RELIGION

Benji and Avital Goldschmidt

Rabbi and Rebbetzin

In January 2025, Israeli President Isaac Herzog joined over 600 congregants to celebrate the grand opening of Manhattan's Altneu Synagogue in the historic $34.5 million Thomas Lamont mansion on East 70th Street—a stunning milestone for one of American Orthodoxy's most dynamic young leadership teams. What the couple launched informally in late 2021 had grown to more than 550 member families by early 2025, with nearly 40 percent under age 36, defying national trends of declining synagogue membership among young Jews. "Post-October 7, there are those giving towards fighting antisemitism and looking outward," Avital, a prominent journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and The Atlantic, told eJewishPhilanthropy in June 2024. "Now is also a time to focus inward... building sustainable, creative, innovative, forward-thinking communities that are not shells of themselves but real and vibrant."