A Struggling Bronx Synagogue Finds Free Housing—in a Mosque – Tablet Magazine, great piece by @tedregencia & @lindsayminerva

Reason #997 I love this city. This sort of space sharing is more common than I think people realize.

A Struggling Bronx Synagogue Finds Free Housing—in a Mosque – Tablet Magazine.

Near the corner of Westchester Avenue and Pugsley Street in Parkchester, just off the elevated tracks of the No. 6 train, Yaakov Wayne Baumann stood outside a graffiti-covered storefront on a chilly Saturday morning. Suited up in a black overcoat with a matching wide-brimmed black fedora, the thickly bearded 42-year-old chatted with elderly congregants as they entered the building for Shabbat service. 

The only unusual detail: This synagogue is a mosque. 

Or rather, it’s housed inside a mosque. That’s right: Members of the Chabad of East Bronx, an ultra-Orthodox synagogue, worship in the Islamic Cultural Center of North America, which is home to the Al-Iman mosque.