The congregation was founded as Beth Jacob in 1869,[7] by more traditional members of an existing Reform German Jewish synagogue,[1] the Keap Street Temple.

[8] They objected to the installation and use of a pipe organ to accompany Yom Kippur services, which was forbidden by halakha (Jewish law), and seceded and created their own congregation.

The synagogue employed a rabbi, gabbai, and cantor, and annual expenses often exceeded the congregation's income (which came primarily from the sale of seats).

In January 1887, during a heated discussion at a congregational business meeting, one member addressed two others with the informal German "du" (rather than the formal "Sie"), which was considered impolite.

When it was time for the former secretary to hand over the financial books, a member, Simon Freudenthal, was alleged to have grabbed them, jumped out a window, and ran away with them.

[11] Ten days later the synagogue president, American Civil War veteran Colonel Solomon Monday,[12] was arrested and charged in turn with libel, for allegedly claiming that Freudenthal stole "sacred books".

[13] Monday, in turn, had Freudenthal charged in November with stealing $8 (today $270) worth of "sacred books" during "divine service".

His primary supporter, synagogue vice president Louis Jackson, who had broken the story to the press, described the congregation as a "collection of jackasses", with the "chief jackass" being the president Louis Schwartz, who Jackson accused of eating ham himself, and of stealing from the synagogue's charity boxes.

[21] Jackson was expelled from the congregation,[21] and subsequently convicted of libel and fined $100 (today $3,400) for making the accusations, while Rosenberg sued the synagogue for his salary.

[22] Rosenberg died of pneumonia in April 1893, at the age of 43, his "health and spirits", according to a contemporary New York Times report, "broken" by the expulsion.

[5] Features of the new design included seating for almost 1,000 in the main sanctuary,[29] a Talmud Torah for Hebrew language instruction in the basement, electric lighting, and steam heating.

[28][34] Born in Szczecin, Poland (then Stettin, Germany) in 1889, he was the descendant of at least eight generations of rabbis, and received his own rabbinic ordination in 1906, at age 17.

[35] He emigrated to the United States the following year, and served as rabbi of congregations in Chicago, Illinois and Scranton, Pennsylvania before coming to Williamsburg.

[35] That year, the congregation purchased for the growing Talmud Torah the First United Presbyterian Church building at South 1st and Rodney Streets, at a cost of $20,050 (today $610,000).

[37] While practicing as a rabbi in Russia, he issued a responsum in 1908 that permitted Jews to shoot—on the Sabbath—anarchist communists who terrorized local Jewish communities, and extorted "contributions" from them.

[38] Before coming to Beth Jacob Anshe Sholom he served as rabbi in Trenton, New Jersey, where he was instrumental in the creation of the re-established Dr. Theodor Herzl's Zion Hebrew School (opened October 1926).

[39] Following World War II and the Holocaust, large numbers of Hasidic and haredi Jewish refugees immigrated to Williamsburg.

It joined with another large Ashkenazi synagogue in the same situation, and in 1957 the merged congregations constructed the current building at the edge of the "Jewish Triangle", just west of Broadway.

[44] Another notable congregant is Steve Cohn, the Democratic District Leader and lawyer whose father was involved with the synagogue, and who had his Bar Mitzvah there.

[1] Samuel Heilman wrote in 1996 that Beth Jacob Ohev Sholom was one of four Williamsburg institutions that served to "anchor the community around them", and "in effect geographically engulf and cancel" the ability of prominent local churches to "dominate the neighborhood".

[2] By the mid-1990s, however, the synagogue attracted only 300 to 400 generally elderly Ashkenazi men and women for High Holy Day services, most of whom lived in "public high rise projects", and Fishman doubted that Williamsburg's only remaining Orthodox Nusach Ashkenaz synagogue still holding regular services would survive.