Mikdash Eliyahu400 Avenue U · Gravesend, Brooklyn

Our story

Established in October 1998 in a former gas station on the corner of East 2nd Street and Avenue U, Mikdash Eliyahu is a good example of how the Syrian Jewish community functions at its best. Today it is home to hundreds of families.

Mikdash Eliyahu’s first home, in black and white: a one-storey former gas station with large glass-paned bays on the corner of East 2nd Street and Avenue U, with houses and apartment buildings behind it

From 1998 to today

Photographs

  1. 1998

    It starts with Mr. Murray Dweck, who would occasionally attend an Ashkenaz synagogue on East 3rd Street on a snowy Friday night. Surprised to see that this minyan was half Sephardic, Mr. Dweck soon decided that there was a necessity for a new Syrian knis in the Gravesend area.

    The idea immediately found its supporters, among them Maney Douek, who was enthusiastic about the project from the start. Although there were the usual difficulties of raising funds and obtaining a property, the project got off to a running start. By using his ingenuity in real estate to procure a lot, and with the help of Ezra Massry, who brought his family to start a daily minyan, Murray Dweck created a synagogue in the Syrian-Halabi tradition.

    Five men in suits stand before an ark curtain embroidered with a Tree of Life and the tablets
    From left: Mr. Maney Douek, Rabbi Avraham Benhamu, Rabbi Nissim Elnekaveh, Mr. Eli M. Dweck, Mr. Murray Dweck.

  2. 2001

    For decades, residents of Gravesend knew the building at the southeast corner of East 2nd Street and Avenue U as a place to gas up their cars. By 2001 the one-storey structure, its large glass-paned bays still recalling its automotive past, was Mikdash Eliyahu, and attendance had swelled from 40 congregants to more than 100 families.

    Within a few years there was a need for a major expansion to fit all of the congregants.

  3. The expansion

    Murray Dweck’s plan was to build a structure more than triple the size of the original synagogue, with a luxury condominium above it: the sale of the condos would fund the expansion. The community responded with support for both, and the New York Times praised the ingenuity of integrating residential and religious edifices.

    The new building follows a traditional design for Sephardic synagogues, with the teba in the middle of the house: “That’s the tradition in Italy, Greece and Spain as well as the Middle East,” said its architect, Stephen B. Jacobs. It is a tribute to the Syrian Jewish community, which dedicates itself to Torah while possessing unparalleled resourcefulness and creativity.

    The round sanctuary today: curved rows of rust-velvet seats around the teba, facing the ark

  4. 2022

    On January 3rd, 2022, the congregation celebrated a siyum of Masekhet Rosh Hashanah, the culmination of months of learning Gemara every morning with Rabbi Avi Harari. Over 20 of the close to 40 participants came for words of Torah, a dinner and a night together, sponsored by Jeffrey Gindi in memory of his father, Ralph S. Gindi A”H. Morris Catton taught the last passage of the Gemara.

    “When Rabbi Avi Harari joined Mikdash Eliyahu family, one of our goals was to build upon our daily learning and to establish a daily Gemara class,” said the president, Eli Dweck. The class went on to Masekhet Sanhedrin.

    The morning Gemara class at tables in the social hall

  5. Today

    Under the leadership of Rabbi Dr. Raymond Harari, Rabbi Avi Harari and our president, Eli M. Dweck, Mikdash Eliyahu is home to hundreds of families, provides daily classes, has world-renowned hazzanim leading the Slah, a booming young adult minyan, an ever-growing father/son minyan, and a Shabbat girls program that attracts dozens. May we only see more growth in the future.

    Men learning at long tables covered in grey cloth in the wood-panelled social hall, its tall windows behind wooden blinds

Our name

Mikdash Eliyahu is named after Eli F. Dweck A”H, the father of Murray. In many ways, the synagogue is a tribute to his memory.

He arrived from Syria at eight, selling newspapers on the street to help his family. Living in Puerto Rico for 19 years, he faced the challenge of raising a family in a Catholic country with practically no Jews. Never wavering from his dedication to Judaism, he built a mikveh for his wife, brought in a mohel from America for each of his three sons, and built a succah every year. When the time came for his oldest child’s Bar Mitzvah, he moved to America, where his sons could receive the proper Torah instruction.

Mikdash Eliyahu continues this tradition of unwavering commitment to Judaism.

The emblem of Mikdash Eliyahu: its Hebrew name inside broken rings

In the press

“A Recent Influx of Syrian Jews Alters a Neighborhood Yet Again.” The New York Times, Neighborhood Report: Gravesend, November 11, 2001, by Tara Bahrampour.

“Despite its unusual dual function, the synagogue would follow a traditional design for Sephardic synagogues.”
Read it in the New York Times

“There are 20 or 30 Syrian-Lebanese synagogues in Brooklyn, a dozen within walking distance of here,” Murray Dweck told the Times. “They’re all pretty full.”

Syrian Sephardim began arriving in New York in the early 1900s, moving from the Lower East Side to Williamsburg, before migrating to Gravesend and Bay Parkway. “Nobody moves out,” he said, “so it grows pretty quickly.”