An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on the rededication of Central Synagogue in Manhattan, which was severely damaged in a 1998 fire. The first sentence of today's Times article reports that the rededication was of "the home of what is thought to be the oldest continuing Jewish congregation in New York."
Well, it may be "thought to be" the oldest, but whoever is having that thought isn't thinking very hard. And no one at the New York Times seems to have thought very hard before plopping that thought into the newspaper. As the Encyclopedia of New York City notes, the first Jewish congregation in North America was Shearith Israel, which was founded in 1654 in what was then New Amsterdam. Shearith Israel, a Sephardic synagogue, still exists in New York, in a building at 70th Street and Central Park West.
The New York Times itself, on December 6, 1996, identified B'nai Jeshurun as "New York's oldest Ashkenazic congregation."
Central Synagogue's distinction, until the fire, may have been as the oldest synagogue in continuous use in New York City. It was completed in 1872. But obviously there is a difference between being the oldest continuing congregation and having the oldest building. That distinction seems to be lost on the Times.
Unreformed on Tort Reform: An article on the front page of today's New York Times reports that jury awards in medical malpractice cases reached an average of $3.49 million in 1999, up from $1.95 million in 1993. The article reports that in California, "juries awarded more than $1 million in 39 malpractice lawsuits, up from 28 seven years earlier. . . .The average award rose to $2.9 million, from $2 million." Well, the Times looks a bit silly, in retrospect, for that largely uncritical report in its national section on August 6, 2001, which ran under the headline, "A Study's Verdict: Jury Awards Are Not Out of Control," and concluded with a quote from a law professor who asserted, "The evidence is that juries are not out of control." That August article didn't mention any of these statistics about the increase in jury awards in malpractice cases. Today's article, meanwhile, is flawed because it doesn't say how many of these large jury awards are reduced by judges on appeal.