On a Friday afternoon in Highland Park, the small borough across the Raritan River from New Brunswick, the sidewalks of Raritan Avenue fill with people walking home before sundown. Strollers, students from Rutgers, men in dark hats, women carrying foil trays of food for neighbours. The story of the Jews in Highland Park, New Jersey is the story of how a quiet streetcar suburb became one of the most densely observant Modern Orthodox communities in the country, all within a single square mile you can cross on foot.
The Place
Highland Park sits on the northern bank of the Raritan River in Middlesex County, directly opposite New Brunswick and a short walk from the Rutgers University campus. It was incorporated as a borough on 15 March 1905, splitting from Raritan Township, now Edison, over a dispute about school taxes and the wish for an independent school system.
It grew first as a streetcar suburb in the early twentieth century, then as an automobile suburb, and the 2020 census counted just over 15,000 residents in a borough of barely two square miles. That density matters here. Raritan Avenue, which carries State Route 27, runs the length of the town as its commercial spine, and almost everything an observant family needs sits within walking distance of it.
The borough is leafy, walkable and unpretentious, a place of porches and modest single-family homes rather than gated estates. For a community that does not drive on the Sabbath, that compactness is not a charm. It is the whole point.
How It Became Jewish
The Jewish presence in this corner of New Jersey did not begin in Highland Park. It began across the river, in New Brunswick, among immigrants who arrived in the early twentieth century and built their first institutions there.
Across the river in New Brunswick
By the 1910s and 1920s, New Brunswick had a working Jewish population: Hungarians, Eastern Europeans and a smaller Sephardic group with roots in Salonika, Greece, Turkey and the Balkans. They founded congregations near the old Hiram Market neighbourhood, close to the synagogues and shops that anchored immigrant life.
Congregation Ohav Emeth, whose fuller name was Ohav Emeth Anshe Ungarn, the Lovers of Truth of the Hungarians, was organised in New Brunswick in 1918. The Sephardic congregation that would become Etz Ahaim traced its beginnings to 1916, was incorporated in 1921 and reorganised in 1927, breaking ground for a synagogue on Richmond Street in 1928. For decades, Jewish life in the area meant New Brunswick.
Crossing the river
The shift began after the Second World War and accelerated through the 1960s and 1970s, as families looked across the Raritan for quieter streets and more room. Etz Ahaim moved first, dedicating its current building at 230 Denison Street in Highland Park in 1962, the oldest Sephardic congregation in New Jersey settling into a new home.
Ohav Emeth followed. Rabbi Eliezer Kaminetzky became its rabbi in 1967, the congregation relocated its centre of activity to Highland Park in 1973, purchased its present site in 1977, and completed the building at 415 Raritan Avenue in 1983. The Hungarian shul of New Brunswick had become a Highland Park institution.
The eruv and the tipping point
The decisive moment came in 1978, when Highland Park became one of the first municipalities in New Jersey to establish an eruv, the symbolic boundary that allows observant Jews to carry objects and push strollers outdoors on the Sabbath. The eruv changed who could live a full Sabbath life in the borough, and it changed who chose to move there.
Once the eruv was in place, the community began to compound. Synagogues multiplied. Day schools opened. A young family in Brooklyn or Queens looking for an affordable, observant, walkable town with good schools and a Rutgers campus across the river found one ready-made. The Highland Park and Edison observant community grew together, sharing an eruv, a mikvah and a roster of shuls, much as the better-known northern New Jersey hub of the Jews in Teaneck had done a generation earlier.
The pattern echoed across the state, from the older Conservative roots of the Jews in Cherry Hill in the south to the suburban growth of Jewish Livingston in the north, but Highland Park’s particular density and its tie to Rutgers gave it a character all its own.
A community built to walk
By the early twenty-first century, estimates placed the broader Highland Park and Edison Jewish population near 9,000, with around half of Highland Park’s Jews Orthodox and well over a thousand Sabbath-observant families. The borough now counts roughly nine synagogues, including a Sephardic one, alongside yeshiva day schools, kosher shops and a full web of community organisations.
The institutions that hold it together are the unglamorous ones: Bikur Cholim to help the sick, Hatzolah for emergencies, Tomchei Shabbos to feed families in need, Chaveirim for roadside help. Together they describe a community that is small enough to know its neighbours and organised enough to care for them.
The Landmarks
Congregation Ohav Emeth, 415 Raritan Avenue. Founded among New Brunswick’s Hungarian Jews in 1918 and rebuilt in Highland Park in 1983, Ohav Emeth sits near the geographic centre of the observant community. Its membership deliberately spans the range of halacha-committed Jews, holding to an ethic of achdut, unity across differences.
Congregation Etz Ahaim Sephardic, 230 Denison Street. The oldest Sephardic congregation in New Jersey, founded by immigrants from Salonika, Turkey and the Balkans and settled in Highland Park since 1962. Its mid-century building carries stained glass depicting the Jewish holidays and the Twelve Tribes, a Ladino-rooted thread woven into an Ashkenazi-majority town.
Congregation Ohr Torah, near the Highland Park and Edison line. One of the cluster of Orthodox shuls that grew up after the eruv, Ohr Torah is part of the dense weave of minyanim that lets residents find a service within a short walk almost any hour of the day.
Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva, 2 Harrison Street, Edison. Founded in 1945 as Moriah Yeshiva Academy by Rabbi Pesach Raymon, this co-educational Orthodox day school serves children from the earliest grades through eighth, one of the schools that made Highland Park viable for young observant families.
Glatt 27, 1177 Raritan Avenue. A glatt kosher butcher, grocer and caterer named for the route that runs through town, the kind of shop that makes a Friday food run a fifteen-minute errand rather than a long drive to another county.
Jerusalem Pizza, on Raritan Avenue. A vegetarian kosher institution of pizza and falafel that has anchored the avenue for years, closing and reopening over time but remaining a fixture of the strip where families gather after school and after shul.
The Eva and Arie Halpern Hillel House, 70 College Avenue, New Brunswick. Across the river on the Rutgers campus, the largest Hillel building in America opened in 2017, named for two Holocaust survivors and funded by their children. Many of its Orthodox students live and eat in Highland Park, binding town and university together.
Where They Came From
The deepest roots run to Hungary and Eastern Europe, carried by the immigrants who built Ohav Emeth and the early New Brunswick shuls. The name Anshe Ungarn, of the Hungarians, is a fossil of that first migration preserved in a synagogue’s founding charter.
A second, distinct strand is Sephardic, from Salonika, Turkey and the wider Balkans, the families who founded Etz Ahaim and brought Ladino prayers and Mediterranean custom to central New Jersey. They remain the minority thread, but a continuous one, nearly a century old.
The modern wave is different. Since the eruv of 1978, the largest stream of newcomers has come not from abroad but from the Orthodox neighbourhoods of New York City, families leaving the crowded blocks of the Jews in Borough Park and elsewhere in Brooklyn and Queens for a more affordable, walkable town with strong day schools. In a sense it is the same restless search that once carried immigrants off the boats and onto the Lower East Side, only redirected across the Hudson and down the Turnpike. That internal migration, more than any single homeland, explains what Highland Park is today.
Highland Park Today
Walk Raritan Avenue on an ordinary weekday and you see a normal small-town main street: pharmacies, coffee, a public library. Walk it on a Friday afternoon and the rhythm changes, the kosher shops busy, the foot traffic heavy, the whole town leaning toward sundown.
It is not a wealthy enclave in the manner of some suburbs. The appeal is practical and communal rather than showy: affordable homes, a complete observant infrastructure within walking distance, a university next door, and schools that draw families who could live anywhere but choose density and community instead.
The borough also remains genuinely mixed. Highland Park has long been a politically progressive, diverse town, and the Orthodox community lives alongside Reform and Conservative Jews, immigrants from many countries, students and longtime non-Jewish neighbours. The eruv poles and the public murals share the same streets. That is the quiet achievement of Highland Park: an intensely observant community that has made its home not by separating, but by walking the same avenue as everyone else.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this the same as Highland Park, Illinois?
No. This article is about the Jews in Highland Park, New Jersey, a borough in Middlesex County across the river from New Brunswick. It is a different place from the affluent North Shore suburb covered in our piece on the Jews in Highland Park, Illinois, which sits near Chicago and has a very different history.
Why is Highland Park, New Jersey so popular with Orthodox Jews?
The Jews in Highland Park, New Jersey benefit from a rare combination: a compact, walkable borough with an eruv established in 1978, roughly nine synagogues, kosher shops along Raritan Avenue, yeshiva day schools, and relatively affordable housing. For families who do not drive on the Sabbath, everything sits within walking distance.
What is the eruv and why does it matter here?
An eruv is a symbolic boundary that allows observant Jews to carry objects and push strollers outdoors on the Sabbath. Highland Park established one of New Jersey’s first eruvin in 1978, and it was the tipping point that turned the borough into a magnet for Sabbath-observant families.
Which synagogues anchor the community?
Long-standing congregations include Ohav Emeth at 415 Raritan Avenue, founded among New Brunswick’s Hungarian Jews in 1918, and Etz Ahaim at 230 Denison Street, the oldest Sephardic congregation in New Jersey. They are joined by Congregation Ohr Torah and a cluster of other Orthodox shuls across Highland Park and neighbouring Edison.
How is the community connected to Rutgers University?
Rutgers sits just across the Raritan River in New Brunswick, and many Orthodox students live and eat in Highland Park. The Eva and Arie Halpern Hillel House, the largest Hillel building in America, opened on College Avenue in 2017 and links campus Jewish life with the town.
Is Highland Park only an Orthodox community?
No. While roughly half of Highland Park’s Jews are Orthodox, the borough is diverse and politically progressive, home to Reform and Conservative Jews, families from many backgrounds, and a large non-Jewish population. The observant community lives integrated into a mixed small town rather than apart from it.
If your family’s story passed through Highland Park, or any of the places Jews have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the Hungarian shuls of New Brunswick and the Sephardic families of Salonika, to the eruv poles along Raritan Avenue, to wherever you are now.