Felder’s burnt shul, a place I called home
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.”
BOROUGH PARK, Brooklyn (WABC) A fire tore through a synagogue that operates out of a home in Brooklyn Wednesday morning, and the 101-year-old mother of a local politician and two children were among those rescued from the burning structure.
The flames broke out just before 8 a.m. at the Congregation Bais Aharon on 18th Avenue in Borough Park, at the synagogue founded by State Senator Simcha Felder s late father in the 1950s. We had a fire in the first floor of a two-story house of worship, FDNY Deputy Chief James Boylan said. Members removed three people from the second floor, a mother and two children. Hatzolah Ambulance Services removed State Senator Felder s mother from the first floor prior to units arrival. She was removed in a wheelchair. Everybody is doing OK.