According to the municipal authorities, by the time the Choral Synagogue was opened the Jewish population of St. Petersburg numbered over 16 thousand and by 1900 this figure rose by 75% to 28,268. A map drawn up by the St. Petersburg police shows the areas where Jews accounted for 1.5-4% of population. In the beginning of the 20th century Jews lived mostly near Voznesensky Avenue, Ofitserskaya and Sadovaya streets.
Poet Osip Mandelshtam dedicated the following lines to Kolomna, one of the most "Jewish" areas (4% Jewish): "In Petersburg there is a Jewish quarter: it begins just behind the Mariinsky Theater where horse-dealers are freezing, behind the imprisoned angel of the Lithuanian Castle burnt during the revolution. There, in the Trading Row, one can see Jewish signboards with bull and heifer, women with wigs under their kerchiefs, and experienced, child-loving old men prancing in ankle-length frock coats. With its cones and bulbs, the synagogue seems lost amid squalid buildings like a luxuriant alien fig-tree. Velvet berets with pompons, jaded servants and choristers, grapes of menorahs, tall velvet skull-caps. The Jewish vessel with ringing alto choirs, with stunning children's voices goes full sail, as if split by an ancient storm into male and female halves".
The opening of the Synagogue was not a purely joyous occassion for St. Petersburg Jews. According to the 1865 Resolution of the Committee of Ministers, all other prayer places had to be closed once the synagogue was opened. The 2200-seat synagogue hall could not accommodate the whole Jewish population of the city. Services had to be held in auxiliary rooms and even in cellars. As the distance to the synagogue was more than Jews were permitted to walk on the Sabbath, Jews who lived in the outskirts of the city found themselves unable to practise their religion.
The Jews who lived in the city outskirts petitioned the authorities for 10 years to reopen their prayer places, but each time met with a refusal. Moreover, the community leadership was not even allowed to hire servants at its own discretion. In 1900, government officials demonstrated an absurd example of this restrictive policy. When the community leadership applied for residence permits for two synagogue servants, one of them Neftel Shifrin, whose rare bass octave voice was needed for the choir, it met with the following response: "This petition should not be granted since a bass octave voice is an impermissible luxury".
Alongside the growth of Jewish publications in Russian and Hebrew, Yiddish newspapers also appeared in this period. Each had its own readership. The Bund's "Yevreysky Rabochiy", or "The Jewish Worker", was mainly addressed to Jews living inside the Pale. A number of publications were intended for readers living both in the capital and in the provinces. With its excellent printing-offices and many capable journalists and publishers, St. Petersburg became the center of Yiddish-language publications. This was further evidence of the increasing influence of the St. Petersburg community on the whole of Russian Jewry.
This period saw further development of the organizations set up by the St. Petersburg community, OPE and ORT. OPE's schools in St. Petersburg were awarded 2nd prize certificates at the All-Russian Artistic and Industrial Exhibition in 1896. In 1904, the Jewish pedagogical journal "Yevreyskaya Shkola", or "The Jewish School", was first published in St. Petersburg. Despite the quota, the number of Jewish students was increasing by the turn of the century. In addition to St. Petersburg University, the Academy of Arts and the Conservatory, Jewish students also went to technical institutes. They became the first Jewish scientists and engineers. As a rule, Jewish students took little part in the life of the Jewish community, although they often sought the support of Jewish charities. At the same time, the names of many graduates later appeared in the lists of donors for various charitable causes of the community.