Historic: Touro Synagogue, the oldest synagogue building in America, has been home to more than one

Who Owns Nation’s Oldest
Synagogue? Supreme Fight
Looms.

The legal fight over ownership of the

country’s oldest synagogue is headed to the U.S. Supreme

Court.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week denied a

petition filed by Congregation Jeshuat Israel, which worships

in the historic synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, for a

rehearing of a ruling from August that said it was a tenant of

the building.

That ruling by a three-judge panel found that New York’s

Shearith Israel, which was founded in 1654, is the rightful

owner of the Touro Synagogue, which was built in 1763.

Jeshuat Israel will appeal, according to its lawyer, Gary

Naftalis.

It is the latest development in a years-long property dispute

between Jeshuat Israel and Shearith Israel, the nation’s oldest

congregation.

The appeals court ruling by Justice David Souter, a former

U.S. Supreme Court justice, also grants the Manhattan

congregation ownership of some of Touro’s possessions.

“We will seek review by the United States Supreme Court to

continue our fight to preserve the Touro Synagogue,” Naftalis

wrote in an email to JTA. He said that Jeshuat Israel is the

only congregation that has prayed at Touro for over a century.

But Louis Solomon, the board chairman of Shearith Israel and

its lawyer in the case against Jeshuat Israel, said the “Court’s

decision reaffirms the need, for the good of American Jewry

and people of faith everywhere, to put this divisive matter

behind us.”