First Narayever Congregation is a traditional-egalitarian synagogue located at 187 Brunswick Avenue, in the Harbord Village neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
In 1943, the congregation acquired and moved to its current building on Brunswick which had previously been Bethel Church and originally a Foresters' Lodge.
[1] It and the Orthodox Shaarei Tzedec are the two last remaining shtiebels of what were once dozens of small congregations in the area around Kensington Market, Spadina Avenue and Bathurst Street - which was a vibrant Jewish area prior to World War II.
In the decades following World War II, many of the congregants followed the rest of the Jewish community as it moved up Bathurst Street north of St. Clair Avenue, but some continued to travel downtown to attend the synagogue.
As attendance for the Orthodox service dwindled to the point that it was unable to attract a minyan, the egalitarian service moved upstairs and the synagogue began attracting more new members and went in a new direction, and is today unaffiliated with any larger Jewish religious movement.