Central Synagogue rises at the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 55th Street in Midtown Manhattan, a 150-year-old Belleville sandstone landmark where a community of more than 3,200 member families gathers every Shabbat. It is the largest Reform congregation in continuous use in New York City, a designated New York City Landmark and National Historic Landmark, and one of the leading Jewish congregations in the country. Beyond a reputation for spirited worship and a nationally regarded musical program, Central is known for an unusually active social-justice practice: a kosher breakfast served to hungry neighbors since 1983, a theater company for people returning from prison, a refugee resettlement partnership, a community fridge on the Upper East Side, all under one roof with a nursery school, a Pre-K through 12 religious school, and a center for adults exploring Judaism.
The Sanctuary That Survived a Fire
The building tells the congregation's story. Central Synagogue was designed in 1872 by Henry Fernbach, one of the most prominent Jewish architects in America, and commissioned by the 140 families of Congregation Ahawath Chesed, who had outgrown their Lower East Side roots and followed Manhattan's population uptown to 55th Street. The facade, an interpretation of the Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest, pairs two sentinel towers topped with copper-clad spheres and three-dimensional seven-pointed stars with a great rose window and three entrance portals carved in Belleville sandstone. The interior is basilica-inspired: a tall central nave, two side aisles, galleries, and an organ loft above the entrance foyer, all subdivided by ten slender cast-iron columns anchored in bedrock. The bimah retains its original ark, richly carved and inlaid with fretwork patterns in gold and topped with celestial-blue onion domes; above the central dome hangs a gilded Star of David.
Rabbi Adolph Huebsch, the synagogue's first rabbi, described the building at its 1872 dedication as a house of worship in evidence of the high degree of development only possible under a condition of freedom. A century later, that freedom was nearly lost. On August 28, 1998, as the congregation prepared for Shabbat and workers wrapped up a three-year renovation, a fire was accidentally ignited. The roof and several support beams crashed through the sanctuary floor; the choir loft and organ were destroyed; prayer books were severely damaged and were subsequently buried in the synagogue cemetery in mourning. Miraculously, the ark was spared because it was under a separate roof. The Ner Tamid, the Eternal Light, never moved. The mezuzah on the center front door stayed in place throughout the reconstruction. And the Torah scrolls - including the congregation's Holocaust Scroll, dedicated in memory of Jews who perished - had been removed from the building before the fire and were rescued intact.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Governor George Pataki, Cardinal John O'Connor of the Archdiocese of New York, the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were among the leaders who stood with the congregation. On September 9, 2001, the rebuilt sanctuary was reconsecrated. Hundreds gathered along Lexington Avenue for the rededication. Two days later, the city was forever changed by the attacks of September 11, 2001. Central marked the 25th anniversary of that rededication on Erev Rosh HaShanah in 2026 with a tribute that remembered both moments together.
Shabbat at Central
Worship at Central Synagogue is spirited, intimate, and welcoming. The Friday evening Shabbat service at 6:00 PM is the flagship gathering; more than five hundred people typically fill the Sanctuary on any given Friday. Saturday morning services are held at 9:30 AM, with an additional 11:30 AM service on select weeks. The Shabbat Mishkan service, an intimate and participatory service with a deeper dive into the morning prayers, runs at 9:30 AM on Saturdays as well. A virtual lay-led Morning Minyan gathers on Zoom every weekday at 8:00 AM for those who wish to say Kaddish. Services use Mishkan T'filah, the prayer book of the Reform movement, with both Hebrew and English, and many regular pieces of liturgy are set to familiar and new melodies that make congregational singing a central part of the experience.
Visitors can find large-print prayer books and assistive listening devices from ushers, and a PEARLS hearing loop - donated by Mindy and Jon Gray in honor of Mindy's mother, Pearl Basser - sends a direct audio feed to t-coil-equipped hearing aids and cochlear implants. Wheelchair access is via a ramp on 55th Street just off Lexington, with elevator access to the Sanctuary and spacious restrooms that are also accessible by elevator. Closed captioning is available for most livestreamed services and special events.
Beyond the Sanctuary, Central extends Shabbat into the wider city. Downtown Shabbat Central gathers 20s and 30s in the East Village on Friday afternoons; Uptown Shabbat Central welcomes families with children from birth through age five to a song- and prayer-filled Saturday morning at 10:00 AM. The holidays find the community stretched across multiple spaces: three sukkot built each year by families in the Community House, a Tashlich ceremony at the East River and 56th Street on the afternoon of Rosh HaShanah, the unfurling of an entire Torah scroll in the Sanctuary on Simchat Torah evening, and a Yom Kippur afternoon Al Cheit service built around anonymous confessions collected from across the congregation. Confirmation, a tradition more than 170 years old, is led by the 10th-grade class each Shavuot.
A Music Program Heard Around the World
Music is a primary means of community building at Central. Senior Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, who is also ordained as a cantor, leads worship alongside Senior Cantor Daniel Mutlu and Cantor Jenna Pearsall, supported by Music Director David Strickland, Assistant Music Director Misa Iwama, and a rotating ensemble of professional musicians. The result is a sound that has traveled well past Midtown: a 2025 recording session at Manhattan's Power Station produced "Sing a Little More," Central's first studio album, featuring the rabbis and cantors alongside a backing choir and live orchestra and including 15 tracks from "Shiru L'Adonai" and "L'cha Dodi" to "Shema / You Shall Love" and "Haporeis Sukkat Shalom." Earlier releases include "Sounds of Shabbat" (2013), recorded live in the Sanctuary, and "Sounds of Healing" (2017). Tracks such as "Hashkiveinu," "Adonai Roi Psalm 23," "Adon Olam," and "L'cha Dodi" can be heard on SoundCloud and on streaming platforms.
The Gabe M. Wiener Memorial Organ anchors the Sanctuary's musical life. Central hosts free semi-monthly lunchtime organ concerts featuring organists from Italy, Germany, Poland, Mexico, and Spain, along with student recitals from the Juilliard, Eastman, Curtis, and Vassar schools; the concerts draw audiences from across the city. Central's commissioned works include Lazar Weiner's "Zekher l'ma'ase," written to celebrate the congregation's centennial in 1970, and "Taking Your Place," composed by honorary Central President and journalist Abby Pogrebin at the request of Rabbi Peter Rubinstein and then-Cantor Angela Buchdahl to mark the meaning of becoming b'nai mitzvah. Members who love to sing can join the Shirim Team, a spirited gathering led by the cantors and music director that is part music appreciation and part liturgical glee club, or the Central Teen Choir, whose members perform at services throughout the year and take a leading role in the High Holy Day worship.
A Pulpit Shaped by 175 Years of Rabbis
Central's roster of senior rabbis begins with Rabbi Adolph Huebsch, the first rabbi of Ahawath Chesed in 1866 and a founder of Hebrew Union College. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who founded the Jewish Institute of Religion in 1922 (it merged with Hebrew Union College in 1948), served briefly in the 1920s. His son, Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, traveled to Germany in 1933 to sound an early warning about the fate of European Jews and has been credited as the most important single individual responsible for raising humanitarian relief funds from America throughout World War II. Rabbi Dr. David J. Seligson served for fifty-four years. Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman led the congregation from 1972 to 1985. Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein served as Senior Rabbi for twenty-three years beginning in 1991, shepherding the membership through the trauma of the 1998 fire and the reconsecration, and now serves as Rabbi Emeritus. Cantor Richard Botton serves as Cantor Emeritus.
Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl became Central's first female senior rabbi in 2014 and the first Asian American to be ordained as a rabbi. She is also the first Asian American to lead a major U.S. synagogue. She and her husband were honored when she was invited to light the Chanukah candles at the White House in 2014. Rabbi Ari Lorge serves as Senior Director of Clergy Study, joined by Rabbis Maurice Salth, Rachael Houser, and Rebecca Thau on the pulpit. A wider Engagement Clergy team directs the rest of congregational life: Rabbi Sarah Berman oversees Jewish culture and programming; Rabbi Hilly Haber directs social justice organizing and education; Rabbi Andrew Kaplan Mandel leads online community engagement; Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal is Senior Director of Youth and Family Education; Rabbi Sivan Rotholz directs adult education; Rabbi Lisa Rubin directs the Center for Exploring Judaism; and Rabbi Brooklyn Michalowicz and Rabbi Rena Rifkin lead the Downtown satellite and the 20s and 30s program. The congregation's full-time staff exceeds one hundred, led by Executive Director Marcia Caban.
Learning from Birth Through the Senior Year
The Lese Center for Living Judaism (LCLJ) offers Pre-K through 12th grade religious education built around project-based learning, the educational method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working over an extended period to investigate and respond to a complex question or challenge. Central's educators are trained by the Buck Institute for Education. Families choose between LCLJ Uptown, at the Community House on East 55th Street; LCLJ Downtown, at Hebrew Union College on West 4th Street; and LCLJ Shabbat, a twice-monthly Saturday morning experience for the whole family. Hebrew instruction begins with Hebrew Through Movement in pre-K and continues through formal decoding and prayer reading in the upper grades, with small-group Hebrew tutoring in the older years.
Seventh grade focuses on Jewish adulthood, including a student-written "Book of Why" and an optional Machloket track that examines ethical issues through the lens of arguments for the sake of heaven. Tenth grade is the confirmation year, when students lead the Shavuot service as a class. Teens in grades 8 through 12 keep connected through CenSyn Teens, which offers rotating courses such as a Civil Rights/Immigration Justice Trip Seminar, Jewish Cooking and Culture, and Current Events discussions. The LCLJ is inclusive of children with special needs; the Director of Developmental Learning and Special Education works with educators and families to support every learner. College-age members are not forgotten either: Central sends holiday care packages to students living away from home.
The May Family Nursery School, founded in 1948 and led by Early Childhood Director Cindy Grebow, serves children through age five. Central Tots offers music, sensory, and Shabbat programs for babies and toddlers from birth to age two, including Tiny Tots, Toddler Time, Early Explorers, and the popular "Shabbat-A-Lot" music class led by a guitar-playing music specialist. Camp Central, Mini Explorers, and Camp Central Tots fill the summer months for the same age group with water play, art, music, Shabbat celebration, and a peanut- and tree-nut-sensitive environment.
The Center for Exploring Judaism
The Center for Exploring Judaism (CEJ) was founded at Central in 2010 as a place where anyone - Jewish, partnered with a Jew, interfaith, or simply curious - can learn about Jewish life. A semester-long Exploring Judaism course taught by Rabbis Lisa Rubin, Sivan Rotholz, and Darcie Crystal covers history, holidays, life cycle events, theology, prayer, and communal life, and serves as the first step toward conversion for those who choose it. Cohorts begin every other month and run for six months; in-person cohorts meet at the Community House and downtown. The course is open to those who are not Jewish; Jewish partners are welcomed and encouraged to attend classes together. Financial concerns do not bar anyone from attending.
Beyond CEJ, Adult Engagement at Central is wide-ranging. The Neighborhood, Central's fully virtual online community, connects members and friends from anywhere. Group Connections include CORE Groups (member-led peer groups built around shared interests), 20s and 30s (with monthly Shabbat dinners, classes like Jewish Adulting, and holiday events), Chai Connections for members seventy and older, CenSyngles for the 50-plus singles community, LGBTQ+ Central, and Jews of Color.
Weekly and ongoing classes include Critical Conversations about Israel, Bible and Bagels, Torah Study, the Alper Talmud Study, and Encountering Our Spiritual Center. Rabbi Andrew Kaplan Mandel's "Whole Megillah" project walked participants through the books of Ketuvim - the final section of the Hebrew Bible - with daily readings, weekly Zoom recaps, and live conversations on Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles, the culminating book. A monthly "Pirkei Avot" series offers a daily dose of timeless wisdom from Ethics of the Fathers.
Repairing the World
Tikkun olam, repairing the world, is a bedrock value at Central. The synagogue's member-led social justice team, Central in Action, focuses on criminal justice, immigration, food insecurity, and climate justice, after a 2016 listening process with more than 500 congregants identified these issues as the ones most pressing to the community.
The Central Synagogue Breakfast Program, founded in 1983 by longtime congregant Nat Shapiro in response to Mayor Koch's call for religious institutions to address homelessness and hunger, runs every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday morning from 6:00 to 7:30 AM. Members package and serve hot meals and to-go sandwiches outside the Sanctuary to guests from across the city. A partnership with Grassroots Grocery and the NYCHA Holmes Towers Resident Association brought the first community fridge to the Upper East Side, located on 92nd Street between First and York Avenues and open 24 hours a day. Members gather before Friday Shabbat services in the Lese Lobby and on Monday mornings in the Atrium to make sandwiches for the fridge.
The Central Welcome Project, a partnership with HIAS and Commonpoint Queens, has resettled four refugee families in the New York area. The synagogue has also been paired through the NYC Office of Faith-Based Partnerships with The Bentley and The Night Hotel to address the material needs of asylum seekers, working alongside Project Rousseau.
In the realm of criminal justice, Central hosts the Coming Home Program, a six-month fellowship for people returning from incarceration that now finds its home at the synagogue under the auspices of Communities for Healing and Justice. Re-Entry Theater of Harlem, founded by Alex Anderson, brings together people with lived experience of the criminal legal system to use art, ritual, and theatrical rites of passage as they mark the transition from prison back to community. Members travel to Rikers Island monthly to pray and learn with people on the inside. The Central Teshuvah Initiative organizes paid summer internships in public health, public policy, media, and law for returning citizens, in partnership with Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison. On climate, Central participates in RAC-NY's Climate Covenant, a campaign to bring Reform Jews together with partners across lines of race, faith, and class to end dependence on fossil fuels.
Art, Life Cycles, and the Wider Public
Central's Sanctuary is itself an artifact. Free docent-led tours run on Wednesdays at 12:30 PM and 1:15 PM, focusing on the building's architecture and the history of the community that built it. The Sanctuary is also open for individual viewing on Wednesdays from 12:30 to 2:00 PM. Private group tours can be arranged with at least two weeks' notice.
The Lindenbaum Pavilion regularly hosts art exhibitions that connect Jewish life to broader contemporary concerns. Recent and current shows have included "Art for a Mixed Multitude," Siona Benjamin's hand-painted illustrations of Jewish stories and identities, and "In Search of What Was Lost," a documentary exhibition of six objects taken from Jewish families during World War II and traced through their postwar journeys. Past shows have examined Israeli and Palestinian children's drawings, the artistry of Holocaust-era textiles, the photography of Judy Glickman Lauder, and a community portrait of Central members and their partners from Emmaus House Harlem.
Central marks life's major moments with intention. B'nai mitzvah preparation begins in the third grade and is overseen by the cantors, rabbis, tutors, and lay leaders who work closely with each family. Weddings take place in the Sanctuary; the congregation marks death and mourning through its Sick, Transitions, and Healing ministry and its 25-year partnership with Plaza Jewish Community Chapel. Children are welcomed through birth and naming ceremonies, and the congregation walks with members through illness, loss, and life transitions.
Worship, learning, and art all extend outward through Central's livestream, which carries most services and special events on Facebook, YouTube, JBS cable television, and a phone line for those who prefer to listen in. The Central Synagogue podcast, distributed through Apple Podcasts and Spotify, makes sermons available on the go. Past services and sermons remain available for viewing on the YouTube channel and for listening through SoundCloud.
Membership and Visiting
Central Synagogue is a member congregation of the Union for Reform Judaism and the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and supports ARZA, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. The congregation holds the religious responsibility of welcoming the stranger as one of its most significant principles, and welcomes interfaith families, Jews by choice, Jews of Color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people with disabilities as full participants in its sacred community. Members and visitors from all Jewish denominations find a spiritual home at Central, alongside those who consider themselves agnostic, atheist, or questioning.
Anyone considering a first visit is welcome at Shabbat services. The Friday night service at 6:00 PM and Saturday morning services at 9:30 AM are open to all, no registration required. The Downtown Shabbat Central for 20s and 30s and the Uptown Shabbat Central for families offer additional entry points. Prospective members can join the mailing list to receive invitations to upcoming programs and events; the Annual Yom Kippur Appeal sustains the work of the congregation year-round, and giving is available online.
The synagogue sits at 123 East 55th Street in New York, NY 10022, and can be reached at (212) 838-5122. Members in need of pastoral support after hours can call (347) 334-1043. The Sanctuary remains open on Wednesday afternoons for individual viewing and personal meditation, and the doors - virtual and physical - are open to all who seek a Jewish community committed to meaning, joy, and the work of repairing the world.