WESTWOOD—The first Jewish family to settle in Westwood was the Steinmans, who arrived in the borough at the turn of the 20th century.
Jacob (Ephraim Yaacov) Steinman and his wife, Ida, were from Vilnius—present-day capital of Lithuania—known as Vilna to its Jewish population. During their time, Vilna was under the rule of the Russian Empire, but its history is complex. Over the centuries, the city changed hands numerous times, coming under the control of Soviet and Imperial Russia, Napoleonic France, Poland, and Nazi and Imperial Germany.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Vilna was one of Europe’s largest Jewish centers, earning the nickname “The Jerusalem of Lithuania.” It was a hub of culture and a world center for Torah study. But by the 1880s, waves of anti-Jewish riots, or pogroms, in the Russian Empire forced many Jews to flee to America. Decades later, World War II and the Holocaust would decimate nearly all of Lithuania’s Jewish population. Those who immigrated earlier, like the Steinmans, were among the fortunate ones.
According to census records, Jacob and Ida married in 1870 when he was 21 and she was 16. They immigrated to America in the 1890s with their two daughters, Fannie and Sarah.
By 1900, the Steinmans had settled in Westwood, making them the first Jewish family in the borough. Jacob opened a clothing store on Broadway, then called Railroad Avenue, at a location now home to Isabella’s Cleaners. The Steinmans’ native language was Yiddish, and while Jacob and Ida could speak English, they could not read or write it.
By the 1910s, a small number of Jewish families had begun to move into the Pascack Valley. These families gathered for religious services in the Steinmans’ kitchen.
Jacob and Ida’s younger daughter, Sarah, married Charles Emanuel in 1903 in a large ceremony at Apollo Hall in New York City. Charles was a senior partner at Emanuel & Gordon’s department store on Westwood Avenue and an active member of the Westwood community. However, he struggled with poor health for much of his life and died suddenly in 1922 at just 42 years old. Although his life was brief, his name continues to hold significance in the Jewish culture of the Pascack Valley.
By the 1920s, there were approximately 15 Jewish families in the greater Pascack Valley area. Temple Emanuel, named in memory of Charles Emanuel, was incorporated in 1929 under the leadership of Dr. David Goldberg, a physician who began practicing in Westwood in 1925. Sarah Emanuel donated $5,000 in her late husband’s memory to help the congregation purchase land at St. Nicholas and Washington avenues in Westwood. The original Temple Emanuel was built there in 1936, and in 1981, the congregation moved to its current location in Woodcliff Lake.
Editor’s note: Bergen County 2024 is home to a significant Jewish community, with an estimated 228,000 Jewish residents in the northern part of the state, including Bergen, Essex, Morris, and Passaic counties.