Conflict at the Touro Synagogue

Gerard Leval

Several decades ago, my wife and I were married under the candlelit chandeliers of the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. The congregation’s longtime rabbi, Theodore Lewis, performed the marriage in a dignified ceremony that echoed the many prior such ceremonies that have taken place over the course of more than 200 years, in this the oldest synagogue in the United States.

Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I had the joy of returning to the Touro Synagogue where our daughter celebrated her marriage to her fiancé within the very same hallowed walls as we had more than decades previously. As it turned out, however, organizing this second familial marriage in the beautiful edifice in Newport became an exercise in diplomacy.

Unfortunately, the Touro Synagogue has been the subject of a lengthy process of litigation between certain members of Newport’s congregation Jeshuat Israel and Shearith Israel, the Sephardic congregation on the West Side of New York City. Our daughter’s wedding could only take place at Touro as a result of the negotiation of a truce in the dispute that has spawned this litigation.

The dispute has been ongoing for decades and has been making its way through the courts for a number of years. Efforts to fully understand the nature of the dispute have been frustrating. The various individuals with whom I spoke about this ongoing conflict had some difficulty defining its contours. The challenge of fully understanding the conflict reminded me of the exchange in the opening scene of “Fiddler on the Roof” where the narrator indicates that a feud has been ongoing between two members of the shtetl, but that it has been ongoing for so long that no one remembers precisely what the dispute is really about.

While disagreements among elements of a Jewish community are hardly a rare phenomenon, the abrasive litigation regarding the Touro Synagogue is particularly regrettable. The fact that it is a highly public feud, visible to all and especially to the non-Jewish world at-large, is an embarrassment. That the dispute involves the most venerable synagogue in the United States, a symbol of the religious liberty that has been afforded to American Jews for hundreds of years, is a particular tragedy.

In the most recent phase of the litigation, just weeks ago, the Supreme Court of Rhode Island ruled that Shearith Israel is the rightful owner of Touro. While this might mark the end of the legal struggle, regrettably, it does not seem likely to end the underlying feud. Most distressing of all, however, is the fact that, in spite of assurances to the contrary, the current struggle has the potential to deprive some members of the Newport Jewish community — a small, but enduring community — of its very long-time shul and to turn the building into a mere museum instead of a continuing place of Jewish observance.

I do not doubt the good intentions of both parties in this struggle. The congregation in New York believes that the Newport group has failed in its obligations to maintain a historical site and has breached the terms of a long-standing agreement that governs the relationship between the two groups. There is more than a kernel of truth to these claims.

Some members of the Newport community consider that Shearith Israel is merely seeking to control the synagogue and to use it to raise funds for its own use, without regard to the long-standing rights to the synagogue vested in the Newport community. That could also be correct. As is the case with most disputes, there is some merit to the arguments put forth by both sides and there is assuredly an element of fault in each side’s comportment.

Resolving a dispute does not require that one of the parties to the dispute prevail. To the contrary, frequently the best means for achieving a solution to a deep-seated, long-standing feud requires finding an approach that does not fully acknowledge the positions of either of the disputing parties.

In the case of the Touro Synagogue, an iconic building which is of enormous significance both to the Jewish community and to the people of the United States generally, it seems imperative to find the delicate compromise that can end the dispute, assure the future of the synagogue building for posterity and, very importantly, permit the continuing use of the synagogue for traditional Jewish worship.

It should be recognized that the Touro Synagogue is not just a Newport community treasure but a Jewish communal treasure. Both symbolically, representing the freedom that has been bestowed by the people of the United States to the Jewish community, and religiously, because it is a place of worship for Jews, the synagogue belongs to every American Jew. Consequently, its welfare is in some measure the responsibility of every American Jew.

Even if the Rhode Island courts have ruled in favor of Shearith Israel, that congregation is, at best, a caretaker of the Touro Synagogue. In effect, it is a trustee for all American Jews. Therefore, it is imperative that diverse members of the Jewish community, including representatives of Shearith Israel and of Congregation Jeshuat Israel, as well as Jewish leaders from across the nation, partner with Shearith Israel, as the acknowledged owner of the Touro Synagogue, to create an organization that will be able to take a major role in the renovation, maintenance and operation of the synagogue — keeping faith with its Newport founders.

The legal rights that have now been definitively established do not delimit the moral obligations that accompany those legal rights. Shearith Israel, working with Jewish leaders from across the nation, must now find the right solution to ensure that the Touro Synagogue continues as the iconic structure that it is and that it also continues to echo the sounds of Jews davening faithfully within its walls, as they have for hundreds of years.

No court can mandate this outcome. Only Jews of goodwill can.

Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of a national law firm.