-American Jewish institutions. He was twice denied entry into the New York Board of Rabbis. The congregation's current politics run the gamut from liberal to conservative.

 

“Racism doesn't fit into Torah,” Yehuda said. “When white Jews walk into our synagogue they are welcome." The beauty of our community is that we don't throw anybody away,” he added.

 

Founded in 1954 by a disciple of Mathew, B'nai Adath moved into the Patchen Ave. building in 1967 and paid off the mortgage in seven years — with congregants mortgaging their own homes to help the synagogue.

 

The congregation now has about 200 members, and there are five other black synagogues in Brooklyn. “There are as many of us as God needs,” Yehuda said. “Coast to coast, you'll find us.”

 

It became the home for hundreds of weddings, bar mitzvahs and brises. There was a soup kitchen that fed 100 people a day kosher food complete with flowers in vases and waiter service. “The life cycle events that took place there are countless,” Yehuda said. “I had my own bris there and I'm no spring chicken. I circumcised three of my own sons in that building.”

 

Starting in 1999, the building began to show its age. In 2006, the east wall was damaged following a storm, and a fundraising campaign began. Meanwhile, real estate speculators hovered like crows. Yehuda said he got three calls from people wanting to buy the building on the way to the fire.

 

“After all the fund-raising, for it to go up in smoke is heartbreaking,” Yehuda said.

 

The building was in the middle of a $4.5 million renovation when the fire broke out and chewed the upper part in minutes. Yehuda called it “liquid fire that ran down the beams from the east to the west walls.”

 

Police believe a roof contractor hired by the synagogue accidentally set the fire.

 

“It was his first day,” the rabbi said. “He just set his tools up. He hadn't been working for 40 minutes. The whole place has to be gutted.”

 

Firefighters rescued the Torahs before they even knew the building was safe, but the scrolls suffered some water damage. Yehuda credited the FDNY, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, Public Advocate Letitia James and 81st Precinct Deputy Inspector Winston Faison with lending support.

 

“Now we have to wait for the engineer so we can request permits to do the necessary work,” the rabbi said. “We have a total vacate order. Nobody can get into the building.”

 

The police charged one of the contractors, Caesar Raynor of Dutchess County, with reckless endangerment for using a blow torch on a flammable roof. The synagogue is in negotiations over who will pay for the damage and is trying to raise money through a GoFundMe page, which has raised $12,345 out of $1.5 million sought through Saturday.

 

“We are homeless,” Yehuda said of his congregation. “It was heartbreaking. We wept.”