Temple Emanu-el

Some religious school students at Temple Emanu-El heard a firsthand account of the Holocaust recently. And they saw the New York premiere of a German-made Holocaust documentary.

During two Yom HaShoah speeches at the Upper East Side Reform synagogue, Holocaust survivor Leslie Schwartz talked about his wartime experiences (the rest of his family died in Auschwitz) and showed a documentary about his life produced by a Bavarian  television channel (an English-language version was recently released at his request).

Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-El, one of the oldest and largest Reform congregations in the world, has hired Rabbi Joshua Davidson as its senior rabbi.

The Jewish landmarks of my childhood in the Jewish section of north Buffalo are now Christian.

Temple Emanu-El, the Conservative congregation where I became bar mitzvah under the tutelage of one of the denomination’s most prominent scholars, Rabbi Isaac Klein, is now a church. So is the Modern Orthodox shul down the block. And another synagogue a few blocks away.