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.”