A federal judge on Monday awarded control of the nation’s oldest synagogue, in Newport, R.I., to the congregation housed there, ruling against a New York congregation that had claimed ownership in a four-year legal fight between two of the oldest examples of America’s religious pluralism.
The Touro Synagogue in Newport, built before the Revolutionary War and with a connection to George Washington, is a landmark of American Jewish history, but its congregation, Jeshuat Israel, suffers from dwindling membership and resources. Pitted against it in District Court in Providence was the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, Shearith Israel of New York, which predates the synagogue by a century.
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