Congregation Or Chadash
| Congregation Or Chadash | |
|---|---|
| Basic information | |
| Location | 5959 North Sheridan Road, Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Geographic coordinates | 41°59′27″N 87°39′19″W / 41.990741°N 87.655363°WCoordinates: 41°59′27″N 87°39′19″W / 41.990741°N 87.655363°W |
| Affiliation | Union for Reform Judaism |
| Status | Active |
| Leadership | Rabbi: Larry Edwards Cantor: Judith Golden |
| Website | orchadash |
Congregation Or Chadash (Hebrew: אוֹר חָדָשׁ, Hebrew for "New Light") is a Reform LGBT-oriented congregation in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. It was founded in 1975 as a gay support group for Jews, and was holding religious services by 1976. It moved into its first building, a former Unitarian church on West Barry Avenue in 1977, and hired its first permanent rabbi, Suzanne Griffel, in 1997.
Griffel was succeeded as rabbi by Larry Edwards, and Or Chadash moved to its current location, which it shares with another synagogue and a Jewish day school, in 2003. In October 2010, Or Chadash was thought to be one of the two synagogues targeted in the 2010 cargo planes bomb plot.
As of 2017[update], Cindy Enger is rabbi and the congregation's hazzan is Judith Golden.
Or Chadash was founded in Chicago in 1975 as a gay support group for Jews. The organization was initially called simply "The Jewish Group". It held its first religious services in January 1976, and adopted its current name in April of that year. The congregation remains geared to needs of LGBT Jews.
According to J. Gordon Melton, at the time of its founding there were four other gay synagogues in the United States, in Manhattan, Miami, Los Angeles and Berkeley, California.Or Chadash and the other gay congregations faced significant opposition from others in the Jewish community, which had, Melton writes, "traditionally abhorred homosexuality because of the admonition to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:28), and the unequivocal denunciation of homosexuality in the Torah (Lev. 20:13)".
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