North Avondale Synagogue

3870 Reading Road

The congregation was a merger of Yad Charutzim (was downtown) and Tiferth Israel. It closed in January 1998. Article on the closing below. The shul's ark now resides at B'nai Tzadek.

Sunday, January 25, 1998

Falling membership closes

Orthodox synagogue

BY JULIE IRWIN

The Cincinnati Enquirer

North Avondale Synagogue, which once served dozens of Jewish families from the center of Cincinnati, has closed its doors because of declining membership.

The synagogue's board voted recently to sell the building at 3870 Reading Road. Membership had fallen to about 20 people, said board member David Varady.

''The members got older, and within the past 10 years a lot of older members died, and there wasn't a replacement by newer members,'' said Mr. Varady, a professor of planning at the University of Cincinnati. ''There were no longer enough members to keep the building open and pay for expenses.''

The decision saddened longtime member Maurice Lowenthal, 86, who joined decades ago, when the Avondale area was the center of Jewish life in Cincinnati.

''The synagogue holds 120, and you couldn't get a seat on the High Holidays,'' Mr. Lowenthal said.

The closing of an Orthodox synagogue is especially hard on members, since Jewish law prevents them from driving to services on the Sabbath. Orthodox synagogues are often the last institutions left as a Jewish neighborhood changes.

''I'm observant, I'm Orthodox, and I don't ride on the Sabbath, so I have a real problem,'' Mr. Lowenthal said. ''We're going to take turns on the Sabbath and have it in each other's houses.''

The closing leaves the Tristate with eight Orthodox synagogues, three of them operated by Chabad of Southern Ohio. The largest of the other five Orthodox synagogues is Golf Manor Synagogue; the rest are small congregations in the Roselawn area.

Since North Avondale Synagogue opened its building in 1946, the center of the area's Jewish community has shifted - first north to Roselawn and Amberley Village, then farther northeast to Blue Ash. In 1980, the Roselawn - Amberley area was home to 35 percent of the Tristate Jewish population, according to the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati. That number has dropped steadily and now stands at under 20 percent.

In the same period of time, the percentage of the Jewish population living in the northeast suburbs has risen from about 6 percent to nearly 20 percent. The total Jewish population of Greater Cincinnati is estimated at 23,000 people.