Adas Israel Looks Back, and Forward

Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor Village, the oldest synagogue on Long Island, is marking its 120th anniversary this year. Members, guests, and dignitaries will gather for a celebratory dinner on Sunday at Osteria Salina in Wainscott. Rabbi Daniel Geffen will serve as master of ceremonies, and speakers will include Neal Fagin, president of the congregation, and Ronald Lauder, a Wainscott resident who is chairman emeritus of the Estee Lauder cosmetics company and a member of Adas Israel. The celebration will continue this summer with various events, including a scholar-in-residence weekend in August.

 Perched on top of a hill at the corner of Elizabeth Street and Atlantic Avenue, the synagogue was built by Orthodox immigrants, employees of the Fahys watchcase factory. Now affiliated with the Union for Reform Judaism, the congregation has grown to 250 memberships (which include both families and individuals) and more than 300 members, nearly double the number in 1996, the building’s centennial year.

Mr. Fagin said the growth had been highly gratifying. “Now we’re a year-round congregation, with events going on all the time” and many members helping in leadership posts, running committees, and taking part in community outreach.

Adas Israel began in the early 1880s when Joseph Fahys moved his watchcase factory from New Jersey to Sag Harbor, creating jobs in the struggling village where whaling once reigned. He relied on Russian, Polish, and Hungarian Jews, many of them watchmakers in the old county, for employees. With roots in the United Jewish Brethren, the congregation formed in 1883.

Its cemetery on Route 114, between Sag Harbor and East Hampton, was created even before the synagogue was built, when a child died and there was no Jewish cemetery east of Lindenhurst. In 1896, a man named Nissan Meyerson bought the property for $350 and a temple, designed as a mix of Colonial church and European synagogue, was built, at a cost of $2,500. Its first service was held to mark the new year, Rosh Hashanah, in 1898, but a formal dedication ceremony would not take place for two more years.

The old synagogue held 100 people in the main sanctuary. Since the congregation was originally Orthodox, women were not allowed to worship alongside the men, and a ladies’ gallery for 60, with a separate entrance, was built. A mikvah, used by Orthodox Jewish women for ritual cleanliness, could be found in the basement. About 50 families were members.

As the story goes, Temple Mishcan Israel, the current temple’s predecessor, was given its first Torah by Theodore Roosevelt, who acquired it in 1898 after returning from the Spanish-American War to Montauk, where some of his 1,200 Rough Riders were recovering from yellow fever and other illnesses. Jewish soldiers had a Torah with them, and it is said that when the troops left the future president donated it to the nearest synagogue, in Sag Harbor.

The temple survived several difficult periods, including an economic decline in Sag Harbor in the 1920s and the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act, which put a quota on Jewish immigration to the U.S. The following year, fire devastated part of the watchcase factory and hundreds lost their jobs. Without much money, the building deteriorated. The mikvah was boarded up in the 1940s and all but forgotten, until it was accidentally discovered in 1977.

The temple became affiliated with Conservative Judaism in 1948. It took on a new name, Temple Adas Israel, and gained a following with young professionals, artists, and writers living on the South Fork. It soon expanded onto an adjacent lot, purchased in 1956 for $1,500, where a social hall was built to allow for a larger sanctuary for the High Holy Days. The congregation was mainly made up of part-time and summer residents during those years. In the late ’70s, during a period of growth, the temple was renovated, its stained glass windows were replaced, and the mikvah was discovered.

The temple is again looking to the future. Plans are underway for a renovation, Mr. Fagin said, that will allow for more space to accommodate children enrolled in the Hebrew school and membership get-togethers. The hope is that construction will begin a year from the coming holiday season. The funding has yet to be secured, as well as approvals from the village.