About Us
Greenpoint Shul (Congregation Ahavas Israel) is located in the Greenpoint Historic District in New York City. Founded in 1893, we are now Brooklyn's oldest continuously-operating synagogue and a congregation of approximately 100 households. Our joyful community holds Shabbat and holiday services, as well as a wide range of classes and events. We also care for our backyard garden, and prepare beautiful communal meals together.
Our History
Ahavas Israel is the only remaining Jewish congregation in a neighborhood that once supported five synagogues. Ahavas Israel is the result of a merger of three synagogues that had served Greenpoint in the late 19th century: Temple Beth El, Hebrew Educational Alliance of Greenpoint, and Ahavas Israel.
Temple Beth El was founded as a German-Jewish Reform synagogue. From 1886, it operated out of what is now our east building (110 Noble St.). This building was, according to records, a Congregationalist Church dating back to 1871.
Ahavas Israel came into existence in 1893 when it was incorporated by German-Jewish émigrés in Kings County as an Orthodox shul. Temple Beth El merged with them in 1898 and Ahavas Israel laid the cornerstone in 1903 for our current home, the west building at 108 Noble St.
In the early 1900s, the Hebrew Education Alliance of Greenpoint built a synagogue on Manhattan Avenue, Greenpoint’s main thoroughfare. After a fire destroyed the structure in 1960, the Hebrew Education Alliance merged with Ahavas Israel on the basis of an executive order of then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller.