Jewish Center (Manhattan)

Jewish Center is one of America's premier Orthodox synagogues , and Modern Orthodox congregations.¹ The synagogue was founded in 1918 by prosperous Jews moving into the Upper West Side , a neighborhood that was just being built along the new IRT subway line. The large synagogue is located in a tall, Neo-Classical building on West 86th Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side that contains a large number of social halls, classrooms, auditoriums and offices in addition to the splendid Neo-Classical main sanctuary. The synagogue was the first in America to be built not only to serve as spiritual home to its members, but also as a cultural, social and recreational home. It continues to support a variety of educational and social programming. The first rabbi was Mordecai Kaplan , who left in 1921 because his positions were too reform oriented for the Orthodox congregation. The congregation then hired Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung , who later became involved in the founding and support of almost every major Orthodox organization in the United States and abroad, from the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations to Agudath Israel, from Torah Umesorah to the Beth Jacob movement (in Poland and the United States) to Chabad. Norman Lamm , now Chancellor at Yeshiva University , took over the pulpit in 1959. The fourth rabbi of the center was Rabbi Isaac Bernstein, an Irish scholar. Schachter was rabbi from 1981-2000, and now serves as Resident Scholar at The Center for the Jewish Future at Yeshiva University. Rabbi Ari Berman, founding rabbi of The Jewish Center Young Leadership minyan, served as the sixth rabbi of the Center before making Aliyah in 2008. The current rabbi is Rabbi Yosie Levine, an alumnus of Columbia University and Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary .²