First Minyan and Synagogue
The first religious service in Belleville was held at the Jewish workers rooming house owned by Moses and Tamara Tobe in 1905. This meeting was the basis for the formation of the Sons of Jacob Congregation, which was initially an informal group of Orthodox Jews in Belleville who met in each others homes to worship together. The first president of the congregation was Abraham Albert, a Russian Jew who came to Belleville in 1914 and started a furniture store in Trenton with his wife Lilly.
During the years after the First World War, several families such as the Alberts, Gitelmans and Merkers, established a minyan in Trenton. They obtained a Torah and held their services on the second floor of the Courier Advocate, the local newspaper office.
As the Belleville community grew in size, it became impractical to gather in the homes of the congregation members and so they rented the Orange Hall on Front Street for Friday night Shabbat services and the High Holidays. In 1927, a house was purchased at 122 Pinnacle Street by the Sons of Jacob Synagogue. The building was fully converted in 1929 and served the Jewish population of Belleville, Trenton and Picton. The first Torah was presented to the congregation by Julius Samuels, an early settler in Belleville who ran a junkyard on Brock Street. The official opening and transfer of the Torah to the Ark in the shul on Pinnacle Street was a grand communal affair, accompanied by a parade of decorated automobiles and the musical accompaniment of the Salvation Army Band. The presence of the band is cited as an early indication of the strong goodwill between congregations in the Belleville interfaith community at large.
By 1942, Belleville’s Sons of Jacob Congregation was listed as having 98 members in a city-wide religious survey, and the community was bolstered by the presence of young Jewish servicemen training for the RCAF at the base in Trenton. The Pinnacle Street synagogue served the Sons of Jacob Congregation until 1956, when a new synagogue was built on Victoria Avenue.
