Pelham Parkway Jewish Center Records, 1949–2008

The Pelham Parkway Jewish Center was started in 1930, when The Bronx had one of the highest populations of Jews in the world. Unlike most other parts of The Bronx, whose Jewish population traditionally was overwhelmingly working-class, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, the Pelham Parkway neighborhood from the start was a firmly middle-class Jewish neighborhood. The synagogue’s membership, presumably, came primarily from this social class. (In the area, working-class Jews were more likely to live immediately north of Pelham Parkway, in the Allerton neighborhood.) At any rate, the shul acquired its own temple and building complex in 1953 at 900 Pelham Parkway. At the height of its activity in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the synagogue boasted a large membership and various highly active auxiliary religious and social clubs.

However, due to the steady of exodus of middle-class Jews from many parts of The Bronx, including Pelham Parkway, during the 1960s and 1970s, the synagogue experienced a declining membership and began to encounter difficulty in forming a daily minyan—the group of ten people, typically men in most traditions of Judaism, over the age of 13 who must be present to commence a public prayer service. Thanks in part to the energetic efforts of Rabbi Abraham Hartstein, who came to the synagogue in 1982, and an influx of new Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union during the 1980s, the Pelham Parkway Jewish Center experienced a marked revival at this point in time and had once more become a vibrant center of Jewish life in the Pelham Parkway neighborhood by the early 1990s. It was at this point in time, 1993, that the person who collected these records, Elias Karmon, who had been an active member with his family since 1958, was elected President of the synagogue.

During Karmon’s two-year tenure as president, he helped navigate the synagogue through two major controversies. The first involved a legal suit between the synagogue and another organization called the Rainbow School for Child Development, which had rented office and classroom space in Pelham Parkway Jewish Center during weekdays since 1989. The Rainbow School evidently began to seek and actually inhabit a larger portion of the center’s space. Certain members of the synagogue, including Karmon, became increasingly suspicious that the school would eventually try to take over the building completely. Upon election as president, Karmon looked over the lease and wished to rewrite the document on terms less favorable to the school. When the school objected, Karmon attempted to rally the synagogue’s membership against it. This dispute led to a lawsuit and settlement in 1993, with both sides making concessions. The Rainbow School thus continued to rent space from Pelham Parkway Jewish Center and even sought a lease renewal in 1995—though not without tension.

The second controversy of Karmon’s presidency involved Rabbi Melvin Sachs, who was hired after the death of Rabbi Hartstein in 1994. Rabbi Sachs evidently tried underhandedly to change the traditional observances and affiliation of Pelham Parkway Jewish Center from Conservative to Orthodox. Much to the ire of many longstanding congregants, Rabbi Sachs attempted to install a mechitzot (i.e., a divider) in the temple to separate men and women during prayer services. Rabbi Sachs also attended a Young Israel conference for Orthodox rabbis, claimed that Pelham Parkway Jewish Center fully supported his decision, and asked afterwards that the synagogue reimburse him for expenses accrued. Karmon and other members of the synagogue sharply opposed Rabbi Sachs’s efforts to change the synagogue’s affiliation and observances—although the rabbi certainly had a loyal cohort of congregants on his side. The dispute eventually came to a head with a lawsuit from Rabbi Sachs against the synagogue. The conflict was soon settled, but Rabbi Sachs did not last at Pelham Parkway Jewish Center for very long afterwards.

A series of rabbis succeeded Rabbi Sachs, though membership was again on the decline in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 2010, the nearby Young Israel of Pelham Parkway, faced with its own dwindling membership, sold its building at 2126 Barnes Avenue and began to rent space in the Pelham Parkway Jewish Center. Over the course of the next few years, the two synagogues merged and became the Young Israel of Pelham Parkway Jewish Center, which it remains to this day.

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