Stand on the bluffs of Riverdale on a Friday afternoon, watch the light fall across the Hudson and the Palisades beyond, and you can hear the neighbourhood begin to quiet. Shops along Johnson Avenue draw their shutters. Families carry challah home from the bakery. The Jews in Riverdale have made this leafy corner of the northwest Bronx one of the most enduring centres of Jewish life in New York City, the last stronghold of a borough that was once half Jewish.
The Place
Riverdale sits in the northwestern crown of the Bronx, a landscape of steep bluffs, winding roads and commanding river vistas bounded by the Hudson to the west and the Henry Hudson Parkway to the east. The land was home to the Lenape, then to Dutch and British farms, before five wealthy businessmen began developing it in 1852 as one of New York’s first railroad suburbs.
By the late nineteenth century, grand estates lined the bluffs. Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt lived along the river, and a twenty-room house in the private enclave of Fieldston, built in 1907, served as John F. Kennedy’s childhood home.
The Riverdale Historic District was designated in 1990, preserving the nineteenth-century estates and early twentieth-century homes that still define the area. It remains one of the Bronx’s most affluent neighbourhoods, quieter and greener than the borough below it, and a short distance from the Italian-rooted Westchester suburb of New Rochelle.
How It Became Jewish
Riverdale’s Jewish story is, in part, the story of a borough emptying out. To understand why this hilltop neighbourhood became a refuge, you have to understand what it was a refuge from.
The Jewish Borough
For the first half of the twentieth century, the Bronx was the Jewish borough. At its peak around 1930, the Bronx was roughly 49 per cent Jewish. The Grand Concourse, with its Art Deco apartment houses, was a boulevard of Jewish family life, and the South Bronx held hundreds of synagogues, delis, bakeries and Hebrew schools.
Jews had arrived from the Lower East Side and from Eastern Europe, climbing out of the tenements into the airier apartments of a borough that promised light, parks and a measure of arrival. For a generation, the Bronx delivered exactly that.
The Great Departure
The postwar decades unwound it. Between 1950 and 1960 the population of the South Bronx shifted dramatically, and upwardly mobile Jewish families, like other white ethnic groups, left for the suburbs in search of backyards and better schools. Redlining starved neighbourhoods of reinvestment, and the Cross-Bronx Expressway, completed in 1963, tore through settled communities and pushed thousands from their homes.
By the early 2000s the decline was stark. In the decade after 1991, the Bronx lost an estimated 45 per cent of its Jewish population. The synagogues of the Grand Concourse closed or changed hands. The delis vanished one by one.
Riverdale was the exception. Sitting on high ground at the borough’s edge, with its own commuter rail link and its reputation for safety and good schools, it held onto its Jewish families when the rest of the Bronx did not. It became the place Jewish life retreated to rather than fled from, much as the Jewish communities of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights in Ohio anchored their region’s Jewish life as older inner-city districts changed.
Building Institutions on the Hill
The community that took root in Riverdale built quickly and built to last. The Riverdale YM-YWHA, the Riverdale Y, traces its founding to 1909, a branch of the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Associations created to serve Jewish immigrants. It remains a cornerstone of neighbourhood life at 5625 Arlington Avenue.
The synagogues followed in waves. The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, established in 1924 and relocated to the neighbourhood in 1971, grew into one of American Modern Orthodoxy’s most influential congregations. Riverdale Temple, a Reform congregation, was founded in 1947. The mid-1950s brought a cluster of major institutions: the Riverdale Jewish Center and the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale were both established in 1954.
Then came the schools. In 1968 three Jewish day schools, Salanter Yeshiva, Akiba Hebrew Academy and the Riverdale Hebrew Day School, merged, adopting the name SAR Academy and moving into a new building in 1974 on the former estate of the conductor Arturo Toscanini. SAR became, and remains, one of the most prominent Modern Orthodox day schools in the country.
Newcomers and Renewal
As the broader Bronx hollowed out, Riverdale also became a landing place for new Jewish arrivals. Soviet Jews who began emigrating in the 1970s settled most heavily in Brooklyn and Queens, but as other Jews left the Bronx, Russian-speaking families moved into Riverdale, and local congregations worked to absorb them, in some cases furnishing apartments and translating sermons for newcomers who spoke little English.
The result was a community continually replenished from within and from abroad: Orthodox, Conservative and Reform, native New Yorkers and immigrants, all sharing a few square miles of hilltop.
The Landmarks
Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, 3700 Henry Hudson Parkway. Known as the Bayit, this Modern Orthodox synagogue is among the most influential in American Judaism. Rabbi Avi Weiss led it from 1973 to 2015, pioneering expanded religious roles for women and training a generation of young rabbis who went on to lead congregations of their own.
Riverdale Jewish Center, 3700 Independence Avenue. Founded in 1954 by the Communal Services Division of Yeshiva University, this Modern Orthodox congregation has kept close ties to that institution ever since. It was one of the targets named in a 2009 bombing plot against Riverdale’s Jewish sites, after which New York State provided funds to harden security.
Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale, on Independence Avenue. CSAIR, founded in 1954, is an egalitarian Conservative congregation whose sanctuary, completed in 1962, was designed by the architect Percival Goodman. On the eve of Yom Kippur in 2000 it was firebombed, and the attack led to the first prosecution under New York’s then-new Hate Crimes Act.
Riverdale Temple, 4545 Independence Avenue. The neighbourhood’s Reform congregation, founded in 1947, was the other intended target of the foiled 2009 plot. Like the Jewish Center, it received state homeland-security funding afterward to install alarms and surveillance.
SAR Academy, Riverdale. Built on the former Toscanini estate and opened in its current building in 1974, SAR is a coeducational Modern Orthodox day school. Its building won the Albert S. Bard Award in 1975, and together with the affiliated SAR High School at 503 West 259th Street it anchors the neighbourhood’s Jewish educational life.
Liebman’s Deli, 552 West 235th Street. Opened in 1953, Liebman’s is the last kosher deli standing in a borough that once held hundreds. Owner Yuval Dekel, a former heavy-metal drummer, now turns out house-made pastrami and matzo ball soup praised by Zagat and the Michelin Guide and once filmed by Anthony Bourdain for Parts Unknown.
Skyview Shopping Center, North Riverdale. The neighbourhood’s kosher hub, Skyview gathers the Riverdale Kosher Market, a kosher pizzeria, a kosher Tex-Mex spot in Carlos and Gabby’s at 5685 Riverdale Avenue and even a kosher Dunkin’. On any weekday afternoon it functions as the community’s grocery, lunch counter and meeting place at once.
Where They Came From
The deepest roots run back to Eastern Europe. The Jews who built the Bronx came largely from the shtetls and cities of the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary, arriving through the Lower East Side before climbing northward into the Bronx’s better apartments. Riverdale’s older families are, for the most part, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that migration.
A second strand arrived from within New York itself: Jewish families moving up from the South Bronx and the Grand Concourse as those neighbourhoods changed, treating Riverdale as the next, safer rung on the same ladder their parents had climbed from Manhattan. The same pattern of upward suburban migration shaped Jewish enclaves on Long Island like the Jewish community in Lawrence and neighbouring Cedarhurst, as well as Port Washington on the North Shore.
A third strand came from the Soviet Union. The emigration waves of the 1970s and the late 1980s through the mid-1990s brought Russian-speaking Jews to New York, and while most settled in Brooklyn and Queens, a steady number found their way to Riverdale, drawn by its established synagogues and the help they offered new arrivals.
Riverdale Today
Riverdale remains the last neighbourhood in the Bronx with a robust Jewish community, home to more than 20,000 Jews by recent counts. In the Riverdale and Kingsbridge area, a majority of Jewish residents say being Jewish is very important to them, and synagogue membership runs close to the regional average. It is, by any measure, a serious Jewish neighbourhood.
The texture of daily life reflects that. Children walk to SAR or the area’s other day schools. Families shop at the Riverdale Kosher Market and eat at Liebman’s. The Bayit, the Jewish Center, CSAIR and Riverdale Temple draw worshippers across the denominational spectrum, and the Riverdale Y keeps its doors open to Jews and non-Jews alike.
It is not the Jewish Bronx of 1930, and it would be sentimental to pretend otherwise. The attacks on the temple and the synagogues are a reminder that even a settled community guards itself. But on a Friday evening on the hill above the Hudson, with the Palisades glowing across the water, Riverdale feels less like a remnant than like a community that simply refused to leave.
Frequently Asked Questions
How large is the Jewish community in Riverdale?
Riverdale in the northwest Bronx is home to more than 20,000 Jews, making it the largest and most enduring Jewish community in the borough. The Jews in Riverdale span the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform movements, supported by several major synagogues and day schools.
Why did Jews settle in Riverdale rather than elsewhere in the Bronx?
For decades the Bronx was the Jewish borough, peaking at roughly 49 per cent Jewish around 1930. As the South Bronx and Grand Concourse declined through the postwar decades, the Jews in Riverdale held on because the neighbourhood was affluent, green and well served by transit, becoming the place Jewish life consolidated rather than left.
What are the main synagogues in Riverdale?
The principal congregations are the Modern Orthodox Hebrew Institute of Riverdale (the Bayit) and Riverdale Jewish Center, the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale, and the Reform Riverdale Temple. They were founded between 1924 and 1954 and remain active today.
Is there kosher food available in Riverdale?
Yes. The Skyview Shopping Center in North Riverdale houses the Riverdale Kosher Market, kosher restaurants and a kosher Dunkin’. Liebman’s Deli on West 235th Street, founded in 1953, is the last standing kosher deli in the Bronx and is famous for its pastrami and matzo ball soup.
What is SAR Academy?
SAR Academy is a coeducational Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in Riverdale, formed in 1968 from the merger of three earlier schools and housed since 1974 on the former estate of conductor Arturo Toscanini. With the affiliated SAR High School, it is one of the most prominent Jewish day schools in the United States.
Have Riverdale’s Jewish institutions faced antisemitic attacks?
Yes. CSAIR was firebombed on the eve of Yom Kippur in 2000, and a 2009 plot targeted both the Riverdale Jewish Center and Riverdale Temple before it was foiled. New York State subsequently provided security funding to help the congregations protect their buildings.
If your family’s story passed through Riverdale, or any of the places Jews have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the shtetls of Eastern Europe and the apartments of the Grand Concourse, to a synagogue on the bluffs above the Hudson, to wherever you are now.