Go on a virtual tour with author, photographer, architect and tour guide Oscar Israelowitz. Register for the Zoom link beginning December 30 at 10 AM.

The program begins with the earliest Jewish settlements in Colonial days with the founding of such congregations as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York City, the Touro Synagogue in Newport, and Mikveh Israel (Synagogue of the American Revolution) in Philadelphia.

We proceed with the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of the Jewish communities throughout the country. There is a section devoted to the Jewish farmers and small wood-frame synagogues in the middle of corn fields, the Lower East Side and its great synagogues and Jewish California with its first talking motion picture, The Jazz Singer in 1927, starring Al Jolson and Cantor Yossele Roseblatt. There is a section devoted to Woodbine, NJ, the first incorporated all-Jewish town in the country—all civil servants, including the mayor, police chief, fire chief and town councilmen conducted business in Yiddish!

We conclude with contemporary synagogues designed by world-renowned architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, Louis Sullivan and Morris Lapidus. This program will 'blow your mind!'

Photo credit: Synagogue for the Congregation Rodef Sholam [sic], s.e. corner Broad & Mount Vernon Strts. Phila. [graphic] / Fraser, Furness, & Hewitt Archts. Phila. 1869; chromolithograph mounted on paper; 63 x 44 cm. (24.75 x 17.25 in.) Courtesy of Library Company of Philadelphia (source).