Learn about the history of Long Island synagogues at Temple Beth El lecture

When it comes to Long Island synagogues, Brad Kolodny knows them all.

From Temple Emanu-El of Long Beach, where Billy Crystal had his bar mitzvah, to Congregation Tifereth Israel in Greenport, to the many that have changed buildings or which no longer exist, you could call Kolodny a maven (the Yiddish expression for expert) when it comes to the topic.

Kolodny’s coffee table book, “Seeking Sanctuary: 125 Years of Synagogues on Long Island” (Segula Press, 2019), highlights almost 400 synagogue buildings in Nassau and Suffolk. They include Patchogue’s Temple Beth El, where Kolodny will speak about his book and sign copies at 10 a.m. on Sunday, March 30.

Kolodny’s talk and PowerPoint presentation is part of a series of events Temple Beth El has planned this year to celebrate its 120th anniversary. They include a Legacy Weekend from June 6 to June 8.

Kolodny, 55, who works in advertising for the New York Times, always had an interest in history in general. He became interested in synagogue history when he took photographs of his synagogue in Syosset prior to the renovation of its sanctuary.

It got him thinking about “what memories are lost when you transform a sacred place? Who’s going to remember synagogues that have closed?”

It set Kolodny on a four-year quest to document Long Island synagogue buildings, old and new. They date back to the first one built  in 1896 in Setauket, for the Agudas Achim congregation, whose congregants worked at a rubber plant that was then in the area. The building was later home to the North Shore Jewish Center, which sold it to the Setauket United Methodist Church in 1971.

Kolodny launched an Instagram page (@synagoguesoflongisland), which led to the book, which led to exhibits at the Suffolk County Historical Society in Riverhead and the Sid Jacobson JCC in East Hills and Kolodny’s founding of the Jewish Historical Society of Long Island.

Kolodny has since researched and written a second book that focuses on the people who filled all those synagogue pews called “The Jews of Long Island: 1705-1918” (SUNY Press, 2022).

Kolodny said the first Jewish person known to come to Long Island was Nathan Simson, who operated a store in Brookhaven from 1715 to 1720.

Among the others featured in his book is Abraham Fishel, of Patchogue, who opened a department store at Main Street and Ocean Avenue in the 1850s. He sold the store to one of his employees, Arthur Swezey, in the early 1890s, and the store became Swezey’s Department Store, a fixture of downtown Patchogue for many years.