Park East Synagogue and Chabad UES are merging programs starting this Rosh Hashanah

Two of the Upper East Side’s biggest Jewish institutions, Park East Synagogue and Chabad-Lubavitch of the Upper East Side, are joining forces and starting Rosh Hashanah, it’s going to change what a night (or a Shabbat, or a Tuesday) out looks like uptown.

Here’s the gist: Park East, the landmarked 1890 sanctuary on East 67th Street where Rabbi Arthur Schneier has held the pulpit since 1962, is opening its doors to most of Chabad UES’s programming. That means Chabad Young Professionals, Chabad Young Families, Friendship Circle and the Upper East Side Kollel and Adult Education Center are all relocating into Park East’s building. Rabbi Ben Tzion Krasnianski, who’s led Chabad UES for over three decades, is stepping in as Associate Rabbi, with Rabbi Yosef Wilhelm, the face of Chabad Young Professionals, joining as Assistant Rabbi. (Chabad’s mikvah and preschool stay put at its East 77th Street campus, so no need to update those calendar invites.)

For the young-professional crowd who’ve spent years bouncing between Chabad UES events looking for a Friday night plan, this is basically a merger of two social ecosystems into one very walkable radius. Suddenly a Torah class, a Shabbat dinner and services in one of the most photographed sanctuaries in Manhattan are all under the same roof.

And if you want to make a night of it, the Upper East Side isn’t short on ways to round out the evening. Grab a pre-Shabbat coffee near the 77th Street campus, wander over to the Jewish Museum on Fifth Avenue for an afternoon before dinner or make a reservation at one of the neighborhood’s kosher spots before heading to services—East 67th Street puts you within easy reach of most of it.

The bigger story here is one of scale: two institutions that between them serve a meaningful share of the roughly 70,000 Jews living on the Upper East Side are betting that combining forces beats operating in parallel.