Antigo (Langlade County)

This commercial city was home to two traditional Jewish congregations in the first half of the 20th century, one succeeding the other. Kahool Adaas Yeshurin was incorporated in 1903. In 1910, the congregation bought a Seventh Day Adventist church at Superior Street and 8th Avenue and converted it into a synagogue. That congregation hired rabbis for the High Holy Days. It dissolved in 1914.

In 1915, many of the former congregants founded Baith Israel congregation. They remodeled the synagogue in the early 1920s. The Jewish population was estimated at either 50 families or 75 persons. Most of the Jewish breadwinners were merchants. In fact, the four local department stores at the time were Jewish-owned.

A Jewish exodus from Antigo began in the late 1920s and continued throughout the 1930s - caused by a declining economy and the desire by some for a larger Jewish community. Baith Israel dissolved in approximately 1932. In 1947, the remaining three congregants sold the synagogue to the Odd Fellows Club. The building subsequently was razed. No known written congregational records remain. The Torah scroll was given to Mt. Sinai Congregation, Wausau.

John Alpert, a longtime Sheboygan resident, lived here from 1940-41.

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.