Rich History

The Young Israel of Pelham Parkway was founded in 1939, at a time when the Jewish community of the Bronx in general, and Pelham Parkway in particular, was bursting with Jewish life.  At that time, the shul was located in a storefront at 708 Lydig Avenue.

Rabbi Schulem Rubin, zt"l, assumed leadership of the shul in 1951, and a few years later led our community into a spacious new home at 2126 Barnes Avenue, where the community grew to be the largest Orthodox congregation in Pelham Parkway.  Rav Rubin continued to serve the shul until his passing in 2001.

By 2010, the Bronx Jewish community had shrunk substantially from the 600,000 Jews who had live there in the middle of the twentieth century, and the shul board decided to sell the property which had been the shul's home for six decades, and to instead rent space from the nearby Pelham Parkway Jewish Center.  After a project to remodel the Jewish Center ballroom into a beautiful new sanctuary, the Young Israel of Pelham Parkway began holding services there on Purim of 2010.

Over the next several years, the Pelham Parkway Jewish Center and the Young Israel of Pelham Parkway began to combine operations, taking on the identity of the Young Israel of Pelham Parkway Jewish Center.