Synagogues and Jewish Life
Other religious institutions existed nearby. Jews fleeing the pogroms of the Russian Empire established a congregation by 1876, and built the Dalston Synagogue in adjoining Poets Road in 1885. This became one of the leading synagogues of London, with Jacob Koussevitzsky as its cantor from 1936.
For a period from the end of the nineteenth century, the Newington Green Area was host to a large Jewish population, which was beginning to leave the East End and move northwards towards Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill. The original Adath Israel orthodox congregation was founded in 1911 and its first permanent building was in Alma Road, off Green Lanes, before moving on towards Stoke Newington and the other side of Clissold Park in the 1950s. A large United Synagogue was built in Poets Road in the 1870s and remained active until it closed down in the late 1960s, as the remaining Jewish population moved on further afield. At its height, the Poets Road Synagogue (or as it was known the Dalston Synagogue despite the fact that it was not in Dalston) had hundreds of worshippers and, for a short while in the 1950s, was the home of one of the worlds leading cantors, a member of the Kusevitsky family.
The synagogue site was eventually sold and the beautiful building, along with its stained glass windows, was demolished in 1970 and replaced by a block of council flats, leaving no trace of the Jewish life which existed in this area.
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Famous quotes containing the words synagogues and, synagogues, jewish and/or life:
“Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.”
—Bible: New Testament Jesus, in Matthew, 6:2-3.
From the Sermon on the Mount.
“Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.”
—Bible: New Testament Jesus, in Matthew, 6:2-3.
From the Sermon on the Mount.
“I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts—especially texts by black women. A working-class Jewish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American scholar and educator. Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B2 (July 27, 1994)
“What should we think of the shepherd’s life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)