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East Village temple may be demolished

By David Freedlander, amNewYork Staff Writer
More stories | dfreedlander@am-ny.com

August 15, 2008

Photos and other items on a wall inside the Anshe Meseritz Synagogue on East 6th Street in the East Village. (Jefferson Siegel, Jefferson Siegel / August 14, 2008)

Unless something is done soon, a century-old temple in the East Village may turn to dust.

Some neighborhood residents and preservationists are upset that the congregation had a deal with mega New Jersey developers the Kushner Compan to demolish the Mezritch Synagogue on East Sixth Street and turn it into high-end residences with a ground floor place for worship.

But synagogue's few remaining congregants and the temple's rabbi say that the building is in such disrepair that it is a danger to the surrounding area, and selling to the highest bidder remains the only way to ensure having a safe place to worship.

"This is a battle about the heart and soul our neighborhood," said Andrew Berman, president of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, who is battling to save the synagogue "It tells the story not only of how New York City grew but how our country did."

The Mezritch Synagogue is the last operating "tenement synagogue," so named because of the narrow slot it occupies mid-block, still in operation on the Lower East Side.

"This building is going to collapse, who is going to restore it?" shouted Lee Sussman, interrupting an afternoon news conference and rally to save the building. "There is not a single person here who has stepped foot in there in the last 10 years."

The tale of the Mezritch Synagogue has grown as opaque as the dark windows that front the building on East 6th Street. Last month mega-New Jersey developers the Kushner Companies worked out a deal with the temple to tear it down and build a new synagogue with luxury rentals above it.

Representatives from Kushner Companies denied at first that a deal for the temple was ever in place. Yesterday, company spokesman Howard Rubenstein released a statement saying that the company was "no longer affiliated with this project."

Some congregants and members of the Mezritch temple community had charged that they were excluded from the decision-making process and planned to file complaints with state attorney general Andrew Cuomo to investigate.

They noted that a demolition permit was filed with the city's Department of Buildings by the synagogue weeks before the final vote was made to sell to the Kushners.

They further maintain that the congregation is preventing new membership to maintain their control over its future.

The deal with the Kushners would have covered five years' worth of utility bills at the temple and would have sent $725,000 in cash the congregation's way.

It was unclear yesterday why Kushner Companies pulled out of the project. Some speculated that a spate of bad publicity convinced them to avoid the project, but others wondered if they simply to going to pick the project back up after the media maelstrom passed.

Reached at home, Rabbi Pesach Ackerman, 79, who has presided over the congregation for 40 years, said that he was unsure what the next move would be.

"What's the future of the synagogue? It's in God's hands."