East Midwood Jewish Center was founded in 1924, when its section of Flatbush was largely an area of widely spaced one-family homes and extensive stretches of open fields. Brooklyn College had not come into being yet, and Bedford Avenue was still unpaved. East Midwood was “out in the country.” Jewish families who had begun to settle here were deeply concerned that there was no Hebrew school nearby.
Our Center was created out of the commitment of a small group of individuals who came together to establish an institution to provide for the Jewish education, spiritual, and social needs of the area in which they lived. They realized that there is no future in Judaism without strengthening the present.
The cornerstone of the building was laid on June 13, 1926. In the autumn of that year the building was fully enclosed and High Holy Day services were held within the building, officiated by Rabbi Reuben Kaufman, our Center’s first rabbi, and Cantor Jacob Schraeter.
The building was completed in 1929, at a cost of about $1 million , and remains one of the most beautiful synagogues in the New York City.
Harry Halpern accepted the call to serve as our rabbi in February 1929. This mutual association of rabbi and Center proved a most fruitful one for many years.
During the Great Depression financial trouble assailed the growing Center. As times improved, membership began to climb slowly. In 1934 there were 300 members. Ten years later the membership rose to 1100. Adult classes became part of the Center’s educational program, with courses offered in Hebrew, religious customs and ceremonies, the Bible and Zionism.
During World War II, the men and women of the Center participated actively in war efforts and drives, including the sale of millions of dollars worth of War Bonds. Many members contributed to the Blood Banks, and women volunteered to serve with the Jewish Welfare Board, Red Cross and U.S.O. Our boys served in all branches of the country’s military forces. Some made the supreme sacrifice.
Meanwhile, EMJC nurtured new generations of Jewish leaders. Among them was Ruth Bader, later Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who studied in our Talmud Torah. She lamented that she did not get a rite of passage equivalent to a bar mitzvah at the time. In eighth grade in 1946, Bader wrote in the EMJC Bulletin, reflecting on the horrors of the Holocaust: "There can be a happy world and there will be once again, when men create a strong bond towards one another, a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance. "
In November 1950, the new school building was dedicated for the use of the Talmud Torah and Youth Activities. Enrollment reached a peak of close to 1,000 students in the early 1950.
The East Midwood Jewish Center Day School, which began with only three grades, grew into a full eight year program where both Hebrew and secular subjects were taught. It became so popular that the Congregation build a new building to house it in the 1950’s. The Day School, chartered by the NYS Board of Regents, operated as a self-sustaining entity until 2018. Alongside the Day School, our Congregation always maintained a Talmud Torah, which in 2007, grew into our congregational school, now called our Room J program.
In 2006, a gala celebration at East Midwood Jewish Center marked its listing on the National and New York State Registers of Historic Places, which recognize it as an outstanding representative of early twentieth century synagogue design and for its significant role in the development of the New York Jewish community, American democracy, and cultural pluralism.
