Jewish Massachusetts: Blue Hill Avenue, Brookline and Newton
Massachusetts holds roughly 302,000 Jews, most of them in Greater Boston. The community's history is a story of moving, and of one street that no longer exists as it was.
Blue Hill Avenue
Jewish immigration to Boston began in earnest in the 1870s and accelerated around the turn of the century. Newcomers moved through the North and West Ends, the South End, then Roxbury, and by the 1930s clustered along roughly three miles of Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester.
What that meant in practice: you could spend Shabbos in the park, see a Yiddish play in the evening, and choose from seven Yiddish newspapers to read. Families lived in wooden three-deckers and ageing Victorians.
It did not survive the second half of the century. Antisemitism, an emerging middle class moving outward, and redlining in the late 1960s combined to empty it. Roxbury and Dorchester had been unusually integrated neighbourhoods where Jews and African Americans regularly traded buildings and land; those policies ended that arrangement too.
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Brookline, Newton, Sharon
The community reassembled to the west and south. Brookline and Newton took most of it, Sharon much of the rest, and Jewish congregations either followed their members out or consolidated down to one.
Greater Boston's Orthodox community today spans Brighton, Brookline, Cambridge, Malden, Newton and Sharon, all supporting the same day schools and yeshivas: five elementary and middle schools, four high schools. Six kosher restaurants operate in Brookline and Boston. Every shul sits within an eruv.
Two Institutions Worth Knowing
Hebrew College opened in 1927 as the Hebrew Teacher's College, with campuses in Brookline and Newton. It added the Me'ah adult learning programme in 1994 and a rabbinical school in the early 2000s.
Mayyim Hayyim in Newton opened in 2004 as a community mikveh. Traditionally a mikveh is used before marriage and monthly thereafter. Mayyim Hayyim also created ceremonies for other transitions: b'mitzvah, coming out, a birthday, recovery after a miscarriage. It is a modern reading of a very old practice.
Downtown, the New England Holocaust Memorial stands near Faneuil Hall: six glass towers for six million.
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Common Questions
How many Jews live in Massachusetts?
Roughly 302,000. The Boston-Worcester-Providence area accounts for about 298,000 of them.
What was Blue Hill Avenue?
The centre of Jewish Boston from the 1930s through the 1950s, running roughly three miles through Dorchester. It supported Yiddish theatre and seven Yiddish newspapers.
Where is Jewish Boston now?
Brookline, Newton and Sharon principally, with Orthodox communities also in Brighton, Cambridge and Malden.
What is Mayyim Hayyim?
A community mikveh in Newton, opened 2004, which extended the tradition of ritual immersion to life transitions beyond the classical ones.
From the MoT Shop
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