Tracing Syracuse's Jewish Buildings II: Former Anshe Sfard

Syracuse, NY. Former Congregation Anshe Sfard, 2013 East Genesee Street. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2018.

Syracuse, NY. Former Congregation Anshe Sfard, 2013 East Genesee Street. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2009.

Syracuse, NY. Former Congregation Anshe Sfard, 2013 East Genesee Street. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2009.

Syracuse, NY. Former Congregation Anshe Sfard, 2013 East Genesee Street. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2009.

Tracing Syracuse's Jewish Buildings II: Former Anshe Sfard Synagogue

by Samuel D. Gruber

In post-World War II Syracuse Jewish institutions that had remained in the "old neighborhood" of the 15th Ward through the Depression years leap-frogged east over the University Hill neighborhood where new synagogues had been erected between 1911 and 1926. They landed on the stretch of East Genesee Street from Westcott Street to Fellows Avenue, and for a few decades this became the new hub of Syracuse's Jewish community. Eventually two Orthodox synagogues, the Jewish Community Center, and the Jewish War Veterans' Post would all be located within a three block area. Several rabbis lived nearby, too. 

Today, the Jewish Community Center newly built in the 1950s and subsequently housing the Paul Robeson Arts Center,  has been torn down and replaced with veterans' housing. The Jewish War Veterans' Post established in a late 19th-century house has been restored as residential apartments and is now known as the Babcock-Shattuck House. The former synagogues are transformed, too. They are hard to recognize, but a close look at the current home of the Syracuse Peace Council at 2013 East Genesee Street on the NE corner of East Genesee Street Westcott Street, reveals architectural features and plaques attesting to its time as the former Anshe Sfard Synagogue, which adapted this former house as a synagogue in 1953 (the other Orthodox synagogue was Young Israel, which I'll discuss in a separate post).

This building is hardly noteworthy for it beauty. It cannot rival either the Classical style Temple Concord (1910-11) or the expressive modern design of the Temple Adath (1968 ff). But it is noteworthy for its history. it is a good example of a way-station of the Syracuse Jewish journey, a temporary stop on what I have elsewhere described as the "Continuing Exodus," a typical American Jewish pattern of out-migration from city center.

Syracuse, NY. Former Congregation Anshe Sfard, 815 South Orange Street, 1917. Photo: Rudolph, From a Minyan to a Community (Onondaga Historical Association).

Syracuse, NY. Former Congregation Anshe Sfard, 2013 East Genesee Street. Founded in a remodeled house in 1953. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2018.

In 1950 the Orthodox Jewish congregation Anshe Sfard sold its building at 815 South Orange Street in the 15^th Ward, and followed the Jewish migration to the Westcott neighborhood. The congregation was founded around 1907 and built its first synagogue in 1917 in the old immigrant neighborhoods. But in 1950 the congregation purchased a large late 19th-century house near the northeast corner of Westcott and East Genesee Streets and remodeled the building to serve as a synagogue. The congregation added an entry wing facing East Genesee Street in with a stark, stripped-down modern style. Vestigial applied pilasters are the only ornament that tie the building to earlier more-ornate area synagogue facades.

The orientation of the house was south-north, so the new congregation built a small extension on the east wall of the new wing, presumably to house the Holy Ark. A plaque with a stylized Decalogue (Ten Commandments) remains in situ above the entrance; only the first words of the Ten Commandments - in Hebrew - were included. Another plaque with a Jewish Star remains set in the new low-pitched gable. 

Syracuse, NY. Former Congregation Anshe Sfard, 2013 East Genesee Street. Ten Commandments over main entrance. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2009.

The congregation’s name indicates its use of the Nusaf Sfard, a liturgy favored by Eastern European Hasidim, members of the widespread pietistic and charismatic religious movement founded by the Baal Shem Tov in the late 18th century that swept Eastern Europe.  Members of Syracuse’s Anshe Sfard congregation had origins in Odessa and Kishinev, Ukraine. Despite the name of the congregation it is wrong to think of this as a Sephardi synagogue; its members were East European immigrants and their children.

According to the late B. G. Rudolph, historian of Syracuse’s Jewish community and author of From a Minyan to a Community, the congregation’s first place of worship was on State Street over a harness shop.  By 1917 they had enough funds to erect a purpose-built synagogue at 815 South Orange Street (now South McBride St.) which was dedicated on August 12, 1917 (Syracuse Herald, Aug. 11, 1917). The building was demolished in the frenzy of "urban Renewal" of the early 1960s. That stretch of South Orange Street is now included within the bounds of the expansive building complex of Presidential Plaza, built from the mid-1960s through 1973.

Despite its move, Anshe Sfard subsequently merged with Temple Beth El in 1974. That congregation - formed by a merger of Beth Israel and Poiley Zedek - opened its new building further east on East Genesee Street in 1965. The merger created a Modern Orthodox congregation of about 600 families. But after years of declining membership Beth El was forced to close in 2007. The East Genesee Street building of Anshe Sfard now houses the Syracuse Peace Council.  The Beth El building is now a church.