[1] That same year, the synagogue's congregants went to court over an attempt by its rabbi and board members to sell the aging structure to an organization run by a Jesuit priest.

Jewish immigrants from the Galician town of Brzeżany organized Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshei Brzezan as a mutual aid society in 1894.

In 1952 the synagogue merged with Bnai Joseph Dugel Macheneh Ephraim, founded by Polish-Jewish immigrants from Rymanów and Błażowa.

[6] Singer, a native of Pilzno, Poland, who had fled the Nazis in 1939 and settled on the Lower East Side,[8][9] served in this capacity until 2002,[10] mostly without pay.

[11] Under Singer's leadership, the synagogue served as a prayer and meeting place for immigrants and working poor of the Lower East Side, most of them elderly, such as "former sanitation workers, bakers, rag vendors in their seventies and eighties".

[6] They arranged to sell the run-down building to the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped, founded and run by a Jesuit priest, for $1.2 million, a reflection of the rising cost of housing in the neighborhood.

[6] The congregants took the matter to a beis din (rabbinical court), which ruled that the sale could go through and part of the proceeds be used to pay Singer's pension.

On October 29, 2002, the parties settled with an agreement under which Singer would not try to sell the building and the congregants would not demand a financial accounting of the synagogue's revenues.

[6] By 2004 membership had topped 100, comprising "an intergenerational mix of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors, middle-aged empty-nesters and twenty- and thirty-something couples and families".

[15] Yuter has applied his computer programming background to his rabbinic duties, posting his synagogue on Foursquare, a social networking site, in 2011[16] and maintaining a Twitter feed and personal blog called Yutopia.

[4] Four cast-stone pilasters, each two stories high, support an entablature and a pediment upon which the Yiddish name of the synagogue and its date of construction are engraved.

[5] The Star of David appears in four places: in an oculus over the main entrance; in a large, circular, stained-glass window over the pediment; engraved onto a stone tablet on the parapet; and atop the stylized wrought-iron gate in front of the building.

[5] In 2018, with donations from community members and the synagogue fund, lay leadership, spearheaded by Jeff Katz,[21] made urgent repairs and additional renovations to the roof, back wall, main sanctuary, and women's balcony.

[12] In keeping with its open door approach, welcoming lively Jewish culture of all kinds, the synagogue schedules frequent musical performances and events.

For Shavuot 2004, it commissioned artist David Friedman to produce "Borsch and Coffee: Floral Abstractions", an exhibition of 16 paintings in the downstairs Kiddush hall.

[7] Since 2004, the synagogue has held an annual event, either a Kiddush or sidewalk chalking gathering, memorializing the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911.