While most Jewish immigrants remained in the larger cities during the mass immigration period, some were attracted to the small towns of the interior. Those who settled in Johnstown, in western Pennsylvania, for example, preferred it to metropolitan New York because it sheltered a rural lifestyle that approximated the one they remembered from Europe. Additionally, Johnstown harbored greater opportunities for Jewish immigrants to become self-employed; many made a living by catering to the needs of the large population of non-Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, with whose languages and lifestyles they were intimately familiar.

Though a community of Jews from Hesse-Darmstadt had taken root in Johnstown in the 1860s, it was not until 1884, after the influx of East European immigrants, that regularly scheduled religious services were inaugurated. Fifteen years later a congregation was incorporated as Hevrah Rodeph Shalom. As opposed to the larger cities, in Johnstown the synagogue remained the locus of Jewish life. Rodeph Shalom grew rapidly—each meeting witnessed the admittance of new members—and in 1906 the congregation erected a new building and published this Yiddish constitution.