Resilience and Reinvention: The Jewish Community of Utah

The members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who followed Brigham Young into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 and became Utah's first permanent Euro-American settlers significantly impacted the development of the West, but they were not the only religious exiles to make a home in Utah.1 The state has hosted a Jewish community since at least 1851, when Salt Lake resident Lorenzo Brown journaled that he “called to see some Hungarian Jews living in the ward.”2 Solomon Nunes Carvalho, a Jewish photographer and artist traveling with John C. Frémont's mapmaking expedition, convalesced in Parowan and then Salt Lake City for several months in 1853.3 The following year, Julius and Fanny Brooks, usually considered Utah's first permanent Jewish residents, arrived.4 In the 1860s, the transcontinental railroad brought additional Jewish immigrants, including businessmen and their families.5 One of these arrivals, Simon Bamberger, even became Utah's first (and only) Jewish governor in 1916, the second in the nation.Most of Utah's early Jewish settlers were German or central European immigrants. Products of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, they were comfortable integrating into their surroundings and adapting to American culture, while keeping their Jewish identity. In 1883, the community built their first permanent synagogue, offering classical Reform services.6Political unrest and violence in Eastern Europe in the 1880s precipitated mass emigration from the Pale of Settlement, a region of the Russian Empire where Jews were required to live. These Russian and Yiddish speakers were poorer, with different ritual practices, and their settlement in Salt Lake City splintered the Jewish community. By the 1890s, members of B'nai Israel seeking more traditional practice split and established Congregation Montefiore.7 Over the following decades, the community grew to over two thousand, with social groups typically demarcated by synagogue affiliation.Scholarship on Jews in the American West is scarce. As Walter Stern noted in 2011, “Jews are generally as absent from the historiography of the region as the West is from the historiography of American Jewry.”8 Scholarship on Utah's Jews, meanwhile, typically centers on the early settlers or Jews in the first decades of the twentieth century.9This article explores Utah's Jewish community in the latter half of the twentieth century, mainly in Salt Lake City, focusing on shifting Jewish identities and impacts of changing demographics. I contend that there have been three main expressions of Jewish identity in Utah since its first Jewish residents settled. The first, which solidified after rapid growth in the late nineteenth century, was marked by social demarcation along ethnic subsets, primarily the German Reform Jews and the Yiddish-speaking traditional Jews. Their stories are covered by existing scholarship.It is the second and third major expressions that this article explores, beginning with the World War II paradigm shift. Nationally and locally, communities were profoundly impacted by the Holocaust and began to focus on a unified peoplehood. Salt Lake City's disparate communities founded new organizations, merged their separate synagogues, and expanded the Jewish Community Center. These changes were led by the children and grandchildren of Utah's original pioneers and emphasized a unified Jewishness beyond Reform versus Conservative, German versus Polish.The third expression started when Utah's Jewry once again transformed its collective identity beginning in the 1980s, a change influenced by demographics and new geopolitical realities. Today, Salt Lake hosts multiple synagogues and decentralized congregations; the Jewish Community Center's membership is non-Jewish by a vast majority; and groups like the National Council of Jewish Women, Hadassah, and B'nai B'rith either count dwindling memberships or have disappeared altogether. While over five thousand current residents of Utah identify as Jewish, including many descendants of the original settlers, the community no longer retains a centralized collective identity like the one that emerged in the 1940s.Historians have established that the United States government and average Americans were aware of Germany's so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” Reports of atrocities were published in major American newspapers, which most Americans had access to regularly through subscriptions, newsstands, and offices. Though rarely above the fold, these reports were widely available.10On November 25, 1942, the Salt Lake Tribune and other American papers broke news about what became known as the “Riegner telegram.”11 In a message to British Jewish leadership, Gerhart Riegner, secretary-general of the World Jewish Conference, shared a firsthand account he'd been given of Nazi leadership discussing plans to eradicate much of Europe's Jewish population. In German-occupied countries, Riegner reported, “3-½ to 4 million Jews should after deportation and concentration in east at one blow be exterminated to resolve once and for all Jewish question in Europe.” He continued, “Action reported planned for autumn methods under discussion including Prussic acid.”12Britain's Jewish community shared the telegram with American Rabbi Stephen Wise, a personal friend of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in April 1942. Wise, an outspoken critic of Hitler since 1933, immediately shared the telegram with the US State Department, who asked for time to investigate its veracity. By November, with the details confirmed, Wise was given permission to publicize the communication.13 As it was, the telegram understated the situation. By the time the Tribune ran their article, Nazi Germany had already killed over two million Jews, expanding plans to rid all of Europe and the world of the entirety of the Jewish people.Utah's Jews were directly and indirectly impacted by the situation in Europe. Some, like Alberta Freshman, had extended family members deported to Siberia.14 Others, like Wally Sandack, worried about Nazi sympathizers in Utah.15 Abe Cline, interviewed in 1982, remembered that he was aware of Hitler but figured that Nazi ideology would blow over. The worst he thought might happen was that Hitler would “annoy the Jews.”16 Bernie Rose, interviewed in 1983, recalled that some wondered “what the damn Jews over there in Germany were doing; they were standing by and taking it,” though he noted that sentiment faded once they had a better understanding of the scope of the atrocities. For Jewish men of military age, the United States’ entry into the war provided an opportunity for direct action. Rose, for instance, welcomed a “chance to get a crack at Hitler.”17 Over two hundred men and women from Utah's Jewish community joined the armed forces.18Joel Shapiro was among those who served in Europe. Shapiro was trained in intelligence and joined the Third Army G2. While in Europe in April 1945, a report on the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp came across Shapiro's desk. Realizing he was only a dozen miles away, he drove out to view the camp. When interviewed in 2010, Shapiro didn't directly indicate why he was moved to go to Dachau, but it is not hard to assume that he might have felt compelled to understand what had happened to his coreligionists. Shapiro found a site with no order or system. Just two days after liberation, American GIs patrolled the camp, where inmates and survivors remained, still in their striped uniforms. The American army did not want the survivors to storm the countryside, and most were in no condition to travel anyway. In a way, Shapiro recalled, the camp had not so much been liberated as simply exchanged one prison guard (the Nazis) for another (the Americans).19“I saw all these skeleton-like figures, and they would . . . look at me and talk to me in languages of course I did not understand,” Shapiro recalled. “Some came up and touched me and . . . in a way I had a little sense of fear.” Despite other soldiers nearby, Shapiro felt “really alone.” “It was impossible to put in your mind,” he said.20The or as been in since the was a paradigm for world European and American Jews the that with the in the century, the of in the nineteenth century, and Jewish by the and was a of the The new on the of that Hitler found in which to his and Jews came to that the of from so many that only Jews for or about other War II had a on The war Over thousand served in the and those who brought home a new understanding of and changes influenced by Utah's military and the thousand those provided brought new residents to the who in brought new religious and the the state from a to one more with the United war the Jewish population. served in Europe the of the in which the Jewish his for instance, Bernie felt a for the Jews of Europe. was he for to of to When his he found who shared his and regularly to the of and social like the one after the World in the of to what had happened in Germany in the and and his planned that even though has in the United its as a to American Jews in new He that understanding is to understanding identity and Jewish a When with the of the Holocaust in a War II even Jews in the United States more and Jewish Bernie to joined and and social after to had served in the but the he to the of this in and of the established state of and his about their that Israel and Bernie in Israel in his as did Abe Cline, who the Jews who over of Israel and it in the of the by the of the British in to Lake resident a of in in the Jewish was established to the of the United Jewish groups have and the to the Jewish Though Europe's Jews had been liberated from the concentration and in which been they had since their and to most were in Europe while the West its over to Holocaust me that I to the of the from to Jews of no one this for 1945, a and military was as a to to the of of in military in little better the they had as noted in in a that he in the of to of these in the there a to these to and he government and members of the to the liberated of Utah was among the members of an American the on the and Salt Lake in to and for the United Jewish The Salt Lake Jewish community several Jewish the United for by a Salt Lake City leadership, the was one of the by Jewish residents of Salt He had Germany for in while ran a in a home to of of European Jews. an the the of American from the in of he and to the through his with these of US to at In he and his to where they about Utah's for the German in Salt Lake as of the new with the after their and like his Jewish was impacted by the had only one thought on mind,” recalled of his time with or had I that I have been in their Lake City Jews and his Rose, in in the early twentieth century, multiple languages and was with Despite Jewish, he a government for the first half of the war but was deported to in was to a of and to in a was liberated from the camp by American and joined in which had been liberated by the to the and of other at the and at for after the where for the British and from The for to the United States and for from the United Jewish in to the first a In they were to Salt Lake and over for a in the family had with a Jewish When about to in Salt the family put at Their it had been at to Rose, were a of who came Salt at the time that I the the came some were in of in an in the I figured . . . I I didn't it one Jews the decades after the war their and into These decades saw the of new Jewish and an of members into existing membership and of a sense of a of the Jewish Community to the expanded in the many of Utah's Jewish the war were with ethnic or subsets, the paradigm following the World War saw a of identity under a more unified of simply the Salt two synagogues merged and became Congregation which to to the Jewish religious had B'nai the Reform synagogue, and Congregation the of Utah's in one or the other synagogues, typically not the In an a of B'nai Israel and of the merged Congregation did not have two had He the classical Reform as as the at B'nai a synagogue, had a traditional to The two synagogues, standing on their with membership of one or as a community and a of Jews go either while were and were Reform by B'nai of and a of religious like the and The had a a religious a and with a social Congregation first with and with the but still traditional was home to members who what they saw as change on at B'nai had a social a and a religious but did not have a or The of was from the to the Jewish Jewish and the United Jewish Council United Jewish of the of were where the two communities the The Council and the typically to synagogues as as the community. 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