Memory Lane: Sternklar’s Grocery, Blazing a Trail of Shmiras Shabbos in Boro Park

In Boro Park of today, one cannot find an establishment open on the holy day of Shabbos. But in Boro Park of the 1940’s, the precise opposite was true; sadly, it was virtually unheard of for a store to be closed on Shabbos. 

This situation persisted into the early 50’s, when most of Thirteenth Avenue remained open on Shabbos. Around this time, the famed “shabbos marches” came in to being, in which Yidden would implore their neighbors to close their shops on Shabbos. 

And then there were those who heroically led by example—like Zecharia and Jack Sternklar, the father and son who are said to have operated the very first Shomer Shabbos grocery in Boro Park, beginning in 1941 when they came to this shtetl. 

Vienna 

The Sternklars originated in Vienna, and Zecharia was a nephew of the legendary ga’on Rav Meir Arik who shaped so many of the future ge’onim who survived the Holocaust and rebuilt with Torah in its aftermath. 

For a living, he operated a grocery store. He could not fathom that he would continue this vocation in America in later years. In 1922, a son was born to the Zecharia and Sabina, and they named him Jack. Jack attended the Gymnasium in Vienna, where he became fluent in speaking and writing English. These skills would come to use in later years, and potentially save his life. 

With the Anschluss in 1938, and the Nazi occupation of Austria, Zecharia was arrested and interned in Dachau and later in Buchenwald. Fearing that her fifteen-year-old son would experience a similar fate, she obtained a visa for him and sent him off to America. 

Young Jack first stayed with relatives in East Flatbush and earned a living by working in a belt-making factory. Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the Second World War, he was drafted into the army. 

Among the few possessions that he took with him when reporting for duty was a small portable typewriter that he acquired for a typing course he took just before being drafted. Despite being a relatively recent immigrant, his education in Vienna’s “Gymnasium” had given him a fluency in speaking and writing English. Shortly before Jack’s division was to be shipped overseas, an officer spotted the typewriter and asked if he was able to write. A positive response landed him a safe office job in America until he was discharged in 1943. In later years, Mr. Sternklar commented, “Something just told me that that typewriter would save my life.”     

Mrs. Sternklar did not rest for a moment in working for her husbands’ release. She would frequent the Nazi headquarters in Vienna, begging for any morsel of information as to his whereabouts. A rov in town gave her candlesticks to sell and use the money to bribe the Nazis. Eighteen months letter, Zecharia appeared in the doorway, and the family immediately escaped for England, and later the United States, arriving in the summer of 1941.  

Sternklar’s Grocery 

In those days in the 1940’s, the area around 15th Avenue and 39th Street was concentrated with Yidden, and when the Sternklar’s moved to Boro Park and sought to operate the only business they knew how, opening a grocery, they did so at the aforementioned 1510 39th Street. 

“The whole family pitched in,” recalled Jack’s daughter. “We had no workers, just my brother and father in the store. When it got busy, my mother would come and help too while my grandmother watched me; she lived with us. When I got a little older, I would help out sometimes on Saturday night. We kept all the accounts with a pencil. I used to like to do the adding up, she recalled”

A 1695 colonial New York blue law read, “Be it therefore enacted that there shall be no traveling, servile laboring and working.... on Sunday. The punishment for any of these offenses was a fine of six shillings or three hours in the stocks.

These laws—which rabbonim and community leaders continued to battle for many decades—compounded the nisayon of shmiras Shabbos, because it meant being closed Sunday, in addition to Shabbos. 

Life in Boro Park 

In typical fashion for Boro Parkers of that era, the Sternklar boys attended Yeshiva Eitz Chaim, located on Thirteenth Avenue and Fiftieth Street, while the girls attended its sister school, Shulamith School for Girls. 

Zecharia became a respected member of First Congregation Anshei Sfard of Boro Park. In 1951, Jack Sternklar married Lila Honig, who was also from a family of neighborhood pioneers. Her grandfather, Hyman Barnett, a prominent lawyer, had served as the first president of another Boro Park historic site, Congregation Beth-El. In this way, the Sternklars were true Boro Park pioneers. 

While groceries of that sort are long forgotten, the store itself was the picture of the “mom and pop” grocery from before the world was taken over by the far less personal supermarkets of today. It bore the simple name, Sternklar’s, and the family lived in an apartment above it.  

Eggs and cheese were bought from an uncle, Mechel Bomzer, who worked for a dairy company. He used to stand in the back of the shop and “candle” eggs to check for blood spots. A bakery named Staumer’s provided doughnuts and pumpernickel. Korn’s, still a Boro Park icon today, delivered fresh bread every morning. 

In 1947, the Sternklars moved their residence and business to 4307 15th Avenue. After a few years they purchased the building next door and began to realize the potential of the real estate market.  Feeling that his son had more potential for success outside the grocery business, Reb Zechariah encouraged Jack to acquire a broker’s license and to pursue other opportunities.  The decision turned out to be a very wise one, as Jack Sternklar went on to achieve great success and build a flourishing real estate company with many holdings. 

But far more than any material fortune is the incredible legacy of mesiras nefesh for shmiras Shabbos that Zecharia and Jack Sternklar left behind from those early years in Boro Park of yore.