Hurley (Iron County)

Hurley thrived in the 1890s and early 20th century as a provider of supplies and adult entertainment to loggers and iron miners in northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. An estimated 300 Jews lived in the small city in 1920. One of them, liquor store owner Hyman Mark, was elected to the Wisconsin Legislature in the early 1920s.

The dedication of the plaque commemorating Hurley's Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, used as an apartment building since 1940, included (from left) Rabbi Norman Lewison, Dr. Steven Heifetz of Minneapolis and State Rep. Gary Sherman (D-Port Wing).

Jews settled in northern Wisconsin beginning in the late 1880s to work as merchants. Most were new or recent immigrants from Russia or Eastern Europe. A WPA book on local history reported that the local Orthodox Jews Louis Ladin, Jake Perl, S.L. Mark, Adolph Skud and H. Selin organized Sharey Zedek "church" in 1892. The congregation first met in Ladin's home on Saturdays. The Jews bought a lot and a house on the northwest corner of 4th and Division streets in 1893. Soon after, the house burned. In 1895, the congregation built a synagogue at the same site that it used until 1940.

Industrial Removal Office resettled nine immigrants here from 1905-1913.

The Rev. B. Perlman served Sharey Zedek before moving to the Ashland synagogue in 1893. That year, Louis Ladin brought the Rev. Moses Rein from Chicago. Learned though not ordained, Rein served the synagogue until 1921, when he left for Minneapolis. The Rev. Temkin led the congregation from 1928-30, and the Rev. Radin from 1932-34. Afterward, the community hired a rabbi for specific holidays. The community at one time numbered 45 families, but had dropped to 25-30 by 1937.

Dr. Steven Heifetz of Minneapolis at the Iron County Historical Society, Hurley, Wis., with the display he built of ritual items from the Hurley synagogue.

Dr. Steven Heifetz of Minneapolis at the Iron County Historical Society, Hurley, Wis., with the display he built of ritual items from the Hurley synagogue.

After 1940, when the synagogue was sold and converted into an apartment building, local Jews continued to pray with the Jewish community of the adjoining city, Ironwood, Mich., in a Finnish social hall. When the hall closed decades ago, the synagogue's religious items -- Torah scrolls, velvet Torah covers, prayer books, prayer shawls -- were left behind. They turned up in 2004 at an area antique store. A Hurley civic activist, lawyer Paul Sturgul, bought the items to sell to a descendant of the Rev. Rein. The descendant, great-grandson Dr. Steven Heifetz of Minneapolis, assembled a display case for the items. He presented it to the Iron County Historical Society in Hurley in 2005.

The building, sans its original onion-shaped dome, still stands at 400 Division St., less than a mile from where Hurley's bordellos had operated. A free-standing plaque marks the apartment building as the former home of Iron County's only synagogue.

Shaarey Zedek Cemetery stands at the edge of Hurley, the oldest grave marked 1902. A remnant of the Jewish community remains in Ironwood. One Jew is known to live in Hurley now (2006).

All of these articles are always open to the addition of new information. Readers who have more data about, or documents or artifacts from, these communities are welcome to contact Leon Cohen at the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning at 414-963-4135 or lcohen@wsjl.org.