Ahavos Zedeck exterior (front)
The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
Hazelwood and Glenwood are located in a bend of the Monongahela River, several miles east of downtown Pittsburgh. The area was rural farmland until the early 19th century, when a newly built plank road established a connection with the current downtown area at the forks of the Ohio River. The construction of railroad lines in the early 1860s brought about industrial expansion in Hazelwood, most notably a Jones & Laughlin steel mill. The city of Pittsburgh annexed the area in 1869.[1]“An atlas of the Hazelwood and Glen Hazel Heights neighborhoods of Pittsburgh,” Pittsburgh Neighborhood Alliance, 1977 (online—Historic Pittsburgh).
With the arrival of various immigrant groups to Hazelwood and Glenwood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a small Jewish population emerged. It was initially focused around the intersection of Vespucius Street ad Second Avenue in Glenwood. This group chartered Congregation Ahavos Zedeck of Glenwood in 1910. Names listed on the charter include David Benovitz, A. Cartoff, M. Katz, N. Neuman, S. Saulkovitz, Joe Schwiner (Schwimer), M. Ungar, I. Weinberger, M. Weinberger, H. E. Weiss, and J. Weiss. As the local Jewish population grew, it expanded west into neighborhood Hazelwood.
Ahavos Zedeck rented meeting places throughout the neighborhood until the late 1920s, when it finally raised sufficient funds to establish a synagogue. It dedicated a two-story brick building at 200 Glen Caladh St. in 1928. The synagogue also became home to a community religious school and a Sisterhood. As the congregation worked to build its synagogue, it also deliberated over the establishment of a congregational cemetery, eventually acquiring a portion of the cemetery of Homestead Hebrew Congregation.
With the development of Jewish communities in nearby Squirrel Hill and Greenfield in the 1920s, and later in the suburban South Hills in the 1950s, the Jewish population of Hazelwood and Glenwood began to decline. Ahavos Zedeck increasingly struggled to convene enough people for religious services and sold its building in the mid-1950s.[2]“Shifts in Jewish Children Population: 1924-1958” (online).
Families associated with the Jewish community of Hazelwood include Balsam, Bluestone, Bloch, Cartoff, Deutsch, Eckart, Eisenberg, Feldman, Friedman, Goldstein, Greenstein, Haffner, Harris, Herskovitz, Jacobs, Kalson, Kartub, Katz, Kaufman, Klein, Lebovitz, Levin, Levine, Marcus, Midler, Moss, Neuman, Newman, Nudelman, Perer, Price, Rosenthal, Rosenbloom, Rossen, Rudin, Salz, Sanford, Saulkovitz, Schwartz, Schwimer, Simon, Spiegel, Spiegelman, Steinberg, Ungar, Weinberger, Weiss, Wittlin, and Yarchever.
