Noah Feldman, Columnist

The Future Wins in a Battle Over Jewish History

A court recognizes that a Rhode Island synagogue's survival is more important than its past.

May 18, 2016 at 5:21 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Focusing on the future.
Photographer: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

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You never actually own a synagogue. You merely take care of it for the next generation. That’s the essence of a 106-page court decision that's transferred control of the historic Touro synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, from a New York City congregation to a local one seeking to revive the institution’s religious life.

Seen through the lens of Jewish-American history, the decision is both correct and symbolically important. It emphasizes the future over the past, refusing to treat Jewish spaces and objects as relics and instead making them into investments in the future.