Monas and Peshe Davidson
The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
The Polish immigrants Hirsch “Harry” Zvi (1881-1951) and Anna Charash Davidson (1883-1936) owned the H. Z. Davidson Grocery at 1806 Centre Avenue in the Hill District from 1911 until about 1940. The store originally sold dairy goods and later added a deli counter. The couple rented the building and lived above the shop with their four children, Minnie, Ruth, Dorothy and Isadore, and Hirsch’s mother, Peshe.
Their son, Isadore, died as a teenager in 1924. Anna Davidson died in 1936, after a costly illness. Within several years, the family lost its lease and moved to the East End, where H. Z. Davidson married Fannie Goodman of Coraopolis and entered another line of business. For a time, he was a gabbai (sexton) at Congregation Oher Chodesh, known at the time as the Roberts Street Shul or the Romanian Shul. (The synagogue is now located in Squirrel Hill and called Congregation New Light.) Fannie Davidson was president of the American Ladies Aid Society, previously known as the Romanian Ladies Aid Society.
Minnie Davidson married Arthur Abelson. Ruth Davidson married Corporal Jack Hirshman. Dorothy Davidson married Sam Schusterman. Dorothy Davidson Schusterman was the chief of nutrition services at the Cleveland Department of Public Health.
