Congregation Mishkan Israel, above Heller and Mandelbaum Dry Goods Store

5 Grand Street (demolished) early name for grand avenue

Congregation Mishkan Israel synagogue building 1856-1897 (former Court Street meeting house of the Third Congregational Church). Photo courtesy of Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven.

Jacob Heller and Louis Mandelbaum were first cousins who arrived together in the United States in 1837 from the town of Dennenlohe, Bavaria, in southern Germany. Around 1840 they started a family business — a small dry goods store at the northeast corner of Grand and State Street. The Heller and Mandelbaum store (located at 5 Grand Street, according to city directories — it was not changed to “avenue” until 1887) was a modest operation, and probably less well known than the building’s second floor occupant. It was above the dry goods store in 1840 that Congregation Mishkan Israel, the first Jewish religious society in Connecticut and the oldest continuous synagogue congregation in New England, was established. Michael Milander was the society’s first spiritual leader.

Several years later, Heller and Mandelbaum each pursued their own businesses, with Heller establishing a clothing store on Chapel Street and Mandelbaum entering the grocery business. Congregation Mishkan Israel continued to meet at 5 Grand until moving to larger rented space in the former Brewster Building at the southeast corner of State and Chapel Streets. In 1856, the congregation purchased a building on Court Street, the former Third Congregational Church (pictured here). The synagogue remained on Court Street until 1897, when it relocated to its first purpose-built sanctuary at the corner of Orange and Audubon streets (currently the home of the Educational Center for the Arts magnet high school). In 1960, a larger synagogue and religious school building was designed and constructed on Ridge Road in Hamden, where the congregation remains today, 180 years after its founding.

Text sources: Michael Dimenstein, President, Congregation Mishkan Israel, Information prepared for CMI Anniversary Celebration; Osterweis, Rollin G. “Mishkan Israel 1840-1960,” The Papers of Congregation Mishkan Israel. Link; Jews in New Haven, Vol. II,  Jewish Historical Society, 1979, pp. 104-108.


Tamar Szabo Gendler describes her relationship to the family that started the store and synagogue above the store.