K'hal Adath Jeshurun

85 Bennett Avenue | also 89 Bennett Avenue | Washington Heights | built 1953

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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. 1939

    German Jewish refugees found K'hal Adath Jeshurun on Bennett Avenue

    Refugees who fled Germany after Kristallnacht founded the congregation in 1939. Its first rabbi, Joseph Breuer, grandson of Samson Raphael Hirsch, modeled the community on Hirsch's Orthodox congregation in Frankfurt am Main and led it until 1980. It still follows the Western Ashkenazic rite and runs its own schools, ritual bath, kosher supervision and burial society.

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 1952

    K'hal Adath Jeshurun dedicates its synagogue at 85-93 Bennett Avenue

    The young congregation's first home was a converted dance school at 90 Bennett Avenue. Answering Rabbi Breuer's call for a new shul, members built this synagogue, dedicated in 1952 and seen by them as a renewal of the synagogues destroyed in Europe. The building had a full-scale renovation in 2002, and the old dance-school building became a social hall.

    Source: kajinc.org

  3. 1958

    Rabbi Joseph Breuer invites Rabbi Shimon Schwab to join the rabbinate

    After founding and leading the congregation for almost two decades, Rabbi Joseph Breuer asked Rabbi Shimon Schwab to join him in the rabbinate, and Schwab did so in 1958. As Breuer reached old age, Schwab took over most of his duties.

    Source: jewishpress.com

  4. 1967

    Rabbi Breuer gives his last Shabbat-morning sermon in the synagogue at a grandson's bar mitzvah

    Rabbi Joseph Breuer's last Shabbat-morning sermon in the synagogue came in 1967, at the bar mitzvah of his grandson David Bechhofer, who later wrote about it. Breuer had arrived in New York in February 1939 with his wife and three of their children, and within days a small group of German-Jewish immigrants in Washington Heights asked him to serve as their rabbi.

    Source: jewishpress.com

  5. 1980

    Rabbi Joseph Breuer leads the congregation until his death in 1980

    Rabbi Joseph Breuer, a grandson of the German Orthodox leader Samson Raphael Hirsch, leads K'hal Adath Jeshurun from its 1939 founding until his death in 1980, shaping its strict Frankfurt-style Orthodox practice on Bennett Avenue. Rabbi Shimon Schwab, who had joined the community in 1958, succeeds him as senior rabbi. The two together lead the congregation for more than fifty years combined.

    Source: Wikipedia

  6. 1987

    Rabbi Zachariah Gelley, a Bergen-Belsen survivor who led a yeshiva in England, joins the rabbinate

    In 1987 Khal Adath Jeshurun invited Rabbi Zachariah Gelley to become one of its rabbis. Born in Slovakia in 1932, he was deported with his family to Bergen-Belsen in 1944 and survived. At 13 he went alone to England to study in a yeshiva, and in 1965 his alma mater in Sunderland invited him to become its head. At Khal Adath Jeshurun he and his wife were loved by the members, who loved them in return.

    Source: jewishpress.com

  7. 1995

    Rabbi Shimon Schwab dies at 86 and Rabbi Gelley succeeds him

    Rabbi Shimon Schwab, who joined Rabbi Joseph Breuer in 1958 and led the community alone after Breuer's death in 1980, died in 1995 at 86, on Purim Katan. His health had declined in his last years, though he kept lecturing and teaching. The congregation turned to Rabbi Zechariah Gelley, who had joined several years earlier as second rabbi, to succeed him.

    Source: Wikipedia

  8. 2018

    April 20

    Rabbi Gelley is mourned at the Bennett Avenue synagogue before burial beside Schwab and Breuer

    Rabbi Zachariah Gelley died on April 19, 2018, in Lakewood, New Jersey, at 85. His formal funeral was held the next morning at the synagogue on Bennett Avenue, with eulogies from his successor, Rabbi Yisroel Mantel, and the Novominsker Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, among others. He was buried in the congregation's section of King Solomon cemetery in Clifton, New Jersey, next to his predecessors Rabbi Shimon Schwab and Rabbi Joseph Breuer.

    Source: jewishpress.com

  9. 2026

    May

    Rabbi Liron Rogovsky succeeds Rabbi Yisroel Mantel as senior rabbi

    In late May 2026, Rabbi Liron Rogovsky, previously of Monsey, New York, is elected senior rabbi of K'hal Adath Jeshurun, succeeding Rabbi Yisroel Mantel, who leaves after being elected rabbi of Gateshead, England's Jewish community in December 2025. Rogovsky trained at yeshivas in Baltimore and Jerusalem, while the Bennett Avenue synagogue continues to follow the Western Ashkenazic rite that its Frankfurt-refugee founders brought to Washington Heights in 1939.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

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