Great turnout at Ira Poliakoff’s lecture and book signing, Sunday April 22-nd 2018.

Event was organized and hosted by Congregation Tifereth Israel Greenport in partnership with Temple Israel Riverhead and North Fork Reform Synagogue in Cutchogue.

Ira Poliakoff is a retired small business owner who grew up in Rockville Centre, Long Island. He served as a youth director at the Oceanside Jewish Center and Queensboro Hill Jewish Center. He has researched and traveled extensively throughout Long Island in order to catalogue the history of its many synagogues and congregations, past and present. Ira lives in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, with his wife and remains an active member of Temple Beth Hillel–Beth El.

Long Island has one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in the nation. After World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jewish soldiers returned from war looking for a life in the suburbs and synagogues to join. In 1946, Rabbi Elias Solomon called a meeting of Conservative rabbis from the area in Manhattan to map out a plan for a synagogue at every South Shore Long Island Railroad stop from Valley Stream to Patchogue. Central Synagogue of Nassau County and Beth El in Great Neck both grew to more than one thousand families as Reform Judaism took hold. The growth of the Chabad movement in recent decades has spurred an increase of Orthodox Judaism. Author Ira Poliakoff catalogues the history of synagogues and congregations that have shaped Long Island past and present.