Inside The Touro Bells Dispute: How A NY Congregation Came To Own A Historic Newport Synagogue

By Shane McKeonMarch 23, 2019

The story starts toward the beginning of the 1800s, when the congregation that had been practicing at Touro dissipated. Services at the synagogue stopped, and the building, according to one history, “was left to the bats and moles.”

Around that time, a lot of Newport’s Jews moved to New York City. Many joined Shearith Israel, a congregation on the Upper West Side that had been around for decades. (Today it’s the oldest Jewish congregation in America.) Shearith starts hearing that this synagogue in Newport had fallen into disrepair. So the New York congregation steps in. They take over the empty synagogue and look over it for years. Until later that century, after the Civil War, Jews come back to Newport. A new congregation begins, calling itself Jeshuat Israel. And in 1903, Jeshuat signs a lease with Shearith Israel, and Jeshuat begins worshipping at Touro as a tenant.

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