Because my Uncle Tony’s business partner was Jewish & my cousin Ron’s best friend is Jewish my childhood experience with Jews was unusual in Chester County.

Also lots of students in Coatesville schools worked at Chertok’s store, including my brother in law. 

Betsy’s first job was at a Jewish owned woman’s clothing store, The Colony Shop.  I can’t think of his name but that store owner Jerry Daghir, vocal music Scott High School, & Ray Pellegrino my barber & family friend were friends.  I think a lot of Chester & Lancaster county residents first experience with Jewish people might have been in the City of Coatesville. 

‘“When Kate Nolt moved from Baltimore to the Chester County suburbs more than a decade ago with her boyfriend, it turned out to be a dramatic change.

"I had culture shock, coming from Baltimore, with 100,000 Jews on every corner, to Chester County, where I could go into a grocery store and barely even find Chanukah candles," said Nolt.

"I would oftentimes go to look for traditional-type items and would really have to go from store to store to find them. Or they were scarce, and the stores would only order a handful, and if I was too late, I was out of luck."

The area, as she put it bluntly, was"devoid of Jews."

That's hardly the case today.”

“According to Susannah Brody, the author of the recently published Remembering Chester County: Stories From Valley Forge to Coatesville, Jews came to Chester County in the early 20th century for the same reasons they went anywhere — seeking opportunity. Many, she said, were merchants, vendors or itinerant peddlers, who often gathered in individual homes for Shabbat or High Holiday services.

The area's first synagogues sprung up. Kesher Israel Congregation in West Chester was established in 1914, while Beth Israel Congregation of Chester County in Eagle was incorporated two years later at its initial home in Coatesville.

Families that kept kosher in the early days — and even in the middle — of the 20th century had to drive to West Philadelphia for kosher meat and other Jewish delicacies, though after World War II, some kosher butchers began delivering to the Chester County area. Prior to that, a shochet, a kosher ritual slaughterer, would come to various homes and slaughter chickens and other fowl, according to residents of the area at the time.

Back then, it seemed that "each of the communities kept to themselves" because they were so geographically separated, according to Bill Chertok, an 81-year-old native of the region who ran a furniture business in Coatesville.

This is understandable, since then as now, Chester County is spread out over 760 square miles, which range from the far western Main Line down to the Delaware state line. Jewish residents tend to be sprinkled from the King of Prussia/ Valley Forge area to the west along the Route 202 business corridor, with pockets in Wayne, Berwyn, Malvern, Phoenixville and West Chester¬

These days, Brody and her husband live in an "Over 55" community in Coatesville, where there are only about 15 Jewish families out of 300, she said, but she noted that she's seen growth in the area, as young families relocate for good schools and more affordable housing, sometimes even followed by their parents…

State Sen. Andrew Dinniman (D-District 19) and his wife Margo first moved to the county in 1972 so he could take a faculty position at West Chester University.

The two-term senator was first elected to public office in 1975, when he joined the Downingtown Area School Board, and has served in various positions since before being elected to the Senate in 2006.

Dinniman, who grew up in New Haven, Conn., said that when he first arrived, the Jewish community was concentrated in only a few locales, like West Chester, Downingtown and Coatesville, but that today, Jewish families and individuals are now spread through the county. That's made the community less insular, even as the diffusion has made cohesion more challenging.

In Chester, he said, an area is Jewish if three out of 40 families belong to the tribe. Long involved with Jewish communal life — he currently serves on the board of the Chester Kehillah — Dinniman observed that, if anything, he thinks the population study undercounted the number of Jews, as well as the number of intermarried families, in the county.

"We are the youngest Jewish community, perhaps between Washington and New York, and perhaps the largest in terms interfaith marriage, and there is more need to come up with innovative approaches," he said. "The paradox is: How do you maintain a Jewish presence in a large area where there is no concentration — no specific concentration of Jewish people?”

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Chester County: Forgotten Frontier?

February 11, 2013