La Crosse (La Crosse County)
Famed American explorer Zebulon Pike left the first written record of the site of what would become the largest city on Wisconsin's western border. He visited the spot during his 1805 voyage up the Mississippi River and listed the name of the place as "Prairie La Crosse," which clearly had been bestowed by French explorers and fur traders.
Non-Indians began to live permanently on the site after 1841. Among its earliest settlers was the founder of the city's Jewish community and one of Wisconsin's remarkable Jewish individuals, John Meyer Levy (1820-1910).
This native of London, England, was educated in Amsterdam and lived in Paris for several years. He came to the United States in 1837, settled first in St. Louis, then opened a store in Prairie Du Chien in 1844. In 1845, he and Samuel Snaugh became the first whites to open a wagon trail to La Crosse, where Levy now settled.
Levy traded with Indians at first, but eventually he became a significant local business leader. He built houses, hotels, docks and warehouses, ran a grocery store and worked with steamboat companies.
He also proved a political and social leader. The then-tiny community of La Crosse held its first known or recorded Christian religious services at Levy's house. La Crosse incorporated as a city in 1856, and Levy was almost the first mayor, losing the election by one vote. He later served three one-year terms as mayor (1860, 1866, 1867) and was an alderman for eight years. (La Crosse mayors today serve four-year terms.)
Rabbi Simcha Prombaum (left) and then-Mayor John Medinger dedicated a La Crosse street in April 2005 in memory of John Mayer Levy, a Jewish merchant who was a founder of La Crosse in the 1840s, a mayor in the 1860s and a leader of the early Jewish community. Medinger urged the street naming after learning about the Wisconsin Small Jewish Communities History Project and speaking with Prombaum.
Rabbi Simcha Prombaum (left) and then-Mayor John Medinger dedicated a La Crosse street in April 2005 in memory of John Mayer Levy, a Jewish merchant who was a founder of La Crosse in the 1840s, a mayor in the 1860s and a leader of the early Jewish community. Medinger urged the street naming after learning about the Wisconsin Small Jewish Communities History Project and speaking with Prombaum.
It appears that not until the 1850s did more Jews arrive and set up businesses and a community. As was true of most Jews coming to the U.S. and Wisconsin in this period, that group comprised "German" Jews from central European countries fleeing the aftermath of the failed 1848 revolution and reform movements. According to a research paper of uncertain authorship provided by Norman Gill, 17 Jewish families settled in La Crosse between 1855 and 1865, all from such places as Prussia, Bavaria, Bohemia and Hungary. At least one member of this group, Louis Hirshheimer, had fought in one of the 1848 revolutions, according to the research paper.
In 1857, this group held its first recorded Jewish religious service in La Crosse (mentioned in an article by H. J. Hirshheimer published in the La Crosse Tribune & Leader-Press on Jan. 22, 1933). Also in that year, this group bought land for a cemetery and founded the Hebrew Indigent, Sick and Burial Society. By 1878, the society had evolved into a Reform synagogue, whose name was variously spelled Anshe Chesed, Ansche Chesed, Ansche Cheset. While the synagogue has gone out of existence, the Ansche Chesed Cemetery retains the shul's name today.
Some sources about La Crosse Jewry assert that some members of the community built a synagogue in 1867; but whether this was independent or an earlier incarnation of Ansche Chesed is not clear. Sources also record that the community's women formed Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society in 1885, but don't record when it went out of existence.
The "German" Jewish community of La Crosse numbered at least 100 people by 1891, according to the research paper. However, that community went into decline from that point and vanished by the 1920s.
However, a new group of Jews began arriving in the 1890s, part of the great wave of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, Rumania, the Baltic countries, etc.). In 1905, this group founded an Orthodox synagogue, Hebrew Congregation Sons of Abraham.
This group went into decline through the 1930s and the first part of the 1940s. Then, according to La Crosse Rabbi Saul Prombaum, a wave of Jewish "young businesspeople," many from Minneapolis, settled in La Crosse after World War II. They took over the synagogue, dropped "Hebrew" from its name, changed its affiliation to the Conservative movement and constructed the building it now occupies, dedicating it in 1948.
Women of the community formed a Hadassah chapter in 1938, but it didn't persist. A Jewish Women's League was formed thereafter and remains active to this day.
In 2000 (Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, Dec. 22), the synagogue reported that it had some 150 members and that about that many unaffiliated Jews lived in the La Crosse area, which has a general population of about 52,000. The synagogue is unique in Wisconsin in attracting members from three states, Minnesota and Iowa as well as Wisconsin.
Members of the community told The Chronicle that a small anti-Semitic skinhead group existed there once and that there had been some vandalism incidents at the synagogue and cemetery, but the Jewish community's overall relations with the general community were "pretty positive." An ecumenical trip to Israel took place in 1998. On Dec. 5, 2007, the La Crosse Tribune reported that Bishop Jerome Listecki, head of the Catholic Diocese of La Crosse, spoke at the Sons of Abraham Chanukah celebration, making him the first Catholic bishop to speak at the synagogue.
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.