Park East

Park East Synagogue was established in the 1800’s by Rabbi Bernard Drachman and Jonas Weil to promote Orthodox Judaism as an alternative to Reform Judaism popular on the Upper East Side.Rabbi Drachman passed away in 1945. Zev Zahavy was appointed rabbi of the synagogue on September 1, 1952. He was known as a dynamic spokesman for Orthodox Judaism. More than 200 of his sermons were reported on in the New York Times.

Since 1962, the synagogue’s rabbi has been Arthur Schneier. The Assistant Rabbi is Benjamin Goldschmidt. Its chief cantor is the renowned Yitzcahk Helfgot.

Out of all orthodox synagogues, the membership is known to be from the wealthiest in the country, second only to the Hampton Synagogue.

In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI visited the synagogue in the midst of a visit to New York City. This was the third papal visit to a synagogue and the only such visit in the United States of America. The Pope was given a box of matzahs and a silver Seder plate (it was almost Passover when the visit occurred); members of both the Catholic and Jewish religions wore their respective skullcaps.

Rabbi & Mrs. Goldschmidt – Assistant Rabbi at Park East

Born in Jerusalem and raised in Moscow, Rabbi Goldschmidt received his Talmudic education at Beth Medrash Govoah in Lakewood, New Jersey.

Inspired by his parents, father Pinchas- the Chief Rabbi of Moscow and the President of the Conference of European Rabbis and mother Dara, who founded the Etz Chaim Day School in Moscow to ensure his Jewish education, Rabbi Goldschmidt founded “Sunday Shkola”, a program teaching Jewish tradition in the Russian language, reaching out especially to the unaffiliated Russian speaking community in Manhattan.

Mrs. Goldschmidt is an editor for the Forward newspaper and a movie critic. In her latest article Mrs. Goldsmith’s relays how she went to the Tribeca Film Festival to watch the ‘Disobedience’ – a film about two orthodox woman whose passions reignite as they explore the boundaries of faith, sexuality and lesbianism.  The film contains multiple obscene/explicit heterosexual and homosexual scenes. In her critique she disapproves the films narrative of stereotyping the Orthodox Jewish woman.

Read more: https://forward.com/life/399922/im-sick-of-orthodox-women-being-fetishized-in-films-like-disobedience/