Drive the length of Pleasant Valley Way on a Friday afternoon and you can read the whole story of the Jews in West Orange in a single mile. A kosher butcher, a bakery, a Conservative synagogue, the largest Orthodox shul in Essex County, and a Jewish day school all sit within a few minutes of one another, and by sundown the sidewalks fill with families walking to services in their good coats.
The Place
West Orange is a township of roughly 48,000 people in Essex County, about four miles northwest of Newark. It was set off from Orange in 1863, and rises in green terraces up the First and Second Watchung mountains, which is why so much of it feels less like a commuter suburb and more like a town built into a hillside.
It carries an unusual amount of American history for its size. Thomas Edison lived and worked here for more than forty years, and Llewellyn Park, laid out in 1857, is generally counted as the first planned residential suburb in the country.
For Jewish families arriving from Newark in the postwar decades, West Orange offered exactly what they were looking for: space, good schools, and a short enough drive that the old neighbourhood still felt close.
How It Became Jewish
The Jewish story of West Orange does not begin in West Orange at all. It begins in Newark, four miles downhill, in a community that was once one of the largest and most organised in the Northeast.
The Newark years
By the early twentieth century Newark held a dense Jewish world of synagogues, Hebrew schools, delicatessens, and benevolent societies, concentrated in the Third Ward and later in the leafy Weequahic section to the south. It was the Newark of Philip Roth’s novels, a place where a Jewish child could walk to shul, to school, and to a dozen relatives without crossing out of the neighbourhood, much like the dense streets of the Jews in Borough Park, Brooklyn.
The institutions that anchor West Orange today were born in that city. The YM-YWHA, the forerunner of today’s Jewish Community Center, opened in Newark in 1877. The Orthodox congregation now known as AABJ&D traces one of its roots to Ahawas Achim Anshe Warshaw, founded by immigrants in Newark in 1898.
The move uphill
The exodus to the suburbs began in earnest after the Second World War. Families were pulled by larger houses and yards and pushed by a changing city, and the movement accelerated sharply after the Newark unrest of 1967. Within a generation the Jewish centre of gravity had shifted out of the city and up into the Oranges, Livingston, and the towns beyond.
The institutions followed their members. In 1967 the JCC opened its new home on Northfield Avenue in West Orange, the building generations of families would simply call the Y, and later the J. The three great Newark temples, B’nai Abraham, Oheb Shalom, and B’nai Jeshurun, all resettled in the Essex County suburbs, where they continue to this day.
An Orthodox town takes shape
West Orange in particular became a magnet for Modern Orthodox families, drawn by the synagogues clustered along Pleasant Valley Way and by the chance to walk to shul on Shabbat. B’nai David, the first Orthodox synagogue in West Orange, was founded in 1961. In 1966 it merged with the old Newark congregation Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob, and the combined community bought its building on Pleasant Valley Way for a sanctuary and a Talmud Torah.
That single decision, to plant an Orthodox shul on Pleasant Valley Way, shaped the geography of Jewish West Orange for the next half-century. Day schools, kosher shops, and more synagogues gathered around it, and the families who needed to live within walking distance bought the houses in between.
The suburb matures
By the 1970s and 1980s West Orange had its own self-sustaining Jewish life: a Conservative congregation with its own campus, a Solomon Schechter day school, a kosher butcher and bakery, and the JCC anchoring the whole. The community was no longer Newark in exile. It had become a place in its own right, and one that kept growing even as other suburban Jewish populations levelled off.
That growth has been most visible at the Orthodox end. While much of American Jewish suburbia has aged and thinned, West Orange has continued to attract young observant families, and the synagogues along Pleasant Valley Way have expanded to meet them.
The Landmarks
Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC MetroWest, 760 Northfield Avenue. The descendant of the Newark Y founded in 1877, the JCC moved to West Orange in 1967 and has been the secular heart of the community ever since. Nearly 2,000 people a day pass through for its preschool, fitness centre, theatre, and camps, and for many non-observant families it is the institution that keeps them connected.
Congregation Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob and David, 700 Pleasant Valley Way. Known to everyone as AABJ&D, this is the largest Orthodox synagogue in Essex County, a Modern Orthodox congregation with multiple daily Ashkenazic and Sephardic minyanim. Its roots run back to an 1898 Newark immigrant shul, and its arrival on Pleasant Valley Way in 1966 set the pattern for the whole street.
B’nai Shalom, 300 Pleasant Valley Way. A contemporary Conservative congregation on the Morris and Miriam Hammer Campus, B’nai Shalom offers egalitarian Shabbat and holiday services followed by a kiddush lunch, along with daily minyanim and a religious school. It gives the street a second, non-Orthodox centre of gravity.
Golda Och Academy, 1418 Pleasant Valley Way. Founded in 1965 as the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, with eighteen children in kindergarten and first grade, the school grew into a Pre-K through 12 academy across two West Orange campuses. It was renamed Golda Och Academy in 2011 after a major gift from the Och family, and remains one of the region’s flagship Jewish schools.
Pleasantdale Kosher Meat & Poultry, 470 Pleasant Valley Way. The butcher counter that makes a Jewish neighbourhood a Jewish neighbourhood. Like the other kosher businesses on the street, it operates under the supervision of the Vaad HaRabonim of MetroWest, the rabbinical body that certifies the area’s kosher food.
West Orange Bake Shop, 480 Pleasant Valley Way. A few doors from the butcher, the kosher bakery turns out challah and pastries that mark the rhythm of the week, busiest on Thursday and Friday as families stock up before Shabbat. The clustering is deliberate: a single short walk does the whole shopping list.
Thomas Edison National Historical Park, 211 Main Street. Not a Jewish landmark, but the place that put West Orange on the map long before the synagogues arrived. Edison’s 1887 laboratory complex and his home, Glenmont, in Llewellyn Park, are the reason the town’s name is known far beyond Essex County, and they sit a short distance from the Jewish quarter.
Where They Came From
Unlike many American Jewish suburbs, West Orange was not settled directly from the Lower East Side or from Eastern Europe. Its families came uphill from Newark, and Newark itself had been built by waves of immigrants from the Russian Empire, Poland, Galicia, and Lithuania who arrived between the 1880s and the 1920s.
That is why so many of the local institutions carry place-names from the old world embedded in their histories: Anshe Warshaw, the people of Warsaw; Anshe Lemberg, the people of Lemberg, the city now called Lviv. The congregations were founded by landsmen who had worshipped together, or whose parents had, in the same corner of Europe.
The more recent arrivals follow a different map. The Orthodox families moving to West Orange today often come from Manhattan, from other New Jersey towns, or from established communities like the Jews in Teaneck, New Jersey, drawn by housing, schools, and the walkable cluster of shuls.
West Orange Today
Today West Orange sits within Greater MetroWest, the federation region whose 2020 community study found that the largest single share of its Jewish households, around 38 percent, lived in Essex County. West Orange is one of the densest pieces of that map, and one of the few suburban Jewish populations in the Northeast that is clearly growing rather than ageing. The federation’s 2020 community study documents that shift in detail.
The town is genuinely mixed, with large Italian-American and African-American communities and a long civic tradition of diversity, and the Jewish presence is concentrated rather than total. But in the streets around Pleasant Valley Way the texture is unmistakable: families walking to shul, children in day-school uniforms, the bakery line on a Friday morning.
West Orange also sits in conversation with its neighbours. It shares schools, simchas, and shopping with the Jews in Livingston, New Jersey, just to the west, and with the older, more established community of the Jews in Short Hills, New Jersey, a short drive south. Together these Essex County towns form a continuous Jewish world that began, four miles downhill, in Newark.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is West Orange, New Jersey a Jewish town?
West Orange is a diverse township with significant Italian-American and African-American communities, but it has a large and growing Jewish population concentrated around Pleasant Valley Way. The Jews in West Orange support several synagogues, a Jewish day school, kosher shops, and one of the region’s major Jewish community centres.
Why did so many Jews move from Newark to West Orange?
The Jews in West Orange largely descend from the great Jewish community of Newark, which moved to the suburbs after the Second World War, drawn by larger homes and better schools and pushed by the city’s changes. The movement accelerated after the Newark unrest of 1967, and West Orange, just uphill, was a natural destination.
What synagogues are in West Orange?
The best known are Congregation AABJ&D at 700 Pleasant Valley Way, the largest Orthodox synagogue in Essex County, and B’nai Shalom at 300 Pleasant Valley Way, a contemporary Conservative congregation. Several other minyanim and congregations serve the surrounding Modern Orthodox community.
Is there kosher food in West Orange?
Yes. Pleasant Valley Way is home to a kosher butcher, a kosher bakery, and several kosher takeout and dining options, supervised by the Vaad HaRabonim of MetroWest. The cluster of shops makes the street the practical centre of observant Jewish life in the town.
What is Golda Och Academy?
Golda Och Academy is a Jewish day school at 1418 Pleasant Valley Way in West Orange, serving students from Pre-K through 12th grade. It was founded in 1965 as the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union and renamed in 2011 following a major gift from the Och family.
How does West Orange compare to Livingston and Short Hills?
All three Essex County towns drew their Jewish populations from Newark and remain closely connected, but each has its own character. West Orange has the most visible Modern Orthodox cluster of the three, while Livingston and Short Hills are known for their larger, more suburban Conservative and Reform communities, and Bergen County towns like the Jews in Fair Lawn, New Jersey developed along their own lines.
If your family’s story passed through West Orange, or any of the places Jews have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a Newark shul founded by the people of Warsaw, to a synagogue on Pleasant Valley Way, to wherever you are now.