Congregation Or Chadash

'New Light') was a Reform Jewish LGBT-oriented congregation that was located at 5959 North Sheridan Road, Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois, in the United States.

[6] In 1977 it moved into its first building, a former Unitarian church on West Barry Avenue,[5][6] and hired its first permanent rabbi, Suzanne Griffel, in 1997.

[7] Griffel was succeeded as rabbi by Larry Edwards,[8] and Or Chadash moved a new location, which shared with another synagogue and a Jewish day school, in 2003.

[3] 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.

[7] Griffel was succeeded as rabbi of Or Chadash by Laurence "Larry" Edwards,[8] who was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York.

Prior to joining Congregation Or Chadash, Edwards served for 22 years as a director of Hillel branches at Dartmouth College and Cornell University.

[15] According to CNN.com, on November 3, Or Chadash co-president Lilli Kornblum "said that despite earlier reports, an FBI agent informed her that her synagogue was not one of the intended destinations in the foiled bomb plot that originated in Yemen.

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who has studied terrorist groups, believed that the synagogues were a backup plan, had the bombs not detonated mid-flight.