The Jewish community of Philadelphia west of the Schuylkill River is a composite of seven distinct neighborhoods surrounding West Philadelphia proper. These include Fortieth and Girard, Parkside, Wynnefield, Overbrook Park, Wynnefield Heights, Southwest Philly, and Island Road. A gathering of seventy-five thousand Jewish people in West Philadelphia during the twentieth century qualified the area known as "a city within a city" as a second settlement area. Excellent public transportation included the famed Market Street Elevated. The West Philadelphia Jews flourished and supported dozens of synagogues and bakeries, and more than one hundred kosher butcher shops at the neighborhood's height from the 1930s through the 1950s. Newly arrived immigrants embraced traditional Jewish values, which led them to encourage their offspring to acquire a secondary education in their own neighborhoods as a way of achieving assimilation into the community at large. The Jewish Community of West Philadelphia portrays Jewish life throughout West Philadelphia in the mid-twentieth century. The book captures rare, nearly forgotten images with photographs gleaned from the community at large.

In the late nineteenth century, a wave of Jewish immigrants fled eastern Europe and settled in northeastern Philadelphia along the Delaware River in Kensington and its surrounding neighborhoods. Separate from the German-Jewish community of Philadelphia, the new immigrants created new Jewish settlements that eventually gave way to permanent residences and businesses along Frankford Avenue, Kensington Avenue, Richmond Street, Front Street, Torresdale Avenue, and beyond. Synagogues, bakeries, delicatessens, kosher butchers, and other Jewish establishments flourished for several decades until the area began to decline in the 1960s as a result of the postindustrial era. The Jewish Community under the Frankford El celebrates the history of this Jewish community and the contributions Jews made, as merchants and citizens, to this highly integrated section of Philadelphia.

The Jewish community of Northeast Philadelphia was created by the relocation of secondgeneration eastern European Jews from the neighborhoods of Strawberry Mansion and South, North, and West Philadelphia. Serving more than one hundred thousand Jewish residents at its height, Northeast Philadelphia consisted of ten distinctive neighborhoods, including Feltonville, Oxford Circle, Tacony, and Mayfair. During the twentieth century, thousands of Jewish families were attracted to the area by the houses built along Roosevelt Boulevard for soldiers returning home from World War II. Welsh Road catered to younger families, and wealthier families resided along Bustleton Avenue and Fox Chase and Verree Roads. Today, the influx of strictly orthodox Jewish residents has given rise to a third generation of Jewish life in Northeast Philadelphia.