ABOUT US

Welcome and thank you for your interest in The Jewish Center of Princeton.  We are committed to providing our members of all ages with opportunities for spiritual, intellectual, social and Jewish growth. 

Our congregation has a rich tradition of welcoming Jewish and interfaith families, couples and singles into our highly diverse community.  We are fully egalitarian in all respects (see Egalitarianism page). Our congregants have strong connections - to each other and to the Jewish community as a whole, and we are affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ) www.uscj.org. We invite you to join us at “The Jewish Center of Our Lives.”

Who we are is defined not only by where we have been (see Brief History below) but by where we are going.  Here is a list of our current strategic goals based on a recent survey of our membership, staff and lay leaders.  These goals tell you how we will be focusing our efforts as we move into the future, while at the same time continuing to provide the full range of services and activities already in place.

Our goals are to:

• Ensure that our nursery and religious schools offer outstanding educational programs
• Develop and strengthen Jewish identity and involvement for pre-teens and teens
• Provide opportunities for lifelong learning
• Encourage membership and participation of young families
• Increase programming to meet the needs of and engage the baby-boom generation (ages 50-65) and seniors (over age 65)
• Serve the larger Jewish and secular community with projects that reflect our heritage of Tikkun Olam
• Encourage more members to experience Shabbat and holidays at home and at The Jewish Center

When you come to The Jewish Center, the energy level is palpable.  This is a congregation widely recognized locally and nationally as an exemplary Conservative synagogue with a proud past and an exciting future. We hope you will visit us so you can sample and participate in all of our programs, classes and activities. We look forward to introducing you to our community.

We want you to be with us at “The Jewish Center of Our Lives” - for more information on membership please visit the Membership page, contact our office at 609-921-0100 x205 or email us.

Brief History

The Princeton Jewish community first organized its own congregation in 1926, calling it Congregation B'nai Zion. Previously, the few Jews in Princeton attended services in Trenton, and for many years after 1926 their children continued to be educated in Trenton synagogues. The Sunday school was organized in 1944, at which time classes were begun in private homes. In 1947, following a significant post-war influx of Jews into the community, B'nai Zion hired its first rabbi, shared part-time with the newly established Hillel on the Princeton University campus. This arrangement continued until 1951. In 1955, Rabbi Joseph Gelberman became the first full-time rabbi. Our first Cantor, Robert Freedman, was hired in 1982 and became full time in 1985. He stayed in that position until 1996, when he left to attend Rabbinical school.

In 1949, the rapidly expanding Jewish community felt that a more formal organizational structure was needed, and the result was The Jewish Center, which adopted its first constitution on December 11, 1949. Soon after a building was purchased on Olden Street. The congregation quickly outgrew the Olden Street building and purchased land at the current site. The first building at 435 Nassau was completed in January of 1958. The Beit Am Building (currently used for Nursery and Religious School Classes) was acquired in the early 1970s. Ground breaking for the current (expanded) main building occurred in 1983.