The Roger Williams National Memorial, at 282 North Main St., is home to a spring that was donated to the city of Providence by Judge J. Jerome Hahn in 1932- in memory of his father, Isaac Hahn (1845-1909), a businessman and textile manufacturer,  who became the first Jewish resident of Providence to be elected to public office.   Judge Hahn believed that the spring was a historic and almost sacred place, as it was there that Roger Williams and his followers first found fresh water in the settlement that would become Providence.   Isaac Hahn’s parents came to the United States from Germany in the mid-19th century and made their home in New York City, where Isaac was born and raised. They later moved upstate, where Isaac married Rose Stern. In 1870, Isaac brought his wife and young son to establish a new life for their growing family in Providence. Isaac owned a dry goods store on Westminster Street, and later invested in  banking, factories and real estate. In 1884, he became the first Jewish state representative from Providence in the Rhode Island General Assembly, in which he served one term. Isaac was also deeply involved in the Jewish community, helping to build a new  synagogue for the Congregation of the Sons of Israel and David (founded in 1854, this congregation survives today as Temple Beth-El).

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Solomon Treital is believed to be the first Jew to settle in Woonsocket. This scholarly and deeply religious man arrived in 1866, and soon established himself as a clothier in the downtown Market Square.

Treital’s brother, Max, arrived two years later, and a few more Jews followed, but it wasn’t until the big migration of Europeans to American shores in the 1880s that a Jewish community began to take shape in Woonsocket.

By 1894, the city directory recorded 28 Jewish names, and by 1900, there were at least 65 Jews living among the 28,204 people in the growing textile-mill city.

According to the “History of Congregation B’nai Israel,” the first Jewish congregation organized in 1883 as Congregation of the Lovers of Peace. Most of the congregants were laborers, craftsmen, peddlers and merchants, and Solomon Treital was their first president.

Although they were devout, the Lovers of Peace were not wealthy, and they could not afford their own synagogue. They first worshipped in a loft over a store near Market Square, and then in a building on Main Street, and then went “from loft to loft, from meeting hall to meeting hall for one and half decades.”

At the start of the 20th century, the young congregation had grown enough in numbers and solvency for Treital to declare that the time had come to found their own house of worship.

The “History of Congregation B’nai Israel” reports that “through tremendous self-sacrifice on the part of each congregant,” the congregation in 1904 was able to purchase a vacant Presbyterian church at 200 Greene Street, giving Woonsocket’s Jewish community its first home.

The squat Queen Anne at the corner of Greene and Bernon streets had, among its selling points, a cavernous room suitable for a sanctuary and just enough room on its tiny lot to build a sukkah, or hut, for the holiday of Sukkot.

The Jewish community, newly renamed Congregation B’nai Israel, mustered its meager resources and set about remodeling the old church into a synagogue. And so it was fitting, when consecration ceremonies were held on July 31, 1904, that “citizens of all faiths were in attendance.”

By 1913, the congregation had grown to 85 members, and by 1914, the city had a very active YMHA (Young Men’s Hebrew Association) and YWHA (Young Women’s Hebrew Association). By 1917, CBI was able to hire its first ordained rabbi.

The congregation continued to grow, albeit slowly, over the following decades, and the Greene Street synagogue thrived. The building wasn’t big enough to host all the events that the Jewish community held, so halls and homes were frequently used for social activities, but the temple was the focal point.

“It was a vibrant Jewish congregation,” said Irwin Shorr, who was among the last boys to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah in the building, on Oct. 21, 1961. “I think at the height of its existence, there were at least 200 Jewish families in Woonsocket.”

Shorr, who now lives in Olney, Maryland, said services were held in the sanctuary on the main floor, while the downstairs held a kitchen and rooms that were used for junior congregation, parties, holiday events and receptions.

Life for Woonsocket’s Jews “revolved around Jewish life when I was a kid,” Shorr said. “My Bar Mitzvah was the most important event of my life. Period.”

In 1962, Woonsocket’s Jewish community proudly dedicated its magnificent and architecturally important synagogue on Prospect Street. This new building had more than enough space to consolidate Jewish life under one roof, with room for everything from a Hebrew School to a Judaica museum.

As for the old Queen Anne, for the next 40 years or so, it was sometimes vacant and sometimes the home of religious groups, until a theater company took it over. And then, around 2000, Pastor Mike Kropman purchased the building for $30,000 for his Church of the Acts.

Kropman describes his church as non denominational. Which is why the Star of David carved into the wall above the bimah, the plaque honoring members of the 1904 “Committee on Building,” and the frame of a sturdy sukkah still stand as testament to Woonsocket’s first synagogue.

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This brick structure, with pedimented portico supported by four columns, was built in 1954 as the home of Congregation Beth David, a Conservative Jewish congregation founded in 1892 that previously worshipped on nearby Chalkstone Boulevard. The building was designed by Thomas Russillo, an architect of some repute responsible for many Rhode Island institutional buildings and private homes, and is sited in a residential neighborhood whose large, substantially built three-decker houses are typical of the Smith Hill area. Jewish immigrants began arriving in Providence in the late 1860s, first from Germany and then from eastern Europe, particularly Poland, Lithuania and Russia. Providence was prosperous in that period and jobs were plentiful. They settled in Smith Hill, one of Providence’s most affordable areas, living peacefully among the Irish immigrants already there. Members of both groups became shopkeepers, tailors, bakers, machinists, and soon lawyers and doctors, as well as workers in the textile, jewelry and rubber industries, drivers of Providence’s then-flourishing economy.   In 1970 the Beth David congregation merged with Anshei Kovno Congregation (founded at the turn of the century by immigrants from Kovno, Lithuania). The merged congregation, called Beth David-Anshei Kovno congregation, left Providence in 1980 to join with the Beth Am congregation in Warwick. This building was then first rented and ultimately purchased by a new church, the Gospel Tabernacle Outreach Ministries (GTOM), whose home it remains today. GTOM’s missions and ministries respond to the area’s current population, largely African American and Hispanic. GTOM sponsors a Hispanic Heritage Month and works to promote education in the community with a scholarship fund and recognition awards for successful students. The organization also offers instruction in life skills such as literacy, financial responsibility, employment, and entrepreneurship. They also host a Men’s Ministry, and they run a food pantry and a food kitchen open to all. In many ways, the spirit of the original Congregation Beth David as a place of worship for new immigrants lives on in GTOM.

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Walking into Ponto Um, an unassuming shop on Warren Avenue in East Providence, you may be greeted with a cheerful “Bom dia!” or another Portuguese expression. Ponto Um, which translates to Point One, advertises the “Best Variety of Brazilian Products” and, indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find another local store that sells more. The small market contains an eclectic and expansive inventory of goods, ranging from cosmetics and household products to hard-to-find spices, frozen foods (like pão de queijo), fresh breads and pastries, meats, and non-perishable products, many of which are imported directly from Brazil. In the back you find clothing, much of it emblazoned with the Brazilian flag, including jerseys so you can support the national futebol team. The Ponto Um Market has only served this neighborhood and wider region since 2007. However, it is part of a long tradition of diverse Lusophone, or Portuguese-speaking, communities in Rhode Island and southern New England. Besides Brazilians, the Ocean State is also home to people from Portugal, Cabo Verde, the Azores, and Madeira, as well as several generations of their descendants. Some of the first people of Portuguese heritage to come to Rhode Island were Jewish families escaping religious persecution in Europe, who traveled by way of Brazil and Barbados in the seventeenth century. By the mid-eighteenth century the community was large enough to need a house of worship, and Touro Synagogue--the oldest in the United States--was established in Newport in 1763. Throughout the nineteenth century, sailors from Cabo Verde and the Azores came to Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts to work in the whaling industry. By 1870, Portuguese speakers began working in the textile industry rather than whaling. Families from mainland Portugal and Madeira arrived in increasing numbers to work in mills and garment shops, joining the Azoreans and Cabo Verdeans who had already settled here. This long history of labor and immigration resulted in the presence of a vibrant multi-ethnic community of Portuguese descent in Rhode Island. Cuisine inspired by these groups can be found on the menus of many restaurants, in the form of Portuguese sweet bread French Toast, and linguiça and choriço sausage pizza. Along Warren Avenue, within blocks of Ponto Um, there is a Madeiran restaurant, Portuguese restaurants, and at least one other Portuguese market. Places like these and Ponto Um allow people to access foods that ensure the maintenance and growth of the foodways they and their ancestors brought with them to Rhode Island.

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