Comments, October, 2024
Trenton Jewish Historical Society
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Trenton Jewish Historical Society
YMHA - Stockton St
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Saturday night dances were fun! And
that little swim pool on the lower level.
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Lots of good memories. B’nai Brith
girls meetings. Watching baseball games etc. Fun times and no social media or cell
phones.
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YMHA - Stockton St
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45Rick Pollock, Joan Stark Foster and 43 others
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Lots
of good memories. B’nai Brith girls meetings. Watching baseball games etc. Fun
times and no social media or cell phones.
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How
did we exist.
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Scotty’s
BB days !
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Yes ,
he started that league for
6-8
year olds and then 7th and 8th grades on sat night and Sunday afternoon. He was
one in a million. You should be very proud to be his daughter.
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How
did we exist.
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Maxine Wolinsky Valunas
My Uncle Abe Finkle
The Butchers of Trenton As
I’ve talked to people about their memories of “Jewtown”, I keep hearing about
the different kinds of stores that lined Market, Broad, Union, and Lamberton
Streets. There were bakeries, grocery stores, barber shops and kosher meat
markets. Looking at the tax photos of the south section of Trenton, one thing
that strikes you is that there were similar stores in proximity to each other
that you would never see today, except maybe a Walgreen’s across the street
from a CVS. On Market Street, you can see Kohn’s and Kunis’ Bakeries were
literally right next door to each other.They each specialized in different
kinds of baked products and co-existed successfully for years. Kohn's and
Kunis's bakeries were located next to each other on Market Street. This picture
was taken for the Trenton tax records in 1958. For more photos of the area,
click here. But, maybe no trade was as overly-represented in the ward as the
Kosher Meat Market. Edith Gordon (Hayfetz) Gordon told me back in April, 2011, that
there were at least 7 butcher shops in that area and a few weeks later, the
descendants of the owners of one of the other meat markets reached out to me.
Barry Weiner, who lives in Livingston and whose father was a partner in Katzoff
and Weiner’s Meat Market which was located at 22 South Union Street, also
contacted me. Eremyi Hayfetz in front of Hayfetz Meat Market from Edith Hayfetz
Gordon And then, a couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Myron Hafetz,
whose grandfather, “David Hafetz passed on his store to his son(s) Joseph and
Frank Hafetz who were my father and uncle. Joe left the business in the 1940's
to go into the scrap metal business. Frank continued and as any of their many
customers will tell you, Frank was really an artisan. His wife Nettie continued
with the store when Frank died prematurely in 1956 or 57. Their stores were in
the Market and Union Street areas.” He went on to say that “Julius and George
Hafitz (sic) (and Edie) are the nephews (and niece) of David and their father
opened a competing store in the 30's and you can guess how that went down. In
fact, when I interviewed Edie in April, she told me how it came to be that the
Hayfetz’s wound up two doors down from the Hafetz’s. Eremyi Hayfetz came to the
United States from Russia in the 1920’s. He and his wife arrived in Trenton
with their young son, Julius. “When my Dad came to this country, he didn’t want
to work on the Sabbath and he didn’t know what to do." Edie recounted.
“And so he decided to open up the butcher store, and this place was available.
Unfortunately it was two door’s away from my Uncle’s butcher store. And they
eventually became in competition with one another.” The days were long for a
kosher butcher in Trenton in the 1930’s and 40’s. Edith recalls her father waking
up early in the morning. “My dad used to open the store around five or six
o'clock and then he would go to Kohn's bakery, after he got the orders made up
and ready to be delivered, he would go to Kohn's bakery and buy hot fresh rolls
and bring them home and we would them for breakfast.” One of her father’s
employees was a black man named Eddie. He worked at Hafitz’s for years and
“learned to speak Yiddish, and people would come into the store and he would
talk to them in Yiddish as though he were one of us.” In fact, Herm Finkle, who
lived in the area remembers, “he spoke better Yiddish than some of us Jews did.
I can still see him walking toward the slaughterhouse, chickens in each hand,
flapping away, walking down the alley to the slaughterhouse.” I asked Edie how
the City of Trenton and specifically the Broad and Market area could support 7
kosher butcher shops and she said, “while they were all I think Europeans
coming to this country and they kept kosher. And most of our customers were in
the western section, Bellevue Ave., West State, all these small streets off of
West State we had customers, Gen. Greene Avenue, I remember.” Shopping in those
days was much different than it is today. There were no supermarkets and
without the benefit of freezers, you’d buy only what you could keep. For those
who lived in different sections of the city, a trip to downtown Trenton was a
special outing. Shoppers would go from store to store, selecting their deli,
fresh produce, eggs, and meat. A shopping trip took a lot longer than it does
today and in some ways, that was a good thing. “It wasn't like you went into
our store and picked up a steak,” says Edie. “You had to wait until Dad brought
the side of beef out and cut the steak and trimmed it, and you waited. It all
took time and that's when you began talking to everybody. It was a whole
different lifestyle than what we have today, and what an interesting thing,
that it all worked.”And sometimes, you had to go to extraordinary measures to
keep your purchases fresh. Edie remembers the time when her
boyfriend/soon-to-be-husband, Arnie, came to her house for Rosh Hashanah. He
got the surprise of his life when he went upstairs to use the bathroom. “All of
a sudden he hears this swish, swish, and he couldn't imagine what this was.”
Arnie picks up the story, laughing. “Not in my wildest dreams could I imagine
what was happening. After I finished my business I got up, and lo and behold
there were two huge fish, swimming in that bathtub. And I never heard of such a
thing.” They weren’t pets, they were the next night’s gefilte fish. According
to Edie, her Mom “didn't want to buy them at the last minute because the fish
that came in first were fresher and better.” Julius Hayfetz When she was old
enough, Edie would make deliveries for her father, but while she could work for
him, there was a hard and fast rule. She couldn’t take a job working for anyone
else. “I wanted to work when I was like 15 or 16 years old. I wanted to get a
job at Dunham’s for Mother's Day or Father's Day. He wouldn't let me. Why?
Because that would show people that it looked like he wasn’t able to support
me, that I had gotten the money for myself. So he never allowed me to work,”
Edie said. “I could deliver orders, I could do all that kind of stuff, but I wasn't
able to go out and get a job until after college when I graduated.” Education
was important to the first-generation merchants who lived and worked in
“Jewtown”. Edie Hayfetz went to Temple University. “I would say 98% of the
children of the kosher butcher stores became professionals. There were
dentists, the Palat's, Dr. Palat was a dentist. I had two brothers George and
Julius and they both became physicians, our cousins, the Hafetz’s, at the
butcher store a couple doors from ours, Morris was a doctor as well.” Their
parents worked hard and it paid off. They also wanted to make sure that their
children had more opportunities than they did and saw schooling as their way
out of the neighborhood. Their dedication to the education of the next
generation may have been the biggest contributing factor to the demise of
“Jewtown”. Trenton Trivia- In his e-mail to me, Myron Hafetz mentions that not
only were his father and uncle responsible for their business, but “Frank and
Joe are responsible for bringing Irv Weinstein to rent one their properties and
Frank moved across the street. Debbie (Hafetz) Babashack can give you more
details about the store when her mother ran it.”
http://trentonjewishproject.blogspot.com/2011_09_18_archive.html
https://trentonjewishhistsoc.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-butchers-of-trenton.html
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reactions · 1 comment · Jul 25
Arthur Finkle shared a memory.
Oct 22
Karen Carson
You were always one of my favorite professors in grad
school. Now I know you're world famous as well!
Shared with Public
Downtown 1975
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8Neil Popkin, Thomas Tighue and 6 others
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I
remember it well!
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I
hadn't moved to Trenton yet: in 1975 I was a 17 year old college sophomore in
Back Bay Boston. Ah...those were the days!
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Great
work Arthur 
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Greenwood Hoiuse
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My
dad put a beauty shop in greenwood many years ago which he donated everything.
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My
grandmother lived there for many years decades ago. She would also help out
doing volunteer work in the office. The only strange thing about it at the time
was having to share a room like skilled nursing. It really gave residents a
sense of no privacy.
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Malcolm
R Casway replied
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My
mother volunteered at Greenwood until she moved to Florida at age 91!!
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Blank’s
Pharmacy filled and delivered most of the Greenwood House prescriptions before
they moved to the new campus.
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Thanks
for posting
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Ronnie's
grandmother was at Greenwood House and lived until she was 102. Her name was
Rae Miller. Greenwood House had a pet bunny, and I would push the rabbit around
in a baby carriage so the patients could pet it.
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