While there was never anything approaching a Jewish ghetto in Cardiff, there were certain streets in which Jewish businesses congregated and by the 1850s Bute Road (later Bute Street) became the hub of Jewish settlement. The Jewish community was proving itself a business community par excellence, with members including watchmakers, jewellers, 'slop'-sellers, tailors, pawnbrokers and general dealers. As early as 1855 it seems there were 27 businesses or shops registered to owners with Jewish surnames on Bute Road.

 

 

There are a number of reasons that business was appealing to the growing Jewish community. ‘Even the poorest observant Jews preferred self-employment in which they could stop work at Sabbaths and holy days. Hence the prevalence of small traders, who sometimes appeared briefly in the newspapers when they fell to the temptation of opening on a Sunday and were caught under the Sunday Trading Acts'[1] and certain trades such as clothing, jewellery and furniture were particularly available to Jewish settlers as they drew upon the existing skills of migrants from Eastern Europe.

 

As soon as enough Jews have settled in an area to form a Minyan (10 adult males), preparation would begin on a synagogue. People would hire an area for prayer, attempt to procure a plot to bury their dead, obtain scrolls of law, a shochet (ritual slaughterer), a mohel (circumcision performer) and a chazan (prayer leader, often the mohel and shochet as well) and then finally procure or build a synagogue and hire a Rabbi.