Kiev-Tcherkass Beneficial Association | Photo: Rachel Hildebrandt
The Kiev-Tcherkass Beneficial Association at Sixth and McClellan Streets, one of the few remnants of what was once one of the largest and most densely populated Jewish communities in America, is for sale and faces an uncertain future, with some of its windows boarded up and others open to the elements.
What remains of Philadelphia’s Yiddish-speaking “Jewish Quarter,” with a street life as rich and self-sustaining as the better understood Lower East Side in New York, are concentrated along this stretch of Sixth Street bounded by Tasker Street and Oregon Avenue. Like Kiev-Tcherkass, the other Jewish community buildings that adorn this stretch, including large purpose-built synagogues, row house shuls, and community centers, are barely distinguishable from the rest of the area’s building stock. Only subtle Hebrew signage and inconspicuous Judaic symbols set them apart.
Many of the synagogues and shuls, particularly those were not demolished upon closure, have been adapted to accommodate congregations of other faiths or even other uses. For instance, Adath Shalom now houses Preah Buddha Rangsey Temple, the city’s largest Buddhist temple, and Atereth Israel now contains apartments. The civic buildings have not fared as well. A victim of long-term neglect, the Kiev-Tcherkass Beneficial Association is vacant and unsecured. A victim of downsizing, the Stiffel Senior Center is closed and for sale.
7th St. between Wolf and Ritner looking north, 1959 | City of Philadelphia Department of Records
Kiev-Tcherkass was founded in 1904 by a group of immigrants from northern Ukraine. The association, a fairly typical landsmanschaften, helped immigrants from the same area connect to relatives, locate housing, and secure jobs. It also offered health and death benefits comparable to those being issued by formal insurance companies. After 25 years of operation, the association evolved into a distinct congregation. Very few buildings of this kind survive.
The Stiffel Senior Center, located at the southeast corner of Marshall and Porters Streets, opened in 1928. Originally Jewish Education Center No. 2, it provided free Hebrew classes and recreational activities. In the late 1960s, the center began to tailor its programming to elderly individuals. Although it remained vital to its constantly changing community, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia closed the facility in July 2011, citing unmanageable operation and maintenance costs.
Stiffel Senior Center, Marshall and Porter Sts. | Photo: Rachel Hildebrandt
Beginning about 1881, tens of thousands of Jewish peasants fleeing czarist pogroms in southern Russia and the Pale of Settlement migrated to South Philadelphia between South and Catherine Streets. (A much more established and assimilated German Jewish community had existed in Philadelphia since the mid-19th century.) A second wave of Jewish immigrants from northern Ukraine arrived before World War I, pushing the center of Jewish South Philly below Snyder Avenue. The new immigrants built row house shuls, larger synagogues, cigar and textile factories, theaters, restaurants, socialist and anarchist libraries, and civic buildings, and they formed labor organizations, mutual aid societies, and orphan asylums. The community endured into the 1980s.
Despite the fact that these sites relay a key chapter of the city’s rich cultural history–the chapter in which South Philadelphia was predominantly Jewish–they are unacknowledged by Philadelphia’s Jewish community. According to Rakhmiel Peltz, director of the Judaic studies program at Drexel University, Philadelphia’s organized Jewish community, unlike its counterparts in other cities, is out of touch with its more recent history. “In general, the Jewish community doesn’t know that it’s connected to South Philadelphia.”
Nor is the Jewish experience often included in the narrative of South Philly, one of America’s great polyglots we’ve simplified into a giant Little Italy.
The sites have evaded the preservation community as well, (although the Stiffel Center did receive some attention when it was placed on the Preservation Alliance’s 2011 Endangered Properties List). Neither of these two threatened properties has been nominated to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, which would nominally protected from demolition. As properties with large footprints on the periphery of an urban core in transition, they are especially vulnerable to being torn down to make way for new development. A third civic building, the Downtown Jewish Orphanage at Ninth and Shunk, met this very fate.
I would love to see the senior center reused into something else rather than demolished. That building is truly beautiful.
Fascinating. My father’s family’s first place in Philadelphia was just a few blocks south of here, and now I understand why — they were from the Cherkasy oblast.
The irony is that an active young Jewish population is now starting to move back into these neighborhoods.
Thank you for bringing attention both the institutions and architecture of Jewish South Philadelphia. At least some of the former synagogue buildings have been saved by re-purposing: the Neziner synagogue on South Second Street has become condominiums and the old synagogue at 6th and Ritner, along with the former Catholic Church across the street, now serve the growing Cambodian community as Preah Buddha Rangsey Temple & Khmer Buddhist Humanitarian Association.
I grew up at 7th and Ritner from 1959 to 2002…the church across from Adath Shalom at Marshall and Porter was originally Bnai Samuel, an Orthodox shul before it became Adath Shalom (Conservative) in the 1950s. The church across the street was St Andrews Lutheran Church and then a Pentecostal church. It was never a Catholic church.
CORRECTION: I misspoke! Adath Shalom was once Bnai Samuel. The church across the street was first St Andrew’s Lutheran, then a Pentecostal church.
Such is the natural order of things. I recall as a kid in the early 1950’s attending a get together in Kensington of a group, Alliance of American Lithuanian Jews. It was obvious that our parents and their vintage would have been so pleased if we kids more actively participated. But it was as apparent, with our limited knowledge of Yiddish and other old country màrkers that we were already too Americanized and their group would have a quiet demise.
Very interesting. I didn’t know about the Jewish history in Philadelphia, however I did know that some of my family had lived there in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
South Philly is still the first stop for new immigrants to this country. Now they come from southeast Asia and Latin America. Hopefully these residents will be able to breathe life into these landmarks.
this Sunday. Sept 16th you can still experience Jewish life in South Philly at the “little shul” 2015 s. 4th st. Where they will celebrate the New year in the oldest Orthodox Synagogue in South Philly founded in 1909. Check out their web site. http://www.little shul.org.
Wow! I didn’t know that Philly once had a place in Jewish history.
Sure did for many many years always all of 7th street was owned by Jews and more also,
Many synogogues were here also.
Years ago I was working at Neighborhood Center around 4th and Bainbridge. It had been started to help Jewish immigrants. You would be interested in the history of the place which is a dissertation at Penn by Julian Griefer.
This is all new to me and I really appreciate learning about the early days in Philly. Maybe you would like to speak to the sons and daughters of holocaust survivors of Philadelphia one day?
In the late 30s early 40s, I was an after school student at JEC2. I can still sing “JEC2, we are for you….” I know my parents paid a few dollars. We students were required to bring a dime a week. The coins went to Israel to plant trees. We lived 2447 S 8th across from Shaari Ely, Kramers and Nats luncheonettes. My parents helped organize the Young Peoples Congregation. I sang in its Chazanim choir. We shopped by d’zipita. I went to Fell, Thomas and Central High. We lived through the Depression. We kids knew we were poor.
This is typical of Jewish communities everywhere. Often, we would rather see our precious landmarks neglected or destroyed than have them hanging around reminding us of when we were poor.
The fate of the Stiffel is woefully symbolic of just how out of touch the Federation is. They cater to the big machers in our community (including the rich, pro-Trump conservatives, and the Aipac crowd) and everyone else is marginalized or excluded. This isn’t the kind of thing that interests these people.