B’Nai Zion Congregation

Princeton’s first Jewish Congregation, B'nai Zion, was founded in 1926, and using a borrowed Torah scroll from a Trenton synagogue, Isadore Braveman conducted services in the rented ballroom on the second floor of the Branch Building at 35 Witherspoon Street. That year, the community gathered for the first local High Holiday worship in the space.  In 1935, reflecting the community's growth, the congregation moved to a larger space on the Spring Street side of the building.

By the late 1940s, B'nai Zion's Spring Street location had become too small and a community of twenty-five families, chartered as The Jewish Center, purchased a one-room building at 61 Olden Avenue (now Olden Street), which had formerly housed the First Church of Christ, Scientist. In 1956, The Jewish Center purchased its current Nassau Street site.