"An abandoned synagogue in Pennsylvania's coal region, which until the early 2000s had served Jewish residents of Mahanoy City for more than 80 years, collapsed late Thursday night, officials and neighbors told the local media. Emergency crews responded to reports of falling walls and scattered debris at the former Beth Israel Synagogue, a brick building whose cornerstone was laid in 1923. No injuries were reported, according to Skook News, a news site serving Schuylkill County ."
""When we talk about the Jewish communities and the Rust Belt, the Jews didn't come to be part of that particular industry or that particular labor. They came to support it," said Alanna Cooper, chair of Jewish Studies at Case-Western University and an authority on synagogues past their prime . "T hey understood that it was important for that economic niche to be there in order to support the people who were working the mines or doing the industrial labor.""
An early-20th-century brick synagogue in Mahanoy City collapsed late Thursday night after serving the local Jewish community for more than 80 years. Emergency crews responded to falling walls and scattered debris and reported no injuries. Crews began removing and demolishing remaining sections of the structure. Mahanoy City's Jewish presence began with an organized congregation in 1888 and grew to about 50 families at its peak, with a synagogue and a Jewish cemetery established in the 1930s. The congregation dwindled as the coal industry and local economy declined, and formal religious services ceased in 2003.
Read at Jewish Telegraphic Agency
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