The Vanished Synagogue That Changed My Life

How a shuttered sanctuary helped shape a convert’s journey

Author’s Note: This is a story that shaped my life—and in many ways, it’s the reason this newsletter exists. It’s about a building I couldn’t stop looking at, a faith I didn’t yet know I could claim, and the long arc of memory that carried me to where I am today.

You may also notice that Memory Is the Only Inheritance I Have is wearing new clothes—after some trial, error, and late-night formatting epiphanies, the site now better reflects the tone and care I hope to bring to each piece. If this essay resonates with you, I’d be honored if you’d forward it to someone else who might enjoy it. Sometimes memory finds its way by being shared.

The Building on Chestnut Street

The first time I noticed the building on Chestnut Street, I was too young to understand why it looked different from the other churches downtown. It sat on a small hill, set back from the road, past a patch of uneven grass, tucked between two buildings—just across from the post office where my parents or grandparents took me to mail letters. The white paint peeled from the brick, the wrought iron fence crooked. Ivy curled up the walls, swallowing windows in some places entirely.

Even then, it looked old.

I don’t remember exactly when I first asked what it was—only that I was with my father when he answered without hesitation.

“It's a synagogue,” he said. “I used to see men with their skull caps, you know little hats, coming out of there when I was a kid.”

A synagogue. The word sat strangely in my mind.

I knew churches—I had grown up around them. My Catholic school was attached to St. Mary, one of the largest in town, with its soaring bell tower and rich stained glass. I had seen Baptist churches, Episcopal churches, and small wooden chapels that all seemed thriving. The idea of any closing seemed impossible.

But a synagogue? I had never seen one before.

In elementary school, Jews were people from the Bible. Abraham, Moses, David—figures from long ago, woven into a story that, I had been taught, led inevitably to Christ. Judaism it seemed wasn’t something that still existed, not as something that had developed since the time of Jesus.

Yet, here was evidence that Jews had lived in my town.

Still, I wasn’t sure if my father was right. His memories were unreliable sometimes, and when I asked other adults, I got different answers.

“I think it’s a church,” someone told me, mistaking it for a similarly worn and white-painted chapel on Walnut Street, a few blocks away.

Others shrugged.

“I don’t know,” they said.

That only made it more mysterious.

The more I noticed the building, the more I wondered why it was always empty. Other churches downtown had wide-open doors on Sunday mornings, their bells ringing out across the town. I visited many of them at least once. A baptism at St. Peter's Lutheran Church. A Christmas concert at First United Methodist Church. But this building stayed silent. No one came or went.

It felt forgotten.

I wanted to go inside.

As I grew older, I noticed the building falling further into disrepair. The paint peeled more. The stained-glass windows, which once provided vivid colors, were growing faded. The grass out front grew untamed in the summers, sometimes looking like it grew past my knees.

And yet, despite its neglect, it still looked like a place of worship.

It had all the right features—a steep gabled roof, gothic windows, double wooden doors above which it looked like a sign was once displayed.

B’nai Israel Congregation, Lancaster, Ohio, circa 1990. The building that sparked an enduring search.

Slowly it began to dawn that the building was no longer an active place of worship.

Searching for Jews in Lancaster

My father had once seen men in little hats outside that building. Where had they gone?

And why did I know so little about them?

The first time I remember seeing a Jewish person, I wasn’t in Lancaster. I was in an airport.

I must have been five or six—around the same time I first remember noticing the Chestnut Street synagogue—when I spotted two men dressed in long black coats and wide-brimmed hats, their beards curling into ringlets at their cheeks. They were like the Amish I was familiar with but different. I asked someone who they were.

“They’re Jewish,” I was told.

I remember feeling curious but don’t recall asking more questions, perhaps from the feeling that the first had been discouraged, it was rude to be asking these questions about others in the airport.

The second time I remember thinking about modern Jewish people, I was in third grade. A substitute teacher at my school spoke about the modern State of Israel and how important it was to support “God’s chosen people.”

I didn’t understand. I asked other adults but was told not to think about it too much. The teacher was not a Catholic and should not have brought the subject up in a class that was not religion.

And then there was the student who joined my school in middle school—one Jewish parent, one Christian. He identified as Jewish. I remember peppering him with questions, and my curiosity must have been overwhelming. He found it odd that I cared so much.

Looking back, maybe I was drawn to Judaism because it felt like something just beyond my reach.

By my first year of high school, I knew enough about Judaism to realize how little I actually knew.

Earlier, through my middle school’s library, I found some basic books about Jewish holidays and came across information about life cycle events, such as bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies. I also began to understand the history of Jewish persecution. It became clear that Jews didn’t see their story as one that ended with Christ; rather, they maintained traditions stretching back thousands of years while living a faith that continued to evolve and change.

And yet, in my town, they were largely nowhere to be found.

Then, during my sophomore year, something strange happened.

A Facebook page appeared: “B’nai Israel, Lancaster, OH.” It had been automatically generated, likely from an old address database. Some of my high school classmates left fake reviews—jokes, I assumed. But for a brief moment, it felt like proof that a Jewish congregation still existed in Lancaster.

For a moment, I wondered if the community had simply moved elsewhere in town. I knew I couldn't ask the students who left the reviews as they were older than me, but I imagined a small group gathering behind an unmarked door, still lighting candles and reciting blessings. But I found no signs of this community.

I walked past the old synagogue more often, scanning the nearby buildings. Could the community be in the vanilla-colored house in front of the synagogue? Above a nearby storefront?

But I never found the congregation.

A year later, I found another trace of B’nai Israel—this time in the public library.

I had pulled a book from a shelf and opened the cover. Inside was a bookplate: “B’nai Israel of Lancaster Jewish Book Fund.”

It struck me.

B’nai Israel would help me read this book.

I assumed the community still existed in some form. I didn’t yet realize this bookplate was part of its last act—an attempt to leave something behind before disbanding.

I was still searching for Lancaster’s Jews.

The more I looked, the more I began to suspect an organized community was gone. My father had seen men in yarmulkes, but where had they gone? Why did no one seem to remember them?

I kept searching. I scanned through Google, but nothing came up. Columbus’s synagogues were impossibly far away. Still something just beyond reach.

Reality had set in.

There was no hidden congregation meeting behind an unmarked door. The synagogue hadn’t moved—it had vanished.

And yet, traces of its existence remained.

Leaving to Belong

I had read about Judaism’s traditions, holidays, and modern communities. But books could only take me so far. If I wanted to experience Jewish life, I had to go elsewhere.

By my junior year, I had read enough about Judaism to deeply understand that it existed as a living faith with just as much change as Christianity had experienced over the past 2,000 years. I learned of many theological teachings in Judaism that deeply resonated with my sense of God, including a rejection of Original Sin. But in Lancaster, I had no visible proof B’nai Israel existed aside from the suspected former synagogue and several bookplates in the library.

By this time, I was also confronting serious challenges to my Christian faith. My questioning was not encouraged, and a conversation with a Jews for Jesus missionary at a local Evangelical church only deepened my frustration. Rather than answering my questions, he dismissed them, telling me I had been reading too much written by Orthodox rabbis. If I wanted to find a faith community where I truly belonged, I had to leave town.

The first time I set foot in an Ohio synagogue, I was 16 and living in Chillicothe. My recently divorced and remarried father—who by this point had begun to support my religious questioning, perhaps as a way to draw me closer to him and away from my mother—drove me and a woman who was very briefly my stepmother nearly two hours to Cincinnati’s historic Plum Street Temple.

It was stunning.

Blue and gold domed ceilings. A red curtained Torah ark towering above the assembled people. The prayer book had beautiful English and Hebrew printing.

A bar mitzvah was taking place. Later, I realized how unusual it was that I happened to visit on a Saturday when the temple was actually open. Most weekends, it sat closed—almost another dead end. The congregation typically met at a modern synagogue in the suburbs of Cincinnati. I don't remember the name of the teen who was called to the Torah, but I remember watching him and wondering what my life would have been like if I had been born Jewish. What if I had grown up in a place like this, part of a community that seemed stable praying together and celebrating children coming of age who wrestled with big spiritual questions like those discussed by the bar mitzvah in his talk. So much different I felt from the reception many of my family members had to the questions I asked.

It was an experience that should have made me feel closer to my search, but instead, it made me feel how far away Jewish life truly was from where I lived.

By senior year, I was no longer searching for Jews in Lancaster, where I had relocated after leaving my father’s house—I was searching for a way out. The hour-long drive to school from Chillicothe during the spring of my junior year had become exhausting; more than once, I nearly fell asleep at the wheel, leaving before dawn just to make it on time. Moving back to Lancaster was a necessity, but it didn’t change the fact that I still felt out of place.

Lancaster’s Jewish community was truly gone. No minyan met in a side room downtown, no small congregation gathering for the holidays.

If I wanted to be part of Jewish life, I would have to leave.

That decision shaped much of what followed.

When I chose a college, I didn’t just look at academics—I looked at where I could find an established Jewish community.

I ended up in Columbus, at Capital University, a Lutheran school, but one surrounded by active synagogues and Jewish organizations. There, I soon restarted the Jewish student group and connected with Jews across the city.

I left the religious life of Lancaster largely behind.

And yet, two years later, when I finally uncovered the history of B’nai Israel, I realized something:

Even though the community had disappeared before I was born, its memory had shaped my entire journey.

The mystery of the building on Chestnut Street, the questions I asked, the search for Jewish Lancaster—it all led me to the life I was living as a college student interning with Jewish organizations and leading events to raise awareness of Jewish history and culture on my campus.

And that meant the impact of B’nai Israel wasn’t gone at all.

Uncovering a Lost History

In the summer of 2017, I often sat in front of my laptop in a dimly lit apartment in Columbus, tired eyes looking far too closely at a glowing screen as I scrolled through decades-old newspaper archives. One evening, my college roommates came home to find me hunched over my laptop in the dark, still absorbed in old newspaper archives. Someone asked why I hadn’t turned on a light. The other roomate—half amused, half exasperated—questioned why I was spending my summer buried in decades-old history. The past had pulled me in—but eventually, hunger won out, and I took a break that evening to eat at Melt Bar and Grilled.

Whenever I wrote, tabs featuring faded newspapers also filled my navigation bar—columns of text from the Lancaster Daily Eagle, a newspaper that had once chronicled everyday life in my hometown. Its successor the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette was still published, though its size was much reduced. I had started searching with only a few leads—memories of a seemingly empty white building on Chestnut Street, the name B’nai Israel of Lancaster, and a Star of David engraved on a war memorial in a small downtown park next to a Civil War cannon. The presence of that symbol, next to a Christian cross, quietly marking a legacy of Jewish service in a town where no Jewish community seemed to remain, deepened my curiosity.

My enthusiasm was driven by the excitement of one discovery made just a few days into my research.

A front-page article from February 28, 1927, prominently featured the dedication of B’nai Israel, the synagogue I had long suspected once existed but had never seen definitively documented. Over 500 people attended, including the mayor, a prominent Christian minister, and three Columbus rabbis representing different Jewish denominations. The article painted a picture of a moment full of hope—a moment when Jewish life in Lancaster was not only present but celebrated.

Reading it, I was elated—this was proof. The synagogue was real, thriving in 1927 in ways I had never imagined. But it also raised a stark question: How did a once-visible Jewish community fade into near-total obscurity?

That summer, as I read hundreds of old articles and painstakingly compiled a growing list of names, I realized that what had started as a personal curiosity was evolving into something larger.

In the fall of my senior year at Capital, I proposed to one of my history professors, and my academic advisor for the program, Dr. Alexander Pantsov, that I utilize my capstone project to document the history of B’nai Israel. Capstone projects were typically deep dives into existing historical literature, but I had something different in mind—I wanted to write a history that had never been written before.

By the time I approached Dr. Pantsov, I already had support from the Columbus Jewish Historical Society (CJHS), where I had interned since June. I also knew that this project was going to test my abilities as a historian. While I was confident in my research skills, I was also aware of the challenges—there was no existing book or well-documented history of Jewish Lancaster to pull from, just miscellaneous references, memories, and newspaper articles waiting to be pieced together. Still, I believed it was worth doing, a true historian’s project, and one I would be proud of once completed.

I also thought this project might help me decide whether to apply to a graduate history program. At the time, I was still considering it, believing that a PhD might be the right path. However, my senior year’s deep dive into the academic job market made me reconsider. I realized just how difficult it was to find stable employment as a historian, and ultimately, I chose to work for Hillel at Ithaca College, a Jewish campus organization, after college instead.

The next five months were consumed by research. I worked late into the night and early into some mornings, combing through every trace I could find—digitized photos, old city directories, scattered references in local histories. The most valuable sources continued to be in newspaper articles, particularly the Lancaster Daily Eagle, which provided direct accounts of B’nai Israel’s past. As I read through the same newspapers that B’nai Israel’s members once did, I felt a deep connection with them. I imagined officers of the congregation flipping through the same pages, reading about their own community. The CJHS archives also helped me uncover personal details—membership lists, treasurer’s reports, and letters, some in Yiddish, that revealed pieces of the day-to-day life of the congregation. I learned that many synagogue records had been lost in a 1961 fire. By this time Lancaster’s Jewish community was already contracting.

Together many of the surviving records painted a picture of a vibrant small-town Jewish community in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to the synagogue, Lancaster had a Jewish youth group, a women’s organization, and even a kosher butcher—though not a full shop. Rather, this local figure performed ritual slaughtering for Jewish families by visiting individual homes. I found myself imagining what it would have been like to stumble upon these activities as a teenager, searching for a place where I might belong. What if, instead of discovering a closed synagogue with peeling paint, I had walked past it on the day of its dedication? What if I had attended a Jewish youth group meeting, finding Jewish peers in my own town rather than floating between worlds where my Lutheran baptism kept me from the sacraments of the Catholic church and my Catholic school education made me feel out of place in Protestant spaces.

One archived document stood out among all the rest: a typed treasurer’s report from 1926, with handwritten notes in places. It listed the names of dozens of Jews from Lancaster, Chillicothe, New Lexington, and Nelsonville who had supported Beth David, the congregation that would become B’nai Israel in 1927. I learned that, like Lancaster, these other small towns had Jewish residents, but few traces of their stories remained. Seeing their names on paper, alongside donation amounts, made me realize the sacrifices families made to sustain Jewish life. These were not just abstract figures in history but everyday people—clothiers, grocers, and scrap dealers—who had built a Jewish community in a place where, by my lifetime, it had all but vanished.

This discovery also shaped the next phase of my work. Learning that Jewish families from other small Ohio towns had been connected to B’nai Israel laid the foundation for my later efforts, between 2020 and 2024, to document two dozen smaller or vanished Jewish communities across the state.

Meeting the Last President

As part of my initial research on B’nai Israel, I interviewed Alan Shatz, the last president of Lancaster’s synagogue. We met in July 2017. Though I had already uncovered many details through newspapers and archival records, I was eager to hear from someone who had been part of the community.

Alan explained that by the 1960s, the congregation was already in decline. There had not been a bar mitzvah since the late 1940s, and the last resident rabbi left in 1957. The main reason for the synagogue’s closure, he told me, was that younger generations didn’t return after college. The same economic trends that have affected many small Midwestern towns also impacted Lancaster’s Jewish community.

His words struck a chord. I, too, had left Lancaster after high school and had no plans to return. In a way, I had followed the same path as the young people he described—I had left for college and would not move back.

Alan also told me about the fire at B’nai Israel, an event I had read about in old newspapers. He confirmed that the fire had damaged the synagogue’s interior, and after that, it no longer had a women’s balcony—an architectural detail that revealed a shift in how the congregation functioned over time.

Perhaps the most powerful revelation came when Alan told me where B’nai Israel’s memorial plaques had ended up. The bronze yahrzeit plaques, which once were displayed on the synagogue walls, had been preserved at Congregation Ahavas Sholom, an Orthodox synagogue in Columbus. Rabbi Julius Baker, B’nai Israel’s last rabbi, had left in 1957 to accept a full-time role at Ahavas Sholom, cementing a connection between the two congregations.

When I visited Ahavas Sholom later that summer, I was shocked to learn that the plaques were not on display—they were in a closet, tucked away, unseen. These plaques had once been a public remembrance of Jews who helped shape Lancaster, and now they sat in storage. I felt a deep sense of loss.

It was more than a disappointment—it felt like a quiet erasure. Most of the individuals whose names were inscribed on those plaques had played important roles in Lancaster’s downtown and in the life of its Jewish community. Now their memory was placed in storage. I shared this with Alan, who confirmed that the plaques had not always been hidden away. Some were also more damaged than he remembered.

This discovery forced me to confront a difficult reality: even in Jewish spaces, memory is not always prioritized in the way we assume it will be. While I’m mindful of how I share this story—I do not want to disparage a still-existing congregation, and I’m aware of Jewish teachings against gossip—the experience left an impression on me. It was a powerful visualization of how even a related Jewish community regarded the memory of Lancaster’s B’nai Israel 24 years after the congregation closed. It reinforced, more than anything, the importance of my work. If these stories were not actively preserved, they would be forgotten.

Writing B’nai Israel Back into Memory

This realization deepened my sense of purpose. What had begun as a search for Lancaster’s Jewish history had become something more: a commitment to ensuring that the echoes of this lost community did not simply fade into silence. Around the same time, I began volunteering with a Chevra Kadisha, a Jewish burial society, in Columbus. In both efforts—through historical research and through the profound rituals of burial—I found a way to honor those who came before me.

After I completed my research, I presented my findings at Capital during the 2018 induction for Phi Alpha Theta, the honor society for history students and professors. I also worked with the Columbus Jewish Historical Society to ensure that the history of B’nai Israel would be preserved. The project was later digitized by CJHS, featured by the Fairfield County Heritage Association in its Fairfield County Heritage Quarterly, and included in the American Jewish Archives at Hebrew Union College, giving it a permanent place in the broader historical record.

Then, in September 2022, nearly a century after B’nai Israel’s dedication, Lancaster’s Jewish history made front-page news in the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette. For the first time in decades, the story of B’nai Israel was being told again—not just in an archive or history journal, but in the modern successor to the very newspaper that had once documented its vibrant life. Seeing my work in print that day, I realized: if I hadn’t uncovered this history, some of these names might have been lost forever.

Coming Home

But uncovering history is one thing—standing in its presence is another.

Later this year, I will step inside the former synagogue for the first time—not as a congregant, nor as a researcher, but as an Airbnb guest. A building that once held prayers now welcomes travelers, its space repurposed for a different kind of gathering. For years, I stared at the building from the outside, imagining the voices that once filled its walls, Hebrew prayers long since faded. The absence felt as vast as the centuries. Now, I will step inside—not as an outsider, but as an invited guest. The owners covered my weekend stay as thanks for a custom history of the building I wrote for their guests in 2024.

I am not just stepping into a building. I am stepping into the questions that shaped me.

If my 15-year-old self could see this moment, he would be awed. He would not believe that the history of Jewish Lancaster—once close to fading—would not only be preserved but highlighted as part of stories in The Columbus Dispatch, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, eJewish Philanthropy, The Times of Israel, and beyond. That the echoes of a nearly forgotten community would reach across continents, recognition that never existed when the community was still alive. He would not believe that his name would be tied to Jewish history projects across Ohio and New York or that the space he once gazed at in quiet wonder would welcome him inside, not as a trespasser, but as a special guest.

The author, whose journey began with a question and a shuttered sanctuary.

And if I could reach back to him, I would tell him something even more important: you are not searching anymore.

As a teenager, my search for Judaism was wrapped up in so many other searches—faith, identity, stability in the wake of my parents’ divorce, and some affirmation that I was not broken for being gay. At the time, I believed the answers lay in finding a Jewish community, in stepping into a synagogue where I could finally belong. But now, I see that belonging is something I needed to find internally. I am newly married, fulfilled in my life, and whole. My journey has led me not just to Judaism, but to a deeper understanding of what I was seeking all along.

I know now that B’nai Israel contributed to shaping at least one person’s ethics in Lancaster long after it closed. Its historic presence influenced my life in ways I could never have imagined as a teen. Its echoes have reached far beyond Lancaster, beyond Ohio, beyond even my own search for identity. Because now, when someone looks up Lancaster, Ohio Jewish, they do not find a blank space. They find the story that was waiting to be told.

And soon, I will stand in the place where it all began and say the Shehecheyanu, the blessing for reaching a milestone moment.

The building that once held so much mystery is now an open door. The synagogue I once searched for has, in some way, been found. I have arrived.

If you’ve ever stood before a building and wondered who once worshiped there—or searched for a tradition that felt like home—I’d love to hear your story. Leave a comment or hit reply.