Maple Street Shul Marks Growth and Survival
Congregation Ahavas Moshe in Crown Heights, commonly known as The Maple Street Shul, will be holding their annual Melave Malka this week.
The event will take place on Motzei Shabbos Mevorchim Nissan, March 17, 2012 at 612 Maple Street, beginning at 9:00 PM. The event will celebrate the synagogue’s growth and continued survival amid past years of hardships.
“When we originally got the building it was in bad shape,” said Eli Blachman, who has been the Shul’s President since 1974 with the blessings of the Rebbe and Rabbi Zalman Shimon Dworkin OBM.
To raise funds to fix the roof and renovate, In 1981 Blachman organized a Membership Drive Breakfast with journalist Gershon Jacobson as the speaker. “The Rebbe sent us membership too,” Blachman proudly noted.
Being located on the borders of Crown Heights, with mostly non-Jewish neighbors, was a challenge in itself. “I used to stand on the corner of Lefferts Avenue and Albany and beg people to fill our Minyan,” Blachman recalls. Upon finding bullet holes at the Shul in the wake of the 1991 riots, the Shul dedicated a room to Yankel Rosenbaum HY“D, who was murdered that August.
When Blachman hesitated about organizing the Melave Malka, ”the Rebbe told me that I must do something, even small, but don’t stop it.“
To continue the wishes of the Rebbe, the maple street shul will be having it’s annual Melava Malka this Motzei Shabbos. The Shul has prepared a very interesting program for your enjoyment, including guest speaker Rabbi Shea Hecht, a well known Community Activist in Crown Heights and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of NCFJE, and a special performance by the well known violinist Reb Yitzchok Hurwitz; since the time of the Baal Shem Tov, the violin has expressed the ”soul” of Chassidic music.
Eli Blachman, the Shul’s President, and Yisroel Karp, the Chairman of the Board, invite the Crown Heights Community to join the celebration. While they definitely need your financial assistance, they also need our community members to attend and show support for the shul. Members, their guests, and friends of the shul are invited to join for the festivities on what will be a most enjoyable and memorable Motzoei Shabbos evening.
Fed Up
I am glad to hear that a room in the shul was dedicated to Yankel Rosenbaum HY”D. It is sad that it had to come to that point, but at least his memory will live on. The dedication, should serve as a reminder to who he was, what he stood for, and why he was murdered. Children, who were not around during the Crown Heights riot will learn about Rosenbaum. From what I read on an online source, shots were fired at the synogauge in September, 1991 several weeks after the riots. It would have been relieving to the Jewish community if such vandalism had been classified as a hate crime, but somehow it wasn’t. At least the synogauge is still there. Congratulations to a job well done on those, who have kept the synogauge going even through the roughest of times, especially after the ’91 riot. The members of that congregation have every right to pray there peacefully without being attacked. It is their neighborhood too.