First Roumanian-American Congregation - Decline

Decline

Over time the synagogue appealed to a broader constituency than just Roumanian-American Jews. Nevertheless, membership declined during the latter half of the 20th century as the upwardly mobile Jewish population of the Lower East Side moved to north Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. First Roumanian-American was particularly affected: as it was an Orthodox congregation, in order to attend Sabbath services its members had to live within walking distance.

In 1980 First Roumanian-American was one of the few congregations on the Lower East Side to still have its own Talmud Torah. This school had been housed in a small building on the east side of the synagogue that had formerly served as the church rectory. The congregation was eventually forced to sell the building, but the new owners retained the school's carved sign.

Rabbi Mordecai Mayer, who had led the congregation for 20 years, died in 1981, two days before his 66th birthday. Born in Chortkov (then in Poland), he had graduated from the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, and had emigrated to the United States in 1936. He had, for 40 years, conducted programs on Jewish topics on radio station WEVD, then owned by The Forward. In the 1970s he was a columnist for the Yiddish weekly Algemeiner Journal, and was the author of the English-language books Israel's Wisdom in Modern Life (1949) and Seeing Through Believing (1973). He was succeeded by Jacob Spiegel.

In the early 1990s the congregation could still be assured of the required quorum of ten men for the minyan during the week, as local businessmen attended the morning and evening prayers before opening and after closing their shops. By 1996, however, the membership was down to around two dozen, and Spiegel began holding services in the small social hall in the basement, as the main sanctuary had become too expensive to maintain.

With the decline in membership, the building deteriorated. In 1997 the congregation received a grant for preservation and repair of the structure from the New York Landmarks Conservancy, and the following year received $4,000 from the Landmarks Conservancy's Sacred Sites program for roof truss repairs. That same year the synagogue building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places at the local level. In the fall of that year Shimon Attie's laser visual work Between Dreams and History was projected onto the synagogue and neighboring buildings for three weeks.

Spiegel had a heart attack and died in 2001, leaving charge of the synagogue to the youngest of his three sons, Rabbi Shmuel Spiegel. The other sons, Rabbi Gershon and Rabbi Ari, were, respectively, synagogue president and assistant rabbi. In June 2003 the name "Rabbi Yaakov Spiegel Way" was given collectively to the corner of Rivington Street and Ludlow Street near the synagogue location and the stretch of Rivington in front of the synagogue.

The roof had long been in bad shape by the time of Jacob Spiegel's death in 2001 and it was threatening to collapse. In December of that year, Shmuel Spiegel managed to raise $25,000 for emergency repairs. However, despite offering cholent (the traditional Sabbath lunch stew) at the Sabbath morning kiddush, Spiegel had to search local streets to make the ten men for the minyan. In 2004 the regular membership hovered around 40. Spiegel kept the synagogue running at an annual cost of around $75,000.