Vol. 4

No. 23

Restaurants:

The Temple Restaurant, Part 1

The Jewish Encyclopedia:

Jews with AIDS in the Family

Neighborhoods:

Lawrenceville

Calendar:

June 11: Alex Calzereth

through Aug. 13: Green Book

Community:

"How We Got Here"

Under the Dome of Rodef Shalom

JCBA "Road-Trip"

Mystery portraits

Research Tools:

Newspapers, Cemeteries,

Memorial Plaques, Books,

Population Figures, Newsletters

Restaurants:

The Temple Restaurant

Black and white photograph of 636 Penn Avenue looking south near McKains Hat Store and the Roosevelt Hotel. Also seen are the Temple Restaurant and Loew's Theater, Aug. 17, 1947.

—from Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection 

University of Pittsburgh Archives & Special Collections 

[715.4776963.CP] (online—Historic Pittsburgh)

This week, we’ll tell the story of the Temple Restaurant. And then next week, we'll tell the story of the Temple Restaurant again. The basic facts are the same in both versions of the story, but one account is more vivid than the other.

The Temple Restaurant was located in the Loyal Order of Moose Lodge No. 46 temple at 632 Penn Ave, in the theater district of downtown Pittsburgh. The building is gone today. The former address sits in parking lot behind Heinz Hall.

(Left) Advertisement for the Temple Restaurant at 632 Penn Ave. downtown. Text reads, "Good Food Means Good Health." Proprietor, Rose Cohen. (Oct. 20, 1916); (Right) Advertisement for the Temple Restaurant at 632 Penn Ave. downtown. Includes High Holiday greeting. Proprietor, Joseph Klein. (Sept. 14, 1917).

—from Jewish Criterion

Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project

Rose Cohen opened the Temple Restaurant as early as 1916. (She advertised the restaurant in the city directory that year as the “New Temple Restaurant,” suggesting a distinction from an earlier establishment at the same location.)

The following year, Joseph and Hannah Klein took over management of the restaurant. The Kleins had become well known on lower Fifth Avenue with their Klein’s Kosher Café. When they moved to Penn Avenue, they sold their Fifth Avenue restaurant to brothers-in-law Alex Schulberg and Louis Bart. A few years later, in the early 1920s, the Kleins left Penn Avenue for other spots downtown. They sold the Temple Restaurant, again to Schulberg and Bart. 

Sometime in the mid-1930s, Schulberg and Bart split. Schulberg relocated to Squirrel Hill, and Bart remained downtown at the Temple Restaurant. Bart sold the Temple Restaurant in the late 1940s or early 1950s to Nick Nichols. Nichols stayed downtown until 1957, when he relocated to 2306 Saw Mill Run Blvd.

Advertisement for the Temple Restaurant at 632 Penn Ave. downtown. Includes details of business men's specials. Proprietors, Schulberg and Bart, June 6, 1930.

—from Jewish Criterion

Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project

This version of the story was compiled mostly through newspaper advertisements. By closely analyzing those advertisements, you can glean some additional details about the operation of the Temple Restaurant: its changing ownership, its “table d’hote” service and its deli counter, the accommodations it made to attract downtown businessmen, and its sudden closure and subsequent renovations and reopening following the 1936 flood. 

For most of the restaurants we’re profiling this year, newspaper advertisements are the best available documentation. These advertisements provide useful facts. But they don’t give a sense of texture or flavor. They don’t tell you what it felt like to walk through the doors, pull up a seat, and order a bite to eat.

For that, you really need to hear it first hand. 

Luckily, you can.

We have an rich first-hand account of daily life at the Temple Restaurant. And so next week, we’ll tell this entire story again, from that perspective.

Next Week: Part 2

All year, the Rauh Jewish Archives is highlighting Jewish restaurants in Western Pennsylvania. If you would like to donate a material from a Jewish restaurant, or just reminisce, contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.

Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:

Jews with AIDS in the Family

"Jews with AIDS in the Family" was a support group for Jewish people in Western Pennsylvania who had AIDS; their parents, siblings, significant others and friends; as well as anyone who had lost a loved one to the disease. Mel and Beverly Pollock started the group in the early 1990s, after the death of their son Bobby.

Jewish Family & Children’s Service hosted the group and held meetings in its offices as well as throughout the local Jewish community, including at Tree of Life Congregation and Temple Sinai. Our entry for "Jews with AIDS in the Family" includes brochures, program fliers, and news articles.

Cover of program from “AIDS Awareness Weekend: A Jewish Response,” held at Temple Sinai, April 22-24, 1994.

—from Pollock Family Papers [MSS 1031].

Neighborhoods:

Lawrenceville

Site of the former Butler Street Congregation at 5157 Butler St., 2019.

In the days of rail, newly arriving Jewish immigrants to Pittsburgh would disembark downtown, walk to the Beth Hamedrash Hagodol synagogue on Washington Street in the lower Hill District, and ask the gabbai (sexton) of the congregation for a ticket to the House of Shelter. This ticket provided room and board for three days, giving the newcomer a short but crucial window to find work and living accommodations and to start a new life in the city. 

For thousands of Jewish immigrants, that new life unfolded right there in the Hill District. In the early 20th century, the neighborhood provided a total Jewish environment—synagogues, schools, community centers, and businesses, all crammed and clustered into a few hilly square miles of the city. 

That was one story. But there was another story.

A small but sizable minority of Jewish immigrants left the Hill District to seek economic opportunities in parts of the city without any Jewish communal life.

(Top) 4933 Butler St., as seen on Google Street View, 2017.

(Bottom) City directory listing for B. Rogalsky, gorcer at 4933 Butler St., 1899.

Bani Rogalsky came to Pittsburgh around 1890 from the city of Sejny. Sejny was a Litvishe town in Suwalk Gubernia. Today, it's located in northeast Poland.

Rogalsky wasn’t alone.

Many of his landsmen (townsmen) also came to Pittsburgh. They started a synagogue in the Hill District called Anshe Sanee and known as the Saneeyer Shul. It later took the name Tiphereth Israel. Bani’s brother S. J. Rogalsky became a lay leader at Tiphereth Israel and was buried in its cemetery.

Bani Rogalsky went a different direction. He quickly left the Hill District. He peddled for a few years before opening a grocery store at 4933 Butler St. in Lawrenceville. At that time, Lawrenceville was a mostly Polish neighborhood, which created opportunities for Polish-speaking merchants like Rogalsky. 

Imagine starting over in a new country, which path would you take?

Would you settle within a dense cluster of your fellow countrymen and the world they were creating? Or would you sacrifice the relative comfort and safety of a familiar environment to pursue economic opportunity elsewhere?

Detail from donation list for the Pittsburgh House of Shelter, recording $2.95 donation collected by B. Rogalsky of Butler Street during Yom Kippur services, Oct. 12, 1906.

—from Jewish Criterion

Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project

Jews began settling in Lawrenceville in the late 1890s and early 1900s. In time, they had enough people to support communal activities. They began holding communal events as early as 1906 and soon formed a congregation.

It was called the Butler Street Congregation. It met in a small outbuilding behind 5157 Butler St. The main building was a jewelry store owned by Isaac Harrison and later by Jacob Crantz. Neither the main building nor the outbuilding survive today, and we also haven't found photographs of either.

Reading through the few available records of the Butler Street Congregation, you can sense a persistent tension between permanence and transience. 

In late 1919, the Butler Street Congregation announced a campaign to raise $15,000 to build a new synagogue. The campaign failed, and the congregation stayed put at 5157 Butler St. for its entire existence. To accommodate larger attendance during the High Holidays, the congregation rented halls. All those buildings still exist today, now as the homes of well known Lawrenceville businesses: Arsenal Lanes, Condado Tacos, and the Deli on Butler Street.

The Butler Street Congregation never incorporated, but it participated in the broader affairs of the Jewish community. It donated generously to Jewish causes, and it joined the Agudath Kehillath to help set community standards.

It was a young community, mostly families. Early on, these families sent their children to religious schools across town. Of the 18 children in the 1911 confirmation class at Tree of Life Congregation, two were from Lawrenceville (and one was from the Strip District, which we profiled last month). 

Toward the end of that year, the National Council of Jewish Women established a religious school in Lawrenceville through its Southwestern District of Pennsylvania Jewish Religious Schools program. Under the supervision of the newly formed Jewish Mother’s Club of Lawrenceville, the school met at the synagogue at 5157 Butler St. and held special events at rented halls at 3059 Penn Ave. and 4124 Butler St., among other spots in Lawrenceville.

In the mid-1920s, the Hebrew Institute counted more than 100 Jewish children living in Lawrenceville. These children must have craved Jewish communal activities beyond religious school because their parents started a Jewish Boy Scouts troop in early 1922. It met at the synagogue on Sunday afternoons.

Brief history of Butler Street Congregation by Ruth Arnfeld, Sept. 11, 1942.

—Jewish Criterion,

from Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project

All this communal activity was a stopgap.

As they could, Jewish families were leaving Lawrenceville for the East End or for Squirrel Hill. Bani Rogalsky moved to Squirrel Hill in the early 1920s. He became an important early figure at Congregation Beth Shalom, as did Max and Harry Weisberger, fellow members of the Butler Street Congregation.

The Jewish student population of Lawrenceville fell by nearly 42 percent between 1928 and 1930 and fell by another 40 percent between 1934 and 1936. The same Jewish families who were willing to follow economic opportunity to an unfamiliar place were often unwilling to deny their children the cultural opportunity to come of age in a Jewish milieu. The Butler Street Congregation continued meeting through the 1940s, before fading away.

June 11:

JGS-Pittsburgh presents:

"Mapping Your Family History"

with Alex Calzereth

Create maps with your own data on Google MyMaps.

This presentation will teach you how to create a custom map, import location data associated with family history events or source records and then customize the appearance of that data on the map. Custom maps can be used in many ways, including visually conveying family migration patterns, showing the location of regional cemeteries, or which towns hold certain vital records. Resulting maps can also be imported into Google Earth.

The program is Sunday, June 11 from 1:00-3:00 p.m. ET. This is a virtual program, occurring exclusively online. The program will be recorded, and the recording will be made available to current JGS-Pittsburgh members.

“Mapping Your Family History with Alex Calzereth” is a collaboration between the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh and the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. Please register online. 

The program is free for JGS-Pittsburgh members and $5 for the general public. To become a member of the JGS-Pittsburgh and receive a free membership code for this program, please visit its website.

This program is possible through the support of the William M. Lowenstein Genealogical Research Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation.

Alex Calzareth is a genealogist focusing on Southwest Germany, the Czech Republic and Southern Italy who began researching his family roots twenty-five years ago. He is a board member for Reclaim The Records and the Jewish Genealogy Society of Long Island, serving as JGSLI’s webmaster. Alex is also the JewishGen Research Director for Germany. He lives in New York City and works as a CPA.

through August 13:

The Negro Motorist Green Book

“The Negro Motorist Green Book” was a travel guide listing restaurants, gas stations, department stores, and other businesses that welcomed Black travelers. In an era of Jim Crow laws and “sundown towns,” the Green Book offered critical, life-saving information and sanctuary for Black individuals and families traveling the country. Harlem postman Victor Green started the publication in 1936, based in part on a similar volume published in Yiddish for Jewish travelers. The Green Book continued annually through 1967.

The new exhibit “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” on display in the McGuinn Gallery of the Heinz History Center through Aug. 13, tells the story of this landmark publication and its impact on the nation’s rising Black middle class in the middle 20th century. The exhibit also reveals the world of the Green Book in Pittsburgh with artifacts from hotels, jazz clubs, restaurants, and more than 30 local businesses listed in the Green Book, including the Terrace Hall Hotel, Harlem Casino Dance Hall, and Palace Hotel. The exhibit features images from the Melvin Seidenberg Photographs at the Rauh Jewish Archives and the Charles “Teenie” Harris Archive at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Community

From the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh

"How We Got Here"

Each family is unique. 

Each family has its own traditions, its own spirit, and its own dynamics. 

Despite all these differences, every Jewish family in Western Pennsylvania has at least one thing in common: They all have a story about how they got here.

Perhaps your family sailed in steerage across the Atlanti in the 19th century.

Or perhaps your family drove the Pennsylvania Turnpike in a station wagon in the 1960s to work for the universities and hospitals during Renaissance.

Or perhaps your arrival into one of the many Jewish communities of Western Pennsylvania involves marriage, or conversion, or a surprising DNA discovery.

Each of these stories is special, and each contributes to the larger story of our community. To collect and honor these origin stories, the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh is launching a new initiative called “How We Got Here.” To participate, just write a short account explaining how you or your ancestors came to settle in Western Pennsylvania. All stories are welcome.

Stories will be eligible for inclusion in the JGS-Pittsburgh’s monthly newsletter Z’chor and also for preservation in the Rauh Jewish Archives. For more information about this initiative, or to contribute, contact Eric Lidji.

From NEXT Pittsburgh

"What's Under the Dome at Rodef Shalom?"

NEXT Pittsburgh's Boaz Frankel visits with archivist Martha Berg to discover the secrets of Rodef Shalom Congregation's historic Fifth Avenue synagogue.

From the Jewish Cemetery & Burial Association

"Road Trip: The Jewish Cemeteries of Western Pennsylvania"

The Jewish Cemetery and Burial Association of Greater Pittsburgh has released a new documentary showcasing Jewish cemeteries in Western Pennsylvania.

“Road Trip: The Jewish Cemeteries of Western Pennsylvania” is a one-hour tour of the many cemetery properties overseen by the JCBA, as well as an overview of the organization’s ongoing work to care for these sacred burial grounds. The video is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate these special Jewish cultural sites in our region. The video includes many historic photographs and documents from the collections of the Rauh Jewish Archives. 

From Rodef Shalom Congregation

A mystery in primary colors

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle reports on an effort by Rodef Shalom Congregation to identify two people from a pair of mid-19th century portraits in the congregation's holdings. Do you recognize these two people?

Research Tools

The Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project contains digitized, searchable copies of four local English-language Jewish newspapers between 1895 and 2010. It is a valuable tool for researching almost any topic about Jewish history in Western Pennsylvania. For a primer on using the website, watch our video.

Western Pennsylvania Jewish Cemetery Project

The Rauh Jewish Archives launched the Western Pennsylvania Jewish Cemetery Project in 1998 to preserve burial records from Jewish cemeteries across the region. Over a period of fifteen years, the information was compiled into a searchable, online database containing approximately 50,000 burial records from 78 Jewish cemeteries throughout the region.

Western Pennsylvania Yahrzeit Plaques Project

The Rauh Jewish Archives launched the Western Pennsylvania Yahrzeit Plaques Project in 2020. The goal was to create a comprehensive collection of burial records from memorial boards at synagogues across the region. Volunteers are currently transcribing these boards and records are being added monthly to our online database. The database currently contains more than 2,000 listings.

Rauh Jewish Archives Bibliography

University of Pittsburgh librarian and Rauh Jewish Archives volunteer Laurie Cohen created this comprehensive bibliography of the Rauh Jewish Archives library holdings from 1988 through 2018. It lists nearly 350 volumes arranged by type and then by subject. This a great tool to use early in your research process, as you’re surveying available resources on a given subject.

Jewish Population Estimates

Looking to figure out how many Jews lived in a certain part of Western Pennsylvania at a certain moment in time? This bibliography includes more than 30 estimates of the Jewish population of Pittsburgh and small-towns throughout the region, conducted between 1852 and 2017.

Rauh Jewish Archives Newsletter

The Rauh Jewish Archives has been publishing a weekly newsletter since 2020. The newsletter contains a variety of articles about local Jewish history, including much original research not found anywhere else. You can find and read every issue—more than 150!— in our new index.