Landmark Shul Up in Flames

The flames that ripped through the landmark Congregation Beth Aaron last Thursday, totally destroying the Boro Park minyan factory and its upstairs apartments, elicited a melancholy wave of nostalgia for those who have known the shul as “Felder’s” since its founding seven decades ago.

“When your father was niftar,” one man told State Senator Simcha Felder, the son of shul founder Rav Tzvi Mordechai Felder ztz”l, “I felt that he was still here, because Rabbi Felder was the shul, and the shul was still standing. When I saw that fire, I felt that Rabbi Felder had just passed away.”

The shul on the corner of 18th Avenue and 49th Street stood as an island of stability amid the turbulence and technological advances whirling outside. Its heavy, ancient wooden benches and tables darkened with age had seated gedolim and businessmen alike. The shul was unique in that its founding led to the frum neighborhood being built around it, rather than the opposite.

For me and the extended Donn clan, the building held an entire basket of childhood memories. The apartment atop the shul was where my beloved grandparents lived for 50 years, where my father grew up. It was the setting for a thousand anecdotes that fill family lore — a trove of Purim seudos, Pesach Sedorim, Chanukah parties, and the obligatory pre-summer visits. For me, the walls and floors, always whitewashed and stone-clean, still contain the smells of my grandmother’s gefilte fish, her chocolate chip cookies doled out with European precision.