Our History

The area of New York City in and around “Far West” 34th Street has gone by many names: Hell’s Kitchen; Midtown West; Chelsea and Clinton; the Garment District; and now Hudson Yards. But whatever the appellation, one characteristic has remained. Our neighborhood has always embraced diversity: tenements of the late nineteenth century teemed with immigrant Jewish multitudes living free from centuries of Europe’s terrors; garment industry factories of the twentieth century offered new Americans a living and financial security; commuters from ever growing suburbs flowed into Penn Station or through the Lincoln Tunnel; and today, the growing High Line Park, the expanded Javits Center, a bold reimagined Penn Station and dozens of gleaming glass towers transform Far West 34th Street into a city within a city for hundreds of thousands of tourists, conventioneers, students and professionals from across the region and the world, offering unparalleled opportunities to dine, shop, live, learn and work right in the heart of town.

Throughout these shifts, our humble congregation has remained “Far West” 34th Street’s beloved, trusted center of spiritual respite and renewal, welcoming the multitudes of Jews calling Midtown Manhattan home for at least part of each day, six to seven days a week.

Founded in 1890, our first iteration, Congregation Beth Israel offered local resident merchants and garment workers a gathering center for worship, spiritual guidance, yahrzeit and burial support services. In 1915, the Congregation officially added the name West Side Jewish Center. Throughout the next fifty years, her congregants staunchly supported the founding of the State of Israel with assertive fundraising, Hebrew and Jewish education, political activism and Aliyah.

In 2016, our congregation has “rebranded” as the Hudson Yards Synagogue. We are here, now and forever, b’H, to continue our synagogue’s century-plus long mission as a Modern Orthodox house of worship, a spiritual home for lives steeped in Torah, Tefillah and Mitzvot for both individuals and families, serving the present and future Jewish diversity of the Hudson Yards neighborhood, and all of twenty-first century New York City.