History Overview: 1880s-2000s

Meanwhile, the city’s first Orthodox congregation, Adath Jeshurun (founded 1884), was largely made up of Eastern Europeans; beginning in the Romanian community on the South Side, it eventually moved to the West Side.¹  The North Side, which would become the largest center of the Jewish population, saw the founding of the Orthodox Ohel Jacob in 1888, which became the heart of the Jewish community. However, the temple was dissolved in 1891 and replaced by Kenesseth Israel.²  This too was a mostly Eastern European congregation, reflecting the general trend among Orthodox Jews. However, in many cases the perceived orthodoxy of these immigrants was more a reflection of their social practices than their actual religious beliefs; the rabbinical structure among Orthodox communities was fairly weak. This weakness became clear as many American-educated younger Orthodox Jews shunned the Old World religious practices of their parents; many flocked to Conservative congregations.³  The congregation that would become the North Side’s largest, the Conservative Beth El, was founded in 1926 largely by young people.⁴  Thus the divisions in the Jewish community in America as a whole were reflected in Minneapolis.

By 1947 there were 20,000 Jews in Minneapolis, four percent of the total population. Fifty-nine percent lived in the North Side, many within a smaller area that was home to the first Jewish settlers. By that time, much of the neighborhood had become a slum; most Jews owned their homes, but many of these homes were in decrepit condition, though another section called Homewood was more prosperous. Forty-one percent lived on the West or South Sides; there had been a general migration of many Jews from the South Side to the West.⁵  A few Jews had already begun settling in St. Louis Park,⁶  though no Jewish congregations existed there at that time.⁷  Over the years, the community’s internal divisions had become less important, despite religious differences.⁸  This likely is due to assimilation and the fact that income levels among different Jewish groups had evened out. However, discrimination also likely played a role in causing Jews to become more united.

Minneapolis was described in a 1946 article as “the capital of anti-Semitism in the United States.”⁹ The author, Carey McWilliams, went on to explain that the Jews in Minneapolis were probably the most separated from civic life of any American city. Service, athletic and even automobile clubs refused to admit Jews; businesses routinely declined to interview any Jewish job applicants.¹⁰  Most of the main economic activities in Minneapolis did not include a significant number of Jews;¹¹  the Jew was "still an outsider.”¹²  Furthermore, many Christian fundamentalist groups which were openly anti-Semitic were headquartered in Minneapolis.¹³  One of the most problematic aspects of the anti-Semitism was housing; whole sections of Minneapolis were closed to Jews, and it was difficult for Jews to rent property.¹⁴  In response to McWilliams’s claims, Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey created a task force which eventually confirmed the depth of anti-Semitism in the city, and reforms began to take shape.¹⁵  However, the difficulty of purchasing homes in Minneapolis and its institutionalized discrimination, along with the growing prosperity of the community and general “white flight” from cities, fueled migration to what would become the eruv, as well as to other suburbs to the north and west of Minneapolis. Southern and eastern suburbs traditionally attracted more migrants from St. Paul.

The first Jewish institution in St. Louis Park was apparently a chapter of B’nai B’rith Women founded in 1953, though a Jewish presence had existed as early as the late 1940s.¹⁶  Bnai Abraham, founded in 1888 on the South Side, was the first congregation to move to St. Louis Park, originally occupying a private home; in 1972 it would merge with two other synagogues to become the Conservative Bnai Emet, acquiring a new building. ¹⁷  Other synagogues followed: Gemulus Chesed, a North Side Conservative synagogue, in 1965; Beth El in 1968; and finally Kenesseth Israel in 1971.¹⁸  Minneapolis’s Jewish Community Center was also established in town, though outside the eruv proper; construction began in 1964. By 1987 St. Louis Park was home to thirty-eight percent of the Jews in the Minneapolis area.¹⁹  (For the location of each congregation in the eruv today, see this map.)

Though Kenesseth Israel became the sole Orthodox synagogue in St. Louis Park, in recent years splits within the community have caused new congregations to form. In the 1980s a group of Kenesseth Israel congregants seeking a more traditionalist approach to Orthodox Judaism split off to form Congregation Bais Yisroel; the congregation now has its own synagogue a few blocks away. In 2005 another group desiring a more modern and forward-looking approach also split from Kenesseth to form Darchei Noam. The rise of a newly vibrant ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement in the 1970s and 1980s, which led to the formation of Bais Yisroel, is also one of the reasons why the eruv was set up; as Orthodoxy became more rigid the need for a tool to improve life for families became more apparent (for more on this see the separate article on this history of the eruv). The emergence of these divisions in the community over the last thirty years emphasizes the continuing debate within the eruv over how Jewish traditions ought to be maintained in the modern world.