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In the 1870’s when Jews first came to Hoboken, it was a city of emigrants. While the native born Americans still owned most of the property the population of 50,000 was principally German with significant numbers of Irish and Italian people. The emigrants  worked in the shipyards, the rail yards and the manufacturing large and small that sprang up in the one and a half city square mile city on the banks of the Hudson and New York Harbor.

The first Jews in Hoboken came from Germany with a short stop in Manhattan.  The 1880 census reveals much about them. Husbands and wives list themselves as being born in Germany, their older children being born in New York, very young children born in New Jersey. They may have spoken Yiddish at home and with each other, but on the census they record their language as German. These first Jewish settlers in the town, like those who came later, were merchants, sales people, dealers, metals workers, agents, bookkeepers. Using the ages and place of  birth of the children, the first Jewish settlers were in New Jersey by 1870.

The closest other Jewish communities, apart from those a ferry ride away in Manhattan, were in Jersey City right on the bluff above Hoboken and those in living in Newark. The closest kosher butcher in New Jersey was Isaac Cohen in Newark.  In my own family, Kashrut became eating kosher cuts of beef, chickens salted at home and separating milch from fliessig.