The Jews of Corpus Christi knew a decade ago they had to act fast to save their two synagogues. With at most 1,000 Jews left in the Texas town and only 60 families making up its membership, the 60-year-old Conservative synagogue was in shaky financial shape. So in 2005, B’nai Israel Synagogue merged with Temple Beth El, a Reform shul, to form Congregation Beth Israel, combining customs and sharing sacred spaces to preserve Jewish life in an area that saw its heyday around World War II. The combined …More

The New West End Synagogue is no longer considered to be in the West End of London, nor is it new. But the resplendent 19th century synagogue remains a shul—and it represents the successes British Jewry after centuries of struggle for acceptance. While the New West End Synagogue is testament to the well-established Anglo Jewish elite, for centuries the community’s existence was far more precarious. No one is quite sure when Jews first settled in the British Isles but there is likely to have been a …More

Jessica Bettelheim, a business ethics lecturer at Portland State University and a young Jewish mother, has little time to spare on weekends. Like other professionals her age, she's busy bonding with her husband and 4-year-old daughter, meeting friends at one of Portland's many fine restaurants or gardening, a favorite pastime in the verdant metropolis known as the City of Roses. So when Bettelheim received an email from the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland last month advertising Food for Thought, a festival …More

Temple Ohabei Shalom is at approximately the 24-mile mark on the Boston Marathon route. As he passed the synagogue, its cantor knew he only had two miles or so to go. What he didn’t know was that the finish line would turn into a scene of such carnage. Bostonians are still trying to understand why this came to pass. With yesterday’s horrific news of violence in Boston, perhaps today we can reflect on the message of Temple Ohabei Shalom—its name means “lovers of peace.” The day after …More

Founded in 1930, the Gran Templo Paso in Buenos Aires is one of the oldest synagogues in Argentina and one of the most beautiful in Latin America. Located on the Paso Street from which it gets its name, in the neighborhood of Once, the conservative shul has a proud history and vibrant present. The synagogue is an important cultural institution in Once, the neighborhood in the city’s Balvanera district that is the traditional home of Buenos Aires Jewry—an Argentine Lower East Side of Manhattan. From …More

Wherever Jews went, they built homes, communities, and of course, neighborhood synagogues. Many of those synagogues have been destroyed or abandoned as a constantly migrating people left for more hospitable lands or, in the case of World War II, faced much worse. But still some remain. In Istanbul, Turkey, for instance, the 15th-century Ahrida Synagogue symbolizes the migratory nature of the Jewish people. One of the Istanbul’s 16 synagogues in use today and located in Balat, the city’s historically …More

The government of Belarus announced plans to renovate one of the country’s oldest synagogues and turn it into a Jewish museum. The museum will be housed this year inside the restored ruins of the main synagogue in Bykhaw, a town located some 150 miles east of Minsk, Belarus’ minister of culture, Boris Svetlov, told the Belarusian Telegraph Agency. The synagogue of Bykhaw, a tall, square building with three arched windows in each façade and a tower in one of its corners, is part of Bykhovsky …More

Palestinian prisoners riot over an inmate's death. [Times of Israel] Amsterdam apparently fined Holocaust survivors for unpaid taxes while in hiding from the Nazis. [Jewish Press] A rocket fired at Israel during Barack Obama's visit has been found at a Sderot kindergarten. [Times of Israel] Belarus plans a $1 million synagogue restoration. [Forward] Jewish organizations in Minnesota condemn anti-gay marriage remarks over Nazism. [MinnPost] Is the circus kosher for Pesach? [Tablet] Gourmet kosher, at a …More

A historic synagogue in Damascus has been burned to the ground, the latest casualty of the Syrian civil war. The 2,000-year-old Eliyahu HaHavi Synagogue was set ablaze and looted recently, though it is not yet clear whether the Syrian government or rebel fighters are to blame. The temple is said to be located on the spot where the prophet Elijah hid himself from captors and is one of the holiest synagogues in Jewish tradition. The contents of the synagogue were stripped before the arson, and the Syrian …More

So Adele, George W. Bush and Marc Maron walk into a synagogue. Or perhaps you’ve heard about the times Al Gore, Rachel Maddow and Tina Fey visited shul? Or, if you prefer, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Kofi Annan and Bobby Flay went to temple? These might sound like the set-ups to a joke but they’re not. They’re true stories. These are just some of the people who have visited the synagogue at Sixth and I in Washington, DC. Few synagogues in the world can claim as many disparate high-profile guests …More

The British city of Liverpool will spend $100,000 to save a 77-year-old synagogue. The Greenbank Synagogue in South Liverpool, which was built in 1936, was listed as being “at risk” in 2010, three years after the area’s Jewish community stopped using it, the Liverpool Echo reported, but the city hopes to secure its long-term future and help find a new use for it. English Heritage, a public body, will provide about $77,000 in grants for the renovation; the council will give the rest. Work is due …More

Frolicking with her fiance in the cool waters of the Suez Canal, Lilian Abada would never have imagined she was about to experience the first of a string of events that would ultimately lead her to flee her native Egypt for Israel with only one suitcase. When Abada and her future husband, Nisso, emerged from the water that day in 1956, a security agent was waiting for them. The two teenagers were arrested for spying for Israel and interrogated for days. They were released and then rearrested, along with hundreds …More