Building Community on the Great Plains: B’nai Israel Synagogue and Montefiore Cemetery

B’nai Israel Synagogue by DeRemer and DeRemer, completed in 1937.

National Register of Historic Places photo by Steve C. Martens

In the mid-to-late 1800s, Jews fleeing religious persecution and mob violence (pogroms) in eastern and central Europe immigrated to the United States. Some chose to stay in large urban areas like New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, while others chose to settle in smaller towns and in rural areas throughout the West. Many Jewish settlers were attracted to the Dakota Territory by advertising and promotional literature that the Great Northern Railway had distributed throughout Eastern Europe. Some came to the territory on their way to the gold mines of Montana but chose to put down roots instead of heading farther west. Some were drawn by an entrepreneurial spirit and the potential to establish a small business. For many who had experienced antisemitic violence and discrimination in their home countries, rural areas like these promised safety.

The Road to Grand Forks

Two aid organizations—the Jewish Agricultural Aid Society (JAAS) and the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society (JAIAS)—helped these immigrants find security and opportunity in the West. In south-central Dakota Territory, they established Jewish agricultural resettlement colonies near Ashley and Wishek, and in the northeastern part of the territory at Starkweather, Webster, Garske, Ben Zion, and Adler. However, many of the Jews who were recruited to establish farms in these areas did not have an agricultural background—in fact, most had been prohibited from owning land in their countries of origin. Their lack of farming experience, combined with rocky soils and punishing weather, as well as deep poverty and isolation from a broader Jewish community, led most of these agricultural colonies to fail. Many of these Jewish immigrants then turned to peddling or working in small stores throughout the region. Some found success here, progressing to larger stores in cities like Minneapolis, Denver, and Chicago. Several chose to stay in the Dakota Territory and made their way to the town of Grand Forks.

Rabbi Benjamin Papermaster, photographed in Grand Forks, ND, in 1916.

Jewish Museum of the American West

Building Jewish Community in Grand Forks

By 1891, there were 60 Jewish families and several unmarried Jewish men in Grand Forks. Many of them came from Ukraine (part of the Russian Empire at that time), while others hailed from Romania and Galacia (southeastern Poland), and five or six of these families were from Germany. These new arrivals were adherents of Orthodox Judaism, but they spoke different Yiddish dialects and pronounced Hebrew differently from each other—yet all were eager to adjust to their new lives in the United States. Together, they established the Congregation of the Children of Israel (B’nai Israel, in Hebrew) in 1891. In support of the Jewish community, William Budge, a local politician and Grand Forks Postmaster, donated a parcel to the congregation near the Great Northern Railway tracks in a thriving neighborhood of Jewish residents and businesses. On this lot, they built a wood-framed synagogue, and many of the congregants mortgaged their homes and peddling wagons to pay for its construction, which cost $3,000 (approximately $107,000 in 2024). Seating 300 worshipers, it was completed in time for Rabbi Benjamin Papermaster (who emigrated from Lithuania) to lead the Rosh Hashanah services in the autumn of 1892.

Gate to Montefiore Cemetery

Jeffrey Powell

Postmaster Budge also donated land for a consecrated Jewish cemetery. Its first recorded burial was in 1888, although some unmarked graves may predate it. Named for the revered British Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore, the cemetery represents the burial customs and beliefs of the Jewish community on the North Dakota landscape. An iron fence separates the consecrated burial ground from the larger cemeteries for non-Jews that are nearby. Inside this fence, tall, mature evergreen trees symbolize perpetual life and shield the peaceful cemetery from street traffic. Grave marker styles, symbols, and languages reflect the diverse backgrounds and cultural traditions of the Jewish people buried here. Descendants and other visitors leave pebbles and small stones atop the grave markers as a token of their visit and to protect and honor the souls who dwell there.

B’nai Israel Synagogue’s sanctuary includes purple and orange stained-glass windows, as well as the bimah (platform and lectern from which the Torah is read), the ner tamid (a hanging lamp that represents the Eternal Light), and a textured paneled wall that includes the ark, where the Torah is kept.

Jeffrey Powell

Forty-five years after their first synagogue was completed, Congregation B’nai Israel built a new synagogue designed in a modest Art Deco style by father-and-son architects Joseph Bell DeRemer and Samuel Teel DeRemer. The symmetrical building exterior is finished with cream-colored stucco and features restrained ornamentation. Three arches mark the entrance, over which reads the name B’nai Israel. Vertical lines at chamfered corners appear like fluted columns, and a zigzag pattern at its cornice repeats in the orange-and-purple stained-glass windows that illuminate the sanctuary like a jewel box. Geometric light fixtures suspended from its ceiling feature precise, machine-like details as they glow. With distinct spaces for worship, education, and social activities in the synagogue, the sanctuary included a separate women’s section (balcony) that was an important feature for the Orthodox congregation; it remains in place today, even though B’nai Israel now follows the traditions of Reform Judaism.

Grave markers in Montefiore Cemetery reflect the diverse backgrounds and cultural traditions of the Jewish people buried here. Descendants and other visitors leave pebbles and small stones atop the grave markers as a token of their visit and to protect and honor the souls who dwell there.

Jeffrey Powell

Preservation and Continuity

In October 2011, B’nai Israel Synagogue and Montefiore Cemetery were listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The 1937 Art Deco-styled building and the cemetery landscape established in 1888 tell the story of the social, spiritual, cultural, and civic growth of a Jewish community in North Dakota over more than 130 years. The construction of their second synagogue demonstrated the strength and longevity of Congregation B’nai Israel as well as the Americanization of its members and their acceptance by their neighbors. Together with the Montefiore Cemetery, the synagogue is a testament to the Jewish citizens of Grand Forks, the oldest and once-largest urban Jewish community in the state of North Dakota. Both the B’nai Israel Synagogue and the Montefiore Cemetery remain in active use today.

This summary is drawn from the National Register of Historic Places nomination (NR Ref. 11000745) authored by Steve C. Martens and Peg O’Leary in 2011.

Bibliography

Tobias Brinkmann, “Between Vision and Reality: Reassessing Jewish Agricultural Colony Projects in Nineteenth Century America,” Jewish History 21:3/4 (2007), pp. 305-324.

Steve C. Martens and Peg O’Leary, “B’nai Israel and Montefiore Cemetery,” National Register of Historic Places nomination (2011). NR Ref. 11000745. Available at National Archives and Records Administration.

Isadore Papermaster, History of the North Dakota Jewish Community (1959), manuscript available at North Dakota State University Repository.

J. Sanford Rikoon, “The Jewish Agriculturalists’ Aid Society of America: Philanthropy, Ethnicity, and Agriculture in the Heartland.” Agricultural History 72:1 (Winter 1998), pp. 1-32.

Lois Fields Schwartz, “Early Jewish Agricultural Colonies in North Dakota.” North Dakota History 32:3 (October 1965), pp. 217-231.