Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes - 21st Century

21st Century

In 2002 Baith Israel Anshei Emes received a $1 million grant for building renovations from Lillian Goldman, just weeks before her death; she had previously donated $20 million for the reconstruction and expansion of Yale Law School's library, and $5 million to Manhattan's 92nd Street Y for a family center there. After raising over $2 million more, including a $54,000 grant from the Jewish Communal Fund, in 2003 the congregation began re-building the three story school/community center from the ground up, leaving only the historic facade. In 2004 the building was re-opened as the "Sol and Lillian Goldman Education Center", and a day-time pre-school launched. Though the sanctuary also needed extensive repairs, the renovations of the school/community center were undertaken first because the congregation decided "a venue for social functions is at the heart of every cohesive religious group". The following year, the school received a $25,000 grant from the Edith Glick Shoolman Children's Foundation "o assist in the development of the Kane Street Kids program for pre-school age children housed in the Congregation's Early Childhood Center".

Nearly 300 households were members by 2006, and in the same year, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation awarded the synagogue a grant of $350,000 for exterior restoration of the sanctuary. The grant was part of a million-dollar capital campaign that the membership intended to carry out in 2008, as the synagogue building still required extensive repairs: the roof leaked, causing interior damage, and (along with the gutters) needed to be replaced; interior columns were taped to prevent plaster from falling off them; the sanctuary doors needed to be replaced; and the stained glass windows needed to be removed, the metal holding them repaired, and their wooden framing replaced. In 2007 the New York Landmarks Conservancy's Sacred Sites Program awarded Baith Israel Anshei Emes grants totaling $17,500, for copper roof and masonry restoration.

The congregation had been supportive of gays since at least the early 1990s, and following the late 2006 decision by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards to allow same-sex commitment ceremonies, in 2007 Baith Israel Anshei Emes voted to follow suit. The day before Yom Kippur, 2009, the synagogue was picketed by members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who shouted antisemitic and anti-gay slogans.

Led by Rabbi Samuel H. Weintraub since 1996, Baith Israel Anshei Emes is the oldest continuously operating synagogue in Brooklyn.