History of The Jews in Pennsylvania - Scranton

Scranton

Scranton is the sixth largest city in the state and the county seat of Lackawanna County. Jews settled there when the city was still called Harrison or Slocum's Hollow, the present name having been given to the city about 1850. The first Jew to hold public office was Joseph Rosenthal, who was Scranton's first, and for a long time its only, policeman. This was in 1860, when the population numbered but 8,500. The first Jewish congregation was organized in 1858, and was reconstituted in 1860 under the name "Anshe Ḥesed." In 1866 the synagogue on Linden street was built, it was the first building reared exclusively as a Jewish place of worship in Lackawanna county. This edifice, after having been twice rebuilt, was sold to the first Polish congregation in 1902, when the present temple, situated on Madison avenue near Vine street, was dedicated. E. K. Fisher was the first rabbi; and his successors were Rabbis-Cohn, Weil, Sohn, Eppstein, Freudenthal, Löwenberg, Feuerlicht, and Chapman; A. S. Anspacher was the Rabbi in 1905. The Rabbi as of 2010 is Rabbi Fine. As of 1906, there were about 5,000 Jews in Scranton in a total population of 105,000. They supported, in all, five congregations, and two Hebrew schools holding daily sessions. One of the latter, the Montefiore Hebrew School, had a well-equipped corps of teachers and an enrolment of about 200 male pupils. The other school which had higher attendance, possessed its own house in the South Side of the city, and was supported entirely by the large Hungarian community. For a while during the 1920s this community was headed by Rabbi Boruch Greenfeld the author of the Sefer Ohel Boruch.

The more important charitable organizations were: the Hebrew Ladies' Relief Society, the Ladies' Aid Society, the Deborah Verein, the South Side Relief Society, the Kitchen Garden School, and the Industrial Aid Society, a branch of the New York Removal Office.