(by Sasha Rogelberg, Jewish Exponent, July 29, 2021)
Born out of the English and Scottish guild systems of the 13th century, the fraternal organization of Masons was designed to help stonemasons regulate the qualifications of guildsmen and find lodging when traveling town-to-town, constructing cathedrals and city walls.
Yet 800 years later, long after the Protestant Revolution, which halted the building of Catholic cathedrals in a newly-Protestant England, and the invention of the cannon, which rendered stone city walls a less useful defense, the Masonic insignia of a square and compass can still be found today: on rings, polo shirts, car decals and license plates.
Though gone are the days of stonemasonry as a popular profession, the fraternal organization of the Masons persists and, for a community of Jews around the world, it’s a touchstone of connection.
When the pandemic hit, Shlomo Bar-Ayal, an Orthodox Jew and former master at the James W. Husted-Fiat Lux Lodge in Manhattan, and Sean Rothberg, a Mason from the Richardson Masonic Lodge #1214 in Dallas created respective Facebook groups for Jewish Masons.
When they found out about the other’s groups, they joined forces to create a larger group of Jewish Masons, from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, even Australia, that now meets online weekly: a Zoom minyan of Masons.
The group, an ensemble of men of varying ages, many bespectacled or sipping a beer in front of…
read more in Jewish Exponent:
When the pandemic hit, Shlomo Bar-Ayal, an Orthodox Jew and former master at the James W. Husted-Fiat Lux Lodge in Manhattan, and Sean Rothberg, a Mason from the Richardson Masonic Lodge #1214 in Dallas created respective Facebook groups for Jewish Masons.
When they found out about the other’s groups, they joined forces to create a larger group of Jewish Masons, from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, even Australia, that now meets online weekly: a Zoom minyan of Masons.
The group, an ensemble of men of varying ages, many bespectacled or sipping a beer in front of…
read more in Jewish Exponent:
When they found out about the other’s groups, they joined forces to create a larger group of Jewish Masons, from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, even Australia, that now meets online weekly: a Zoom minyan of Masons.
The group, an ensemble of men of varying ages, many bespectacled or sipping a beer in front of…
read more in Jewish Exponent:
