Congregation Beth Jacob Ohev Sholom

284 Rodney Street | also 336 Broadway | South Williamsburg | built 1956

Open on the map4 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1957

    Two congregations, displaced by the expressway, build a new synagogue on Rodney Street

    Beth Jacob, founded in 1869, lost its South Third Street synagogue when the city took and demolished it for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the 1950s. It combined with another large Ashkenazi congregation in the same position, and in 1957 the merged Congregation Beth Jacob Ohev Sholom built the present building at 284 Rodney Street, just west of Broadway.

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 1971

    Joshua Fishman becomes rabbi of Beth Jacob Ohev Sholom and serves for more than four decades

    Rabbi Joshua Fishman took the pulpit in 1971, when as many as 700 people attended services, and led the congregation until he retired in 2014. From 1982 he also headed Torah Umesorah, the national society for Hebrew day schools. By 2010 Shabbat services drew only about two dozen worshippers, as demographics changed.

    “Rabbi Joshua Fishman served as rabbi from 1971 until his retirement in 2014. ... attendance at services, which had been 700 in the 1970s, fell to two dozen by 2010.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 2024

    September 17

    Broken pews fill the Rodney Street sanctuary floor in a fight over leasing it to a yeshiva

    Congregation leaders say a rival board faction, which had leased the building to a Satmar boys' high school, left broken pews filling the ground floor on September 17, 2024, a week after a Kings County court ruling said the school could not move in. Some of the pew ends were engraved with Stars of David. The congregation says it then got a restraining order and kept holding services.

    “Broken and splintered hardwood ... filled the ground floor of CBJOS on September 17, 2024. ... despite a ruling that stated the yeshiva couldn't move in at present…”

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 2025

    January 31

    The Department of Buildings orders part of the Rodney Street synagogue vacated after gut work

    According to the congregation's account, developers working with a rival faction gutted the area where the Torah is read and ripped up floor tiles containing asbestos. On January 31 the Department of Buildings issued a partial vacate order, saying conditions were imminently perilous to life. A three-day court hearing in March was meant to decide which board is the congregation's true custodian.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 6 buildings with stories in South Williamsburg