Bonds of Faith

Congregation Adas Emuno has certainly been in the news quite a lot recently, and while much of it has involved the controversial resolution to declare Leonia a sanctuary city, Bergen County's monthly 201 Magazine ran a feature about our shul's history in their March issue. Here's how it looked:

And let's take a closer look at those photos:

The color photo is of last year's spiel, and this came out just in time for Purim, which we just celebrated on Saturday evening and Sunday morning! 

We are most certainly the little shul that could!

Searching for Our History

from the pages of Kadima, the newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

From the desk of …                    

 Rabbi Barry Schwartz

    

SEARCHING FOR OUR HISTORY

In the year 1871:

-        Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United Sates and the Civil War had ended only a few years before.

-       Queen Victoria ruled England.

-        The Great Chicago fire left 100,000 people homeless.

-        The first major league baseball game was played on May 4 and the first home run was hit on May 8.

-        Lord Stanley located a missing explorer in Africa with the words, “Dr. Livingstone I presume?”

-       Congregation Adas Emuno was founded in Hoboken.

 In this, our 140^th year, I’d like to find out more about our long history. After all, we are one of the oldest congregations in New Jersey. Keep in mind that the entire Jewish population of the United States at that time was only some 200,000, before the great emigration from Eastern Europe beginning in the 1880’s swelled our ranks by several million. The majority of Jews, like the founders of Adas Emuno, were Ashkenazic German speaking immigrants (although Sephardic Jews were the oldest segment of the American Jewish community stretching back to the colonial period). 

 A few paragraphs on our journey from Hoboken to Leonia can be found in the history section of our website. A synagogue was built in 1883; the Gothic Revival building stills stands today. Ten years later the congregation had tripled to a hundred families. The flourishing community included a religious school, choir, and benevolent association to aid the poor. Brotherhood and sisterhood groups were formed in the early 1900’s, and later on a youth group and “Spiritual Advisory Committee”.  Dues in 1919 were $30 a year; $45 by 1924 (but High Holy Day seats were extra and those closest to the ark cost $15). The congregation moved here in 1974, and became known as the synagogue with a steeple and star.

 What more can we find out and include in our story? There a many gaps to try and fill in. Sadly, some records may have been destroyed during Hurricane Irene when the basement of our religious school flooded. I’d like to propose a Temple history taskforce that will search historical sources and interview long time members and others with connections to our past. If you would like to volunteer, or contribute a piece on your own memories and recollections, please contact me. 

 As a people we deeply cherish memory and the transmitting of our heritage from one generation to the next. Our story, approaching a century and a half in the making, spans more than half of our nation’s history. Let’s tell it: for ourselves, our children, and posterity.

A Look At Our Roots

Congregation Adas Emuno was founded on October 22nd, 1871, in Hoboken, New Jersey, and from our perspective, our Congregation is not a place or a facility, it is an organization, and more than anything else, a community.

But for another perspective on Adas Emuno, we can turn to a website called, interestingly enough, The New Jersey Churchscape.  Here is how the creators of the website explain their project: "We've created a database and photographic inventory on more than half the 18th & 19th century churches in the state and add to it each month." 

And they have an entry for the "Adas Emuno Synagogue"!  But not for our present shul in Leonia, no, but rather for the original facility in Hoboken!  And here's the photograph that accompanies their entry:

According to our website's History page, this synagogue "was built on a parcel of land donated by the Stevens Family. This charming Gothic Revival building still stands today as an historic landmark, and at the time of its construction, was the pride of its congregation and a “credit to the city" [source: Hoboken Evening News, 1893] of Hoboken." And here is what they say in the New Jersey Churchscape entry on the Adas Emuno Synagogue:

This is the oldest surviving synagogue in New Jersey, built in 1883. The windows and door are Gothic, but the arcade in the gable is Romanesque. In the last part of the nineteenth century, the Jews had not developed an architectural style that was different from Christian churches, although in several instances, including an old synagogue in Newark, a vaguely Moorish style was adopted. I believe it was used by a Christian congregation for a period but is now an apartment building.

In 1974, a little over a century after its founding, our Congregation moved north, from Hoboken in Hudson County to Leonia in Bergen County, and that's where you'll find us today.  

And if the fate of the building saddens you at all, it is worth recalling that the origins of the Jewish people were as nomads, and that much more space, what we value is time, including the sacred time of Shabbat and the Jewish holidays.  And much more than places and buildings and monuments, what we value is people, and life.