User:Sawyer777/History of the Jews in Madison, Wisconsin

First German Jewish community & Gates of Heaven
The first Jewish residents of Madison were German-speaking immigrants from Bohemia who began arriving in the area in the 1850s. Many of the German-Jewish immigrants to Madison became involved in the clothing and dry goods business, and others were grocers, tailors, or clerks. They were generally secular, liberal, and assimilated well into broader society. Samuel Klauber, an itinerant peddler from Muttersdorf, Bohemia, became the first Jewish resident of Madison when he immigrated to the city in 1851. His brothers and others from Muttersdorf followed throughout the 1850s. The German Jews of Madison lived throughout the downtown, and many became successful businessmen; Klauber ran a clothing and dry-goods store. By 1861, Samuel Klauber and Marcus Kohner were the second- and third-wealthiest residents of Madison. The German Jews lived and worked throughout the downtown area.

In 1856, the German Jews decided to establish a synagogue, and in 1863 the Gates of Heaven Synagogue was built. J.M. Thuringer, a member of the congregation, invited his brother to act as the service leader in 1866, but Gates of Heaven never had a full-time rabbi.

The German Jewish community was in decline by the 1870s. With only six remaining attendees in 1878, the congregation rented out Gates of Heaven to the First Unitarian Society in 1879, and began meeting in members' homes. They later rented Gates of Heaven to, successively, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, and the English Lutheran Church. They sold the building in 1916, and formally dissolved the congregation in 1922.[cite Swarsensky]

Russian Jewish community & Agudas Achim
In the 1890s, a larger wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire began arriving in Madison. Most of them came from a single village in modern-day Belarus, Kapule. They spoke Yiddish and were religiously Orthodox, and had strained relations with the German Jews. They worked as peddlers or in the junk business, and some opened stores. The Russian Jewish community was heavily concentrated within a few blocks located in the Triangle neighborhood, then a part of the Greenbush area, forming what Leslie Goldsmith calls a "ghetto" based on Louis Wirth's study of the phenomenon.

The Russian Jews established a synagogue in 1904, named Agudas Achim, which became the social, educational, and religious center of the community. In 1908, the Jews of Madison founded a chapter of B'nai B'rith and in 1915, a local branch of the Workmen's Circle was established, which provided aid to the recent immigrants from Eastern Europe.

University life and Zionist activism
In 1911, a branch of the Menorah Society (see: The Menorah Journal) was established at the University of Wisconsin (UW) following efforts the previous year to organize a Jewish society. The second attempt was successful due to initial support from two members of the faculty, Louis Bernard Wolfenson and Horace Kallen, and the group saw financial support from Chicago philanthropist Julius Rosenwald the following year to help establish an essay prize. Kallen had been an early member of the society at Harvard University and was described by Isaiah Leo Sharfman as "a source of inspiration and a pillar of strength" to those in the UW group. Among the students involved were Marvin Marx Lowenthal, who became a prominent Zionist author and activist, and Johan J. Smertenko, who served as vice chairman of the pro-Zionist American League for a Free Palestine.

In March 1917, a branch of Hadassah was founded to campaign for the Zionist cause within the city, the fourth oldest chapter in the country. Those associated with the group included Horace Kallen and branch founder Rachel Szold, the wife of Joseph Jastrow and sister of Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold. Members of Madison's Jewish community continued to involve themselves in wider Zionist circles, sending Saul Kasdin as a delegate to the Zionist Organization of America's 1919 national convention: he had served as president of the Zionist Society of Madison during the 1910s. William Linn Westermann, a professor at the Univeristy of Wisconsin, was a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace and later helped lead celebrations at UW following the Mandate for Palestine in 1920.

(scratchpad)
list of synagogues in madison


 * Beth Israel Center (conservative, originates with Russian Jewish immigrant community)
 * Chabad houses (one on regent, one on campus)
 * Congregation Shaarei Shamayim (reconstructionist, meets in First Unitarian Society of Madison, named after Gates of Heaven but unrelated)
 * Temple Beth El (reform, led by Swarsensky for many years)
 * UW Hillel presence
 * Gates of Heaven (not used except for special occasions, oldest synagogue in the state)

some notable people


 * Hannah Rosenthal
 * Russ Feingold
 * Paul Soglin
 * Louis Bernard Wolfenson (taught first Yiddish university course in Americas)
 * Max Kadushin (rabbi at UoW-Madison Hillel)
 * Max D. Ticktin (rabbi at UoW-Madison Hillel)
 * Sherry Mayrent (Klezmer musician who founded Mayrent Collection of Yiddish Recordings with Henry Sapoznik)
 * Solomon Levitan (started at User:Pretzelles/sandbox7)
 * Samuel Klauber (first Jewish resident of Madison)
 * August Kutzbock (architect of Gates of Heaven & numerous other local landmarks, not Jewish but buried in the Jewish cemetery plot)
 * Yid Vicious (local Klezmer/folk band, no idea if they're Notable but their music bangs lol)
 * to be added

Random sources what I found
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM2761
 * https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2022/03/being-a-badger-uw-madisons-issue-with-identity?ct=content_open&cv=cbox_latest - info on UoW and campus antisemitism

https://search.worldcat.org/title/7235627

https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/WI/Madison/#loc=12/43.0765/-89.38