Seen here at his Wythe Avenue factory loft office, in what is now still Brooklyn's hippest 'hood, Israel Rokeach, founding patriarch of I. Rokeach & Sons Inc. manufacturer and distributor of a host of kosher food products, made his initial fortune selling kosher soap and scouring powder.

According to the Forward's 1930 feature on Rokeach in advance of a tribute dinner, the legendary kosher soap manufacturer was born in 1842 and immigrated here in 1890, from Wolkawysk in the Suwalki region formerly of Poland-Lithuania and then Russia, and currently known as Vaukauvysk, Belarus. "Rokeach was the kosher person's Edison" claimed the Forward. "Before opening their million dollar factory in Brooklyn," the Forward gushed proudly "Rokeach ran a kosher soap manufacturing plant out of a cellar on Market Street not long after arriving in 1890." Soap was historically crafted using animal fat, usually from a non-kosher animal, and proved problematic therefore for strictly kosher householders. The need for kosher soap for dishes is debatable, yet Rokeach's invention of a kosher version, replete with the words 'kosher' in Hebrew letters embedded throughout the Rokeach brand soap bar was a lifesaver for kosher hygiene, noted the Forward.

"Rokeach" the Forward gushed admiringly, "was an older immigrant, having arrived at the age of 49. Imagine having to start eeking out a living here at that age" they queried readers. According to his 1904 naturalization form, Israel Rokeach settled in the Morrisania Bronx neighborhood first, on Forest Avenue near 168th Street, seen above before eventually moving to Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Rokeach's 1930 banquet in celebration of his four decades of philanthropy, as well as his successful kosher product business, was held at the then decade old Brooklyn Jewish Center, seen above. The event would have taken place a mere week since the Jewish Passover holiday that year, a time in which Forward readers and other consumers of kosher products would have been seeing Rokeach's ads in the then Yiddish paper. Passover, a Jewish holiday in which bread and other leavened products are refrained from, has special "kosher for Passover" ones made available to consumers. In the Yiddish Forward, or forverts , that holiday season, as usual, the paper ran ads for Rokeach kosher for Passover strawberry preserves, and even a vegetarian coconut and cottonseed oil and onion version of shmaltz (rendered chicken fat) called 'Nyafat', that survived an early 1941 royalty tussle in court.

A mere three years after that celebratory banquet, having succeeded in nearly five decades of business and philanthropy, Israel Rokeach died in 1933, at the age of 93. Services were held at his local synagogue, Congregation Chovevei Torah in his long time Crown Heights neighborhood, and he would ultimately be buried shortly thereafter, per his request, in British Mandate Palestine. The synagogue's Rabbi Jacob Levinson and State Supreme Court Justice Mitchell May, also a Jewish communal leader, were among those who gave eulogies. In his lifetime, Israel Rokeach saw his family business grow from a kosher soap manufacturer to a vast multi million dollar kosher food enterprise encompassing sales of: kosher scouring powder and silver polish, cooking food products, shortening, soup, oils, honey and tea, to mention a few. His Passover candies, such as jelly fruit slices remain a popular fluorescent hued sweet talisman to this day. "The elder Israel Rokeach" the Forward remarked, "remains an interesting subject. Had he not become a wealthy manufacturer and remained a poor man, we'd still have written about him" they imagined. "Neither his orthodox practice nor his involvement with rabbinic leaders and synagogues, kept him from embracing opportunities in America with 'pep' they exhorted, "despite having arrived here as an older immigrant, already in his late forties." "A naive type of synagogue Jew, he nonetheless built up a curious kosher factory here in treyf (unkosher) America" they marveled. "With his traditional head covering, sidecurls and beard, he looks the very picture of an old world type," they noted, comparing him to an old master painting. "And yet, kosher or not, one must really struggle here in America to make a living. And he somehow succeeded at it through his ideas about kosher products."