On a Friday afternoon in north Teaneck, the parking turns scarce around West Englewood Avenue, the bakeries on Cedar Lane sell out of challah by mid-afternoon, and the streets fall quiet by sundown. This is one of the largest Modern Orthodox Jewish communities in the United States, and the story of the Jews in Teaneck, New Jersey is the rare case of a place that went from almost no observant families to a national centre of Orthodox life inside a single lifetime.
The Place
Teaneck is a township in Bergen County, a bedroom suburb roughly eight miles from the George Washington Bridge and the northern edge of Manhattan. The 2020 census counted 41,246 residents, making it the second most populous municipality in the county.
It is a town of tree-lined streets, brick colonials and a long civic reputation for taking itself seriously. In 1949 the U.S. Army selected Teaneck from more than 10,000 American communities as a model municipality, citing its civic spirit and the quality of its government, and used films of township life in education programmes shown in occupied Japan and Austria.
That civic streak matters to this story. Teaneck was a community that believed in itself before the Orthodox families ever arrived, and the institutions they built sat comfortably inside a place already proud of its tolerance.
How It Became Jewish
Seventy years ago there were essentially no Orthodox Jews in Teaneck. The transformation is recent enough that the people who began it are, in many cases, still davening in the shuls they helped found.
A liberal town earns its name
Before it was an Orthodox centre, Teaneck was famous for something else. In 1965 it became the first community in the nation where a white majority voluntarily voted to integrate its public schools, with no court order forcing the change. The Board of Education had approved a busing plan by a 7 to 2 vote on 13 May 1964, and the integration that followed went ahead despite angry phone calls and the occasional threat.
That reputation for fair-mindedness made Teaneck attractive to newcomers of every kind. When observant Jewish families began looking outward from New York in the 1960s and 1970s, a town already known for welcoming difference was an easy place to feel at home. The same suburban pull would later draw Jewish families to Scarsdale in Westchester and to Short Hills in New Jersey, though Teaneck became the more intensely observant of the three.
Out of the city
The earliest arrivals came largely out of New York, from Washington Heights and other Manhattan neighbourhoods and from the older immigrant districts like the Jewish Lower East Side of Manhattan and from Brooklyn enclaves such as Borough Park, drawn by Bergen County’s space, schools and proximity to the bridge. Families who wanted a yard and a quieter street but still needed to be within reach of jobs in the city found Teaneck close enough to commute and cheap enough, at first, to settle.
The early years were not easy for observant life. Through the late 1970s there were barely a handful of kosher eateries, and women had to travel to Washington Heights or Brooklyn to reach a mikvah. Sabbath observance in those first years asked a great deal of a family, and the ones who came anyway did so on faith that others would follow.
Building the infrastructure
One of the first major projects was the construction of a community mikvah, which meant observant families no longer had to leave town for ritual immersion. A community eruv followed, the symbolic boundary that permits carrying on the Sabbath and that, more than almost anything, makes a neighbourhood liveable for families with young children.
The first families rolled up their sleeves and set about building the institutions that would let others follow. A shul, then a second shul; a small Daf Yomi study group that, by 1982, had grown into a large one. Each addition lowered the cost of moving in for the next family, and the community began to gather momentum.
The boom
The schools soon followed the shuls. Torah Academy of Bergen County, the boys’ high school known as TABC, was established in 1982, and a generation later Ma’ayanot opened to educate the community’s girls. By the time these schools opened, the community had reached the size where it could sustain its own institutions rather than borrowing those of neighbouring towns.
From the start of the 1980s onward Teaneck entered a sustained growth period that observers of Modern Orthodox life still describe as a phenomenon. Each new shul and school made the next family’s move easier, and the community compounded on itself.
In 1982 Elie Katz, who would later serve as mayor, became part of a generation of Orthodox residents stepping into civic leadership, a sign of how thoroughly the community had woven itself into the township’s public life. By the 2010s estimates put roughly 15,000 Jewish residents in a town of 36,000 to 37,000, and the 07666 ZIP code had become the functional centre of the northern New Jersey Orthodox world.
The Landmarks
Congregation Bnai Yeshurun, 641 West Englewood Avenue. Known to everyone as CBY, this is the largest and oldest Orthodox synagogue in Teaneck and the spiritual anchor of the community, serving close to 600 families. Rabbi Steven Pruzansky led the congregation from 1994 until he moved to Israel in 2020, and was succeeded by Rabbi Elliot Schrier in 2021.
Shaarei Orah, the Sephardic Congregation of Teaneck. The community’s Sephardic shul, a reminder that Teaneck draws observant families of many backgrounds, not only the Ashkenazi mainstream. It anchors a smaller world of Sephardic ritual and cuisine within the larger Orthodox town.
Torah Academy of Bergen County, 1600 Queen Anne Road. Founded in 1982, TABC is the boys’ yeshiva high school whose arrival marked the community’s coming of age. It now serves several hundred students in grades nine through twelve and feeds the network of higher yeshivas its graduates go on to.
Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School, 1650 Palisade Avenue. The girls’ counterpart to TABC, founded in 1996. Together the two schools mean a Teaneck child can be educated within the community from primary years through graduation.
Butterflake Bake Shop, 448 Cedar Lane. A bakery on Cedar Lane since 1950, Butterflake became kosher in the autumn of 1998 under David and Richard Heisler. On a Friday its challah sells out early, a small weekly ritual of the Orthodox south end.
Ma’adan, 446 Cedar Lane. A kosher deli and takeout institution that has served the metropolitan area for more than three decades, sitting almost next door to Butterflake on the strip of Cedar Lane that has become the community’s commercial heart.
Estihana, 515 Cedar Lane. Kosher Asian cuisine on Cedar Lane, one of the nearly twenty kosher restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets that now cluster along Cedar Lane and Queen Anne Road, the spine of observant daily life.
Where They Came From
The Jews who built Teaneck came overwhelmingly out of New York City. The migration ran from Washington Heights, the upper Manhattan neighbourhood that had been a refuge for German Jews fleeing Nazi Europe, and from Brooklyn and other Manhattan enclaves where observant families had long lived dense, walkable urban lives.
What pulled them across the Hudson was the familiar suburban calculus of space, schools and a yard, set against the harder calculus of an observant family that cannot drive on the Sabbath and so must live within walking distance of a shul. Teaneck offered both: suburban houses and, once the eruv and the synagogues were in place, a neighbourhood compact enough to walk.
The result was a community that imported the intensity of New York Orthodox life into a Bergen County township, then deepened it. The Teaneck of today is not a watered-down suburb of the city but, by many measures, a more concentrated centre of Modern Orthodox life than the neighbourhoods its founders left.
It is worth noting that Teaneck draws from the full range of the observant world. Alongside the Ashkenazi mainstream came Sephardic families with their own synagogue and liturgy, and the town’s institutions were built to hold them all. The thread that runs through every household is the same, though: a decision to leave the city for the suburbs without leaving observant life behind.
Teaneck Today
Teaneck now supports at least fifteen synagogues, multiple yeshivas, and close to twenty kosher shops, restaurants and supermarkets. The north end around West Englewood Avenue holds the largest shuls and the densest residential streets, while the south end’s Cedar Lane carries much of the kosher commerce.
It remains, importantly, a mixed town. The Orthodox community is roughly 15,000 strong in a township of more than 40,000, and Teaneck’s long-held identity as a diverse, integrated suburb has not dissolved into a single-group enclave. The same civic culture that voted for school integration in 1965 still shapes a place where Orthodox families share the township with neighbours of every background.
For Modern Orthodox families across the country, Teaneck has become a kind of reference point, a place people move to precisely because so many institutions already exist, much as warmer-climate observant Jews gravitate toward Boca Raton in Florida. That self-reinforcing pull, more than any single landmark, is what makes it one of the defining Orthodox communities in America.
Frequently Asked Questions
How large is the Jewish community in Teaneck, New Jersey?
Estimates from the late 2010s put roughly 15,000 Jewish residents in Teaneck, in a township of 36,000 to 37,000 people at the time. A 2001 study found Jewish households made up about 16.5 percent of the 07666 ZIP code.
Why did so many Orthodox Jews move to Teaneck?
Observant families left New York City, especially Washington Heights and Brooklyn, for suburban space and schools while staying within reach of Manhattan. Teaneck’s growing cluster of synagogues, an eruv and a mikvah made walkable Sabbath observance possible, which drew still more Orthodox families.
What is the largest synagogue in Teaneck?
Congregation Bnai Yeshurun, at 641 West Englewood Avenue, is the largest and oldest Orthodox synagogue in Teaneck, serving close to 600 families. It is widely regarded as the spiritual centre of the Jews in Teaneck, New Jersey.
Where are the kosher restaurants in Teaneck?
Most cluster along Cedar Lane in the south end and Queen Anne Road, including Butterflake Bake Shop at 448 Cedar Lane, Ma’adan at 446 Cedar Lane and Estihana at 515 Cedar Lane. The town supports close to twenty kosher restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets in total.
What Jewish day schools are in Teaneck?
Torah Academy of Bergen County, the boys’ high school founded in 1982, sits at 1600 Queen Anne Road, and Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for girls, founded in 1996, is at 1650 Palisade Avenue. Together they allow a Teaneck child to be educated within the community through graduation.
What is Teaneck known for besides its Jewish community?
In 1965 Teaneck became the first town in the nation where a white majority voluntarily voted to integrate its public schools without a court order. The U.S. Army had earlier named it a model American community in 1949.
If your family’s story passed through Teaneck, or any of the places Jews have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From Washington Heights and Brooklyn to a brick colonial off West Englewood Avenue, to wherever you are now.