History Overview: 1840s-1880s

While Jews have had a presence in the United States since before independence, the Jewish population in America rose dramatically with a wave of immigration from Europe which began around 1880. In Minnesota, scholars have concluded that Jewish pioneers probably settled in the territory as early as the 1840s, and a small Jewish community existed in St. Paul even before statehood¹. In 1856 the first synagogue in Minnesota, Mount Zion, was founded in St. Paul²; by 1875 it had been joined by a second congregation, Bnai Yaakov, which catered to the Eastern European community as opposed to the primarily German congregants of Mount Zion³. Minneapolis’s Jewish community formed later; the first known Jewish residents were established there by 1867, and in the 1870s more Jews began to settle there⁴ . However, it was not long before tensions among immigrant groups over what being Jewish in America meant arose there, as they did in Jewish communities nationwide.

The earliest Jewish residents of Minneapolis were immigrants from Germany. These people had mostly lived on the East Coast or in the South before coming to Minneapolis and were able to establish themselves as merchants, and they generally became part of the affluent class in Minneapolis⁵. While the Germans tended to associate mostly with fellow Jews, they generally desired to integrate themselves into American culture, and they only had basic training in Hebrew and in traditional Jewish learning. Core traditions were respected but “could be and were easily compromised when the occasion demanded”⁶. The second wave of Jewish arrivals came from Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe. These Jews, often fleeing conscription or persecution, were more likely to be single, and in general they were less able to speak English and more likely to be poor. These Jews self-segregated to a large extent by origin and religious practice; Romanian Jews settled in a neighborhood on the South Side, while a larger community developed on the North Side⁷. On the North Side, Jews generally kept to themselves and maintained their religious traditions, though old fashions began to disappear as children were educated^8.

The divide that existed in the Jewish community in Minneapolis reflected one that had manifested itself throughout the United States. German Jews were generally the standard-bearers of Reform Judaism, which therefore became the most popular form of Judaism in the United States⁹. Reform Jews tended to think of Judaism as simply a religion rather than emphasizing its ethnic dimension, and they favored a greater degree of assimilation into the dominant American culture¹⁰ . In Minneapolis the first synagogue to be established, Shaarei Tov (founded 1878, later renamed Temple Israel) was Reform¹¹ ; its membership was largely German.