Not all the Jewish people who emigrated to Minneapolis came from the region of Eastern Europe known as the Pale of Settlement that was part of Czarist Russia. Others came from Romania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Few in number, their customs and traditions while similar to their co-religionists from the Pale of Settlement, differed enough in certain respects to cause controversy.
The Romanian Jews who lived on the South Side initially joined the Adath Jeshurun when it was organized in 1884, but due to differences in minhag [custom] left to form their own congregation, B’nai [Sons of] Abraham in 1891. In 1906, they erected a synagogue at 314 15th Ave. S., in the midst of the neighborhood in which they lived.In 1920, they purchased the Norwegian Danish Methodist Episcopal Church at 825 13th Ave. S. In the mid-1950s the congregation moved to the St. Louis Park suburb and built a synagogue in 1959 at Highway 7 and Ottawa Ave. The congregation disbanded in 2011.