- I'm Jim Kirchherr, and during this bicentennial year, we've been featuring a lot of our history programs, both new and from our archives.

Coming up is a history of St. Louis's Jewish community.

Now this first aired in 2008, so it only takes us so far, but the story, it actually starts about 200 years before that.

(upbeat music) (upbeat horn music) (chanting in foreign language) (upbeat drum music) It is Purim, one of the most colorful, and certainly the noisiest of all Jewish holidays.

It may not be typical, but then it is impossible to say what is typically Jewish.

The community is in many ways as varied as the costumes in this parade, or in any of the Purim celebrations that have been taking place in St. Louis longer than anyone can remember.

Jews have been a part of St. Louis for more than 200 years.

They came as individuals and families, in trickles and in waves.

This city would play an important role in defining their lives, and their lives would play an important role in defining the city.

Their Jewish history is American history, and St. Louis history.

(country music) Soon after the Louisiana purchase made St. Louis an American city, it would have its first Jewish resident.

It's possible Jews passed through before that, but non-Catholic settlers were banned by the French and Spanish, even though the rules were not always strictly enforced.

But in the United States, there was no state religion, no such rules.

The Jews who came to the US, many of them peddlers, traders, and merchants, had never been in a country that gave them so much freedom to do what they wanted and go where they wanted.

And they did, even if it took them to the most remote frontier outpost.

- That was actually part of the success, this mobility that they had, that they could, when they were planning very carefully.

When they saw an opportunity somewhere else, they would follow it.

- [Paul] In Philadelphia, that's exactly what the Phillipson brothers were planning to do.

Simon, Joseph, and Jacob Phillipson were Jews who had come to America, and they already had business dealings in the frontier fur trade and lead mining.

(country music) The United States now stretched all the way to the Pacific ocean, and they knew St. Louis would be the gateway for those heading into the new territory.

Less than 10 years after he arrived in the United States, Joseph Phillipson was making the long journey west with $10,000 worth of goods.

- What they decided to do is to open up a store in St. Louis, where they would sell, as a merchant, supplies.

Jacob also did the same thing, also opened the store.

With the brother operating in the east, and them operating here, they ran like a family business this way, and that's what really brought them here to St. Louis.

- This is the Phillipson ledger.

- [Paul] At the St. Louis Mercantile Library is the record of Joseph Phillipson's sales at his St. Louis store.

The first entry is dated December 13th, 1807.

- We've got quite an interesting array of St. Louis personages in this.

Choteau.

Here's Governor Merryweather Lewis.

Even has Merryweather Lewis's liquor bill with the Phillipson's in here.

- [Paul] There is nothing in the ledger that tells you Joseph Phillipson was a Jew, and everything we know about him indicates that he came to St. Louis to open a business, not to bring a religion.

- There certainly were Jew's who arrived here, and they opted out of Judaism.

They changed their names, they intermarried.

That's it.

So it wasn't an optional identity in America, and it's actually quite surprising how many Jews clung so much to Judaism, and pretty much immediately after they arrived they were looking for some sort of Jewish connection.

(country music) - [Paul] One frontier Jewish merchant who did make those connections, did maintain his Jewish identity, was Joseph Phillipson's brother, Jacob.

He was the only one of the three brothers who would find a Jewish wife, which could not have been easy.

Most of the Jews on the frontier were young single men, and a few years after arriving in St. Louis, Jacob moved down river to open a store in St. Genevieve.

- We've got great archival records that show different accounts with people here in St. Genevieve.

He became involved in the community, and was a fire warden here in St. Genevieve at a time.

He kind of disappears for a short time, around 1815 or 16.

He sells his house here, and we don't see any evidence of him for a couple of years.

- [Paul] Although historians don't all agree, it is possible Jacob went east to Cincinnati, which was home to a branch of the Block family, probably the largest Jewish family in the West.

The next thing we know, Jacob is back in St. Genevieve with a new wife, Elizabeth Block.

- And in 1818, in April, buys this property that we're on today, and he starts construction of this very elegant federal style stone structure.

And by all measures, this would have been the most elegant house probably in town at the time.

- [Paul] It is an American house quite different in style from the homes the French had built.

In St. Genevieve, Cape Gerardo, in St. Louis, and in other frontier river towns, Jewish merchants were among the settlers who were transforming the Louisiana territory into a piece of America, building American communities.

Creating Jewish communities within them would take much longer.

(water pouring) (distant chanting) There is a particular moment that marks the establishment of a Jewish religious community, the first worship service.

You don't need a synagogue, you don't need a rabbi, you need a minyan.

- That's 10 Jewish men over the age of 13, and a minyan, it represents community.

And so there are certain parts of the prayer service, The Talmud says that in a community, in a great, in a larger gathering of people, you can sense God in a more powerful way.

- [Paul] There is a minion at Base Abraham, an Orthodox synagogue in University City, and at other congregations throughout the week.

But the very first in St. Louis was significant, not just because it was the first, but because it took so long to happen.

- In St. Louis, the first known Jew came in 1807, and there was no service here for 30 years.

- [Paul] Historians have been frustrated at setting an exact year, 1836, 37, or 38.

There are no written records, just an account written nearly 50 years later, and there are inconsistencies.

But it does say the first worship service took place on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, in a room at a grocery store at Second and Spruce, now the south end of the arch grounds.

This was the beginning of what would become the United Hebrew congregation.

But formerly organizing as a congregation was not their first priority.

- A cemetery was often the first Jewish institution in a town or a city.

You had more deaths than, let's say, circumcisions, because there were not that many women there in the beginning, not that many families.

- The first cemetery was located on what was then the outskirts of the city.

After the Civil War, city growth prompted United Hebrew to buy land much further West, in what would later become University City.

The establishment of the cemetery was the first public sign that St. Louis had a Jewish community.

A year later, they formerly organized into the United Hebrew Congregation.

- The United Hebrew Congregation is the oldest Jewish congregation west of the Mississippi river.

I think it was, at its founding, it was one of only 20 Jewish congregations in the United States.

It was present and enlisted names-- - [Paul] The congregation would also organize a benevolent society to care for the sick and the poor, and they began to create in St. Louis a place where one could live and raise a family as an observant Jew.

After years of holding services in rooms and homes, United Hebrew leased a Baptist church in 1848, and converted it into a synagogue.

Still, they had no rabbi.

- Rabbi really means teacher, and a rabbi is a teacher and a guide, but all Jews are the same in the sense that nobody has any special powers.

Anybody can lead the service.

(speaking in foreign language) (slow music) - [Paul] St. Louis's first rabbi was Bernard Illoway, who came in 1854, more than 15 years after that first worship service.

It was an important decision for United Hebrew to bring in a full-time rabbi, in part because it was no longer the only congregation in town.

The year Illoway became the first rabbi, a new congregation, B'nai El, was building a synagogue, and not because United Hebrew was overcrowded.

- There's this joke that, what does a Jew do when when he gets to a lonely island?

He builds two synagogue.

One to pray in, and the other one where he will never set foot in.

- There's a Yiddish phrase, it's called an (speaking in foreign language) which, like, if there are three synagogues, or three shuls in an intersection, just, (speaking in foreign language), you know, just to do it, or just out of spite, you know, somebody will put up a fourth one.

- [Sonja] Whether in Europe or in America, descent was a very Jewish thing that can be very fruitful.

It can be destructive at times, but it can also bring forth good things.

- [Paul] It's not as if the Jews who were coming to St. Louis during the 1840s and 50's didn't have their differences.

Most of the newcomers, like a lot of the immigrants, were German speakers, but they came from different regions of Europe, and what they found at United Hebrew was not always to their liking.

St. Louis soon had what people called the Polish, German, and Bohemian congregations, differing in how they conducted worship and what prayers they used.

But there was more to it than that.

- Sometimes you had cultural differences, or even personal differences that led to the formation of new congregations and synagogues, which they could do in America.

In Europe, it was a little different.

- [Paul] All the early synagogues practiced by today's definition Orthodox Judaism, but the establishment of B'nai El was the start of a movement to something less rigid.

They weren't calling it reform yet, but that's where they were heading.

- The Jews of the United States, in wanting to Americanize and be in the American mainstream, appreciated the importance of an American expression of Judaism, as opposed to a European expression of Judaism.

And they sought the new.

- [Paul] One of those modern Americans was Isadore Bush, a native of Prague who came to St. Louis in 1849.

He began to build a successful wine business, and later invested in real estate and railroads.

He was a prominent businessman, an active civic leader, and a proud practicing Jew, and the Jewish communities first historian.

Future researchers would have Isadore Bush to thank for those 1883 articles about the first minion and early settlers.

Bush's history, however, makes no mention of Joseph Phillipson's arrival in 1807.

It's possible he didn't know of the Phillipson's.

More likely he knew enough to leave them out.

In Isadore Bush's history, he says there were those who disavowed or concealed their being Jewish or of Jewish descent.

These, he said, he would not count among St. Louis's Jews.

- Who is a Jew remains a tantalizing question, but there's no one way, as there never has been, one way of defining who was a Jew.

That's certainly true today, and maybe more so than ever.

- [Rabbi] You shall not oppress your neighbors nor rob them.

- [Paul] There is much about the United Hebrew sabbath services that would surprise the founders of that frontier congregation.

Not just the size of the building and the number of worshipers, but the service itself.

Men and women are sitting together, and there's a woman rabbi.

This is American reformed Judaism.

United Hebrew and the other early congregations moved gradually into the reform movement of the 19th century.

But for some liberal thinking German Jews, they weren't moving fast enough.

And so in 1867, a group broke away from B'nai El and formed congregation Shaare Emeth.

They built this impressive synagogue at 17th and Pine.

From day one, this was a reform congregation.

Men and women sitting together, no head coverings, and shorter services with sermons.

They installed an organ and brought in a choir.

- And tried to bring worship into line with what they felt was modern aesthetic sensibilities, which to them meant similar to the Protestant church.

- [Paul] At the synagogue dedication, a guest speaker from New York was Rabbi Solomon Sonneschein.

He was so impressive, they hired him.

In some ways, they got more than they bargained for.

He could be inspiring, but also arrogant and abrasive.

And he didn't just move away from the old Jewish traditions, he threw them out and wouldn't let them back in.

- He said, we have to be like our fellow Americans, celebrating with them their holidays, as well as our own.

And he even advocated for a while that Jews should have Christmas trees, not as a religious symbol, but as a symbol of being Americans and part of the times.

- And they often saw themselves as saving, especially in America, as saving Judaism from many of its members defecting to Christianity.

They thought that if they changed Judaism and adapted to the modern world, then less Jews would abandon Judaism or convert.

- [Paul] The new rabbi's wife, Rosa Sonneschein, was also outspoken and independent.

She was a feminist, and became Editor of the American Jewess Literary Journal.

She often publicly disagreed with her husband, and their modern, flamboyant ways provided much gossip, as did their eventual divorce.

Rabbi Sonneschein, who often spoke to Christian groups, was a prominent public figure, and when he battled with the Shaare Emeth board in the 1890's, it was covered in the Post Dispatch.

The paper said there was a new Orthodox faction on the board, unhappy with the rabbi's radical ways, and they heard that Sonneschein had applied for a job in New York.

The opening was for a Minister at a Unitarian church.

- The board confronts him, and the board is divided, and he denies it, but he's so angry that he takes half the board, and they leave and form Temple Israel.

And he doesn't last long at Temple Israel too.

In a few years, he's gone from there.

He had a fight with the board, and went back to the New York area.

Incidentally historians have found that it was true, that he had looked at a Unitarian pulpit in New York.

- [Paul] In the early 20th century, B'nai Amoona congregation would offer Jews a middle ground between the old world Orthodox and new world reform.

In 1917, the Orthodox synagogue became St Louis's first conservative congregation.

But since the late 19th century, the majority of practicing Jews have belonged to reform synagogues.

United Hebrew moved into its new synagogue at 21st and Olive in 1880.

Once Orthodox, St. Louis's first congregation had by now embraced the new American way of doing things.

- And here's a listing of the membership in 1880, and it said, Rabbi and Minister, which is interesting language.

Rabbi and Minister, Reverend Henry J Messing, and he was referred to as Reverend, but he was a rabbi.

- [Paul] Rabbi Howard Komplansky today would never go by Reverend, and the 19th century reform rabbis would have never worn a yarmulke or a prayer shawl.

There has been a return in many reformed congregations to some of the old traditions, but in other ways, United Hebrew remains true to its 19th century reform roots.

After this worship service, members remain to listen to a panel, made up of a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim.

Reform Jewish leaders in 19th century St. Louis were often at the forefront of social change, community activism, but political organization?

That was something they generally left to others.

- For Jews, local politics was not the main venue for, you know, asserting themselves, or rising, like it was for the Irish, with local political machines, especially in the democratic party.

And many Jewish leaders, throughout the 19th century, even early 20th century, were very careful to say, look, there is no Jewish vote.

We vote as Americans.

- [Paul] There have, of course, been Jewish politicians.

Lawrence Ruse served for years as St. Louis County Supervisor, and Ken Rothman and Harriet Woods were elected Lieutenant Governor.

But in all of St Louis and Missouri history, voters have sent only one Jew to Washington.

His name was Nathan Frank.

- He was a politician, he was a lawyer, he was in the real estate.

He built the Lowes State Theater downtown, founded The Star Times newspaper.

Today he would be called a Renaissance man.

- [Paul] In 1888, Frank was elected to Congress from St. Louis and served just one term, during which he began to lobby for a World's Fair.

Although Chicago got the Colombian exposition, Frank continued to work to bring St. Louis a World's Fair in 1904.

He was among some of the city's prominent Jews to serve on the World's Fair committee.

He never won another election.

He lost three US Senate primaries, but never blamed that on his being Jewish.

But when he was passed over for a cabinet post he expected to get, that was different.

- And the only time that I ever saw in print a quote attributed to Frank, and Frank thought that it was strictly anti-Semitism, that the fact that he was Jewish kept him from having that cabinet post.

- [Paul] If Nathan Frank is known at all today, it's for donating the money for the island bandstand in Forest Park.

His lasting impact wasn't really in politics or elective office, but in civic life.

Like others, he was known not just for the money he made, but for the money he gave away.

In the 20th century, many Jewish family names had become familiar as names of places.

Tillis, Greensfelder, Alo, Edison, Steinberg.

The skating rink in Forest Park opened in 1957, a gift to the city from Etta Steinberg as a Memorial to her late husband, Mark C Steinberg, an investment broker.

This sort of thing had been going on since the 19th century, when Jewish St. Louisans first began to succeed in their new home.

- Philanthropy and sponsorship of the arts was a big part of how Jews, I won't use the word assimilated, but of how they showed their patriotism and also their gratitude to America.

- [Paul] Aaron Fuller was one of those Jewish American success stories.

He was one of the founding partners of the Sticks Baron Fuller Company, and the Grand Leader department store.

By the 1920s, he was a very, very wealthy man, but he and his partners did not start out with all this, did not start out with mansions, or a store that covered a city block.

This was the much more humble start of the Sticks Baron Fuller story.

Two brothers, Julius and Sigmund Baer, had arrived from Germany, young and alone, but with the name of a relative and a place to go.

Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The relative lent them money to open this store in a nearby small town on the Arkansas river.

- Fort Smith, at that time, was the last outpost before Oklahoma.

Fort Smith was an Army Garrison, and they handled goods, and wagons, and tools for people who were homesteading in Oklahoma, and North Texas, and all that stuff.

They prospered, they worked hard.

Those guys really worked hard.

They slept on the counters at night a lot of times so the store could be open first thing in the morning for some guy who had to come in and get out, and they wanted to be of service.

- [Paul] Aaron Fuller came to America when he was just 14, worked for a while in Chicago, and then he too headed for Arkansas and went into business with Julius and Sigmund Baer.

They bought a store on Fort Smith's main street and called it the Boston Store.

It grew bigger along with the town, and they opened branches, and the partners became relatives when Aaron Fuller married Julius and Sigmund's sister, Frieda.

- They often married the sisters or cousins of their business partners, and that's how business connections got established.

And the Jewish, the early Jewish economy in America was much reliant on family ties, and on more general Jewish connections.

- [Paul] Towns like Fort Smith weren't really isolated outposts.

They were ties to bigger cities, the manufacturing, distribution, and banking centers.

And for much of the south and the west, that center was St. Louis, the kind of place that drew ambitious men.

(horn beeping) This, the late 1800's and early 1900's, was the age of the hustling and bustling downtown.

Street cars, elevators, electricity made this the center of everything, business, entertainment, and shopping.

And this was the age of the giant department store, everything under one roof.

The Baer's and Aaron Fuller opened with their new partner, Charles Sticks, The Grand Leader department store, which kept moving to bigger and bigger buildings.

- [Young Man] I mean, they grew fast.

They really did.

And their main competition was the Barr Company, Famous Barr.

- [Paul] The story of Famous Barr and The May Company also began far from St. Louis.

High up in the Rocky mountains was the silver mining boom town of Leadville, Colorado.

David May came from Germany as a child, arrived in Leadville in 1877, and opened a store with Moses Schoenberg, and married his sister.

Even here, there was a Jewish community and a synagogue.

They went to Denver to open their first department store, and then went to St. Louis, where they bought two businesses, combining the Famous store and Barr's Dry Goods into one.

(horn beeping) St. Louis would become headquarters of The May Company.

- They were at the right place at the right time, and department stores was also something that was built up by Jews in Europe to a great degree.

So again, we have this parallel of Jewish economic patterns in Europe and in America, only, in America, they were much freer to develop, and to show initiative, and be rewarded for it.

- [Paul] In the 20th century, more businesses founded by Jewish families would come to St. Louis because it was a national center of the garment industry and shoe manufacturing.

The five Edison brothers, who had a shoe store in Atlanta, came to St. Louis in the 1920's, and built a company that would become one of the country's largest retailers of women's shoes.

But they too were sons of a Jewish immigrant who had started out as a peddler.

(emotional music) When the men of that generation, like Aaron Fuller, passed away, they were not just giants in the business world, but in civic life, charitable work, and in the Jewish community.

Their deaths made headlines in the city papers, the German papers, and the Jewish papers.

Their children and grandchildren often continued their work in the community.

And even after their names were gone from the stores and businesses, their contributions remained.

- You know, when you come to the St Louis Art Museum, or maybe any encyclopedic museum across the country, many people want to find where are the Van Gogh's, where are the Monet's, where are the Cézanne's, where are the Gauguin's?

And this is the room here where you experience that.

And what's remarkable is that, largely, every picture in this room is from the Steinberg family or from the Schaumberg.

- [Paul] The family names are all over the museum, on labels next to pictures, which they or their foundations gave to the St. Louis Art Museum.

But no one had as great an impact as Morton May, the head of The May Company, and grandson of its founder.

Morton May, who died in 1983, gave some 5,000 works of art to the museum.

Oceanic art, Meso-American art, and his early appreciation of Max Beckmann became the core of the museums fine collection of German expressionist paintings.

- [Andrew] We owe a real sense of gratitude, not only to those families and what they sort of did in the mid 20th century in building these collections, but that they saw that they would come to the St Louis Art Museum and be the core of this great city's art museum, that would bring us international attention.

(distant chatting) - [Paul] The giving takes place in many ways in the Jewish community.

It is more than a tradition, it is a religious obligation known as Tzedakah.

At United Hebrews Mitzvah day, congregation members gathered to assemble meals for a food pantry, and make pillows for hospital patients.

Charity has often been a uniting factor in the Jewish community.

The first organized effort came after the Chicago fire in 1871.

The different Jewish congregations worked together to help Jewish families recover and resettle.

Jewish organizations would respond to new disasters, and crises, and ongoing needs, eventually forming the Jewish Federation to coordinate their efforts.

It would serve as a model for the united way.

Today, it's services reach far beyond St. Louis and the Jewish community, but that's where and why it was started.

- Federation was created at the time of the mass immigration from Eastern Europe, from Russia, from Poland, from the Ukraine.

These were people who coming with nothing, and they were overwhelming the existing Jewish community.

- We were so glad to be here, and I reminded my dad all the time.

I says, if you never do another thing for the family, you've done the thing that saved our lives.

I says, you gave us the opportunity to live in freedom, and the opportunity to be somebody.

(emotional music) - [Paul] They came for the same reasons previous immigrants had come, but their arrival in St. Louis would challenge the Jewish community.

Not just because there were so many who needed help settling in, but because they were so different.

These were Yiddish speaking Orthodox Jews, coming to a place where the established German Jews had worked hard to look, act, and even worship like other Americans.

- The reaction of the established Jewish community to the newcomers was ambivalent.

On the one hand, they felt obliged to help them, often with genuine feelings of sympathy for their oppressed and downtrodden brethren.

But on the other hand, they were embarrassed by them, and they wanted to Americanize them as quickly as possible, so that they would not cause antisemitism and endanger the status of the community that was already there.

- You know, we're a family of six children.

- [Paul] In 1997, after he had just turned 100 years old, Ben Satz told the story of one family's journey from Russian village to big American city.

His father came to St. Louis first, arriving in 1904.

- He immediately went to work, it was easy to get work, and then he saved up enough money that he could send for his two oldest daughters.

They worked in the dress factories, you know?

Right immediately they got work, you know?

And we came here in March of 1908.

We took a train that brought us to Union Station, and from union station, they brought us over in a horse and buggy way, cobblestone streets and what have you.

My sisters, when we came in into the house, they says, now we have to go and Americanize you, and buy you different clothes, and so this, and do that.

And we were definitely going to be American citizens, don't you see?

And that's the way it was.

(upbeat music) - They wanted very much to Americanize.

It was very important to them.

They did not see eye to eye with the central European Jews on how to do that, but for them, Americanization became an almost obsession.

And definitely clothing on the first day.

They had the shoes, the pants, a suit.

That was definitely a major thing.

(slow music) - [Paul] The Satz's lived just north of downtown, an area that would be known as the Jewish ghetto, although other immigrant groups lived nearby as well.

Ben learned English at school, worked as a newsboy, and learned to play baseball at the nearby park.

Then, like many others, he got a job in the garment district, and stayed in the business the rest of his life.

Not as a sewer or a presser, as many of the first immigrants did, but as a salesman, and later a store manager.

The children of many immigrants moved into white collar jobs, and some would go to college.

- When you compare it to other immigrant groups, you can see a level of upward mobility which is nearly unprecedented in American history.

(upbeat music) - [Paul] Few people are still around who remember the old north side Jewish neighborhood.

It was a vibrant and colorful place, but a place that, when you started doing well, you moved out of.

There's hardly anything left of it now.

Most of what was there has been torn down and built over, but there are family businesses that trace their roots to that old neighborhood.

North of downtown, there are scrap metal recycling businesses, massive high-tech operations that started simply.

A Russian-Jewish immigrant with a horse and wagon, traveling through neighborhoods, collecting all kinds of metal, paper, and rags.

In 1913, immigrant Max Pretzel started a bakery in the old neighborhood, and his grandson is still running the business, turning out bagels, rye bread, and challah.

This business survived by following its customers.

- Actually, the bakery itself has migrated as that Jewish population migrated, from downtown, into the Wellston area, into the University City area, into Creek Core, in Chesterfield.

You can follow that migration sort of as the bakery itself has moved.

- [Paul] St. Louis has always been a city on the move, expanding and changing.

In 1876, the original B'nai El synagogue was still standing, but it was now the Good Samaritan Episcopal church, an African-American congregation.

Over and over, Jewish and Christian Black and white congregations would move in and out of each other's buildings.

In 1927, United Hebrew congregation was moving again, and members of the Ladies' Aid acted out the move for the camera, riding over to the brand new synagogue across from Forest Park.

(energetic music) Some of the older members were filmed tracing the congregation's westward movement, visiting the downtown side of the first worship service 90 years before, the sight of the second synagogue at 21st and Olive, and then to the synagogue at Kings Highway and Enright, which now had a For Sale sign.

Their new home was on the very western edge of the city, and United Hebrew would stay there for 50 years.

The movement of the Jewish population had generally been westward, along the central corridor and north to Page.

German Jews' neighborhoods were south of Delmar, in the West End.

East European Jews were, for the most part, north of Delmar.

But with each generation, the two groups were blending, and the melting pot was the public schools.

- It was much more segregated ethnically in those days.

Walter Ehrlich, the great and late local historian, talked about how the German Jews and the Russian Jews began to interdate.

First, at Soldan High School, and then later at U City High School.

- [Paul] In the years between the world wars, the center of the Jewish community was at Union and Delmar, not just because of Soldan, but because of the opening in 1927 of the new Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association, the Jewish Y at Union and Enright.

There had been other Y's, and organizations, and settlement houses in the Jewish neighborhoods, but this was being called St. Louis's first true Jewish community center.

It would later take on the JCC name and move west into the county, where today it is in many ways different, in others, pretty much the same, at least at this table, where the friendships go back to the old neighborhood and the old Y.

- I knew Mickey, I knew Mon.

- Most of the fellows that I went to school with in Soldan would all go walk over and go together.

Play basketball, swim.

- They had a teenage club downstairs in the basement, like, and all the teenagers met, and they had a jukebox down there, and they used to dance down there, and was just a nice meeting place.

- [Paul] In the next generation, the neighborhood would shift further west along Delmar to University City, and that's where you would find the big Jewish high school, the Jewish businesses, and new synagogues.

- It was kind of an insular, isolated community.

As a matter of fact, the first time I heard the word ghetto was in relationship to the old Delmar loop area.

And we didn't really mean anything pejorative about it, or it wasn't a put down, but we had simultaneously a great secure feeling.

I can count the number of times I was subjected to anything anti-Semitic.

I think I had three such incidents, two for sure, and one probably, in all those years.

- [Paul] The discrimination Jews faced in places like St. Louis was nothing like they had dealt with in the old country, but it was here, sometimes overtly coming from individuals, more subtly in business, and education, and social circles.

There were companies that wouldn't hire them, schools they wouldn't get into, clubs they couldn't join, and streets that couldn't live on, no matter how much money they had.

In 1900, wealthy cotton merchant Jacob Goldman, excluded from the private streets of the central west end, bought land and developed his own gated street, Hortense Place, where he built his mansion.

And when the next generation of college educated Jews came out of the universities, they knew or quickly found out which downtown companies and law firms hired Jews, and which did not.

It was still that way when Mike Newmark came home to St. Louis to practice tax law.

- Sure.

There was never any statement that, oh, you can't, you can't get a job there.

It just happened that you didn't get a job offer from those other law firms.

And then, and so this would be in the 1960, early to mid 1960's.

It began to break down in the 70's, and I'd say by the middle 1980's, it had fully broken down.

- Well, when I applied for med school, they interviewed me, and I was told that there were going to be four Jewish people accepted.

And fortunately, I was one of them.

But that was, the same thing was happening in medical schools all over the country.

- [Paul] They didn't just find those restrictions going into medical school, but coming out as well.

It was one of the reasons Jewish hospitals were started in big cities.

- [Morris] There was no good place to train Jewish doctors.

- St. Louis's first Jewish hospital opened on Delmar in 1902, primarily to serve indigent Jewish patients.

It was funded mostly by contributions from the reform German Jews, and it did not have a kosher kitchen.

When Jewish community leaders began to talk about building the larger hospital, Orthodox Jews insisted it have a kosher kitchen, and reform Jews on the committee finally gave in.

More and more Jews were finding common ground at the hospital, the Y, the Jewish Federation, and on an issue that had long divided them, the issue that would change everything.

At the 1904 World's Fair, Zionists, those who were campaigning for a Jewish Homeland, managed to get their flag publicly displayed for the first time in this part of the world.

Not everyone was happy about it, especially in St. Louis's reform Jewish community.

- And the reform movement, by the late 19th century, by and large was anti-Zionist.

They said, Zion is here, and they said, look, we're Americans of the mosaic persuasion.

Judaism is a religion, nothing more than that.

Eastern European Jews, when they came here, they understood their Judaism much more in communal terms.

Not only as a religion, but as nationhood, as peoplehood.

- [Paul] After World War One, Rabbi Samuel Sail of Shaare Emeth, by then it had moved to Lindell and Vandevender, shocked many in his reform congregation when he publicly switched his stand, and came out in support of a Jewish state.

At United Hebrew, Rabbi Samuel Thurman was a long time supporter of Zionism.

And these were more than just individual opinions.

These rabbis were men who spoke with great authority, and had tremendous respect and influence.

- Rabbi Thurman's generation was a generation of giants.

I think the role of the rabbi in relationship to his congregation, and in relationship to his community, and the community at large.

I think it was very different.

- [Paul] At temple Israel, the Rabbi was Ferdinand Isserman.

In the early 1930's, just after the Nazis took power, he traveled to Germany.

And he returned, warning and speeches and writings of what would happen if Hitler wasn't stopped.

The world was changing, and would change for many what it meant to be a Jew.

One member of Temple Israel at the time was a young engineer, Isadore Millstone.

In 2008, I.E Millstone turned 101 years old, and was still coming into work at the construction company he started.

He was well-known as a businessman, philanthropist, and a man who had helped build Israel, not politically but physically.

But as a young man.

- I wasn't really too much interested.

My father-in-law, Louis Golan, was a Zionist.

And there weren't very many of them in St. Louis, very frankly.

Isadore, he would say, someday there's going to be a state of Israel, a Jewish state, and it'll have to be in Palestine.

- [Paul] Although a Jewish Homeland had been promised since World War One, It was the Second World War, Nazi atrocities, the Holocaust, that for many settled the issue.

Support poured in to help the survivors and refugees, and for a new Jewish state in the Middle East.

- And Varient said, we need help, that people are coming in on boats, and we've got no place to put them, and we hear that you are a housing expert, you build a lot of houses.

- [Paul] Millstone brought in a team of experts, including architect, Louis Kahn, to tackle the problem.

They rejected the idea of prefabricated housing, because where some saw only the sand and rock of a desert, Millstone saw the makings of concrete, and a way to put people to work.

- I said, you've got everything you need.

You've got everything you need.

And we will build an industry.

And we'll start with housing and all, and we did.

- [Paul] In 1948, President Harry Truman, against the advice of many in his cabinet, granted recognition to the newly declared nation of Israel.

At his inauguration in 1949, the President's friend and fellow Mason, Rabbi Samuel Thurman, was sitting on the stage.

Before the swearing in, Rabbi Thurman had delivered the invocation.

(emotional music) In 1954, Truman was in St. Louis at the Jefferson Hotel, one of the guests and speakers at an event honoring Rabbi Thurman's 40 years at United Hebrew.

So much had changed since his arrival in St. Louis in 1914.

It was now a very different world, and a different Jewish community with a new generation of leaders.

- But the effect of words on your gut, on your nervous system, was eventually-- - [Paul] When Al Fleishman did this interview, he was almost 90 years old, and long retired from Fleishman Hillard, the public relations firm he started.

Many St. Louisans knew him for his long association with client, Gussy Busch, his brewery, and his baseball team, and also for Fleishman's role with the powerful corporate leaders of civic progress, who would help to remake downtown.

In his time, Fleishman was one of the most influential people in the city, often working behind the scenes to make deals, and to settle or prevent arguments and communications breakdowns.

- Please don't call anybody names when you don't agree with them, or they don't agree with you.

They never forget it.

- He could handle people as well as anybody.

He was a hell of a guy.

People really trusted him for advice.

- [Paul] He was also a unifying force in the Jewish community, the first President in the history of the Jewish Federation who was not a German Jew.

Fleishman came from a Russian Jewish family.

He spoke Yiddish, and began attending the conservative B'nai Amoona synagogue when it was still on the north side, and he was an early and ardent Zionist, and visited Israel more than 50 times.

- I called him the Colossus of words, because I pictured him a stride both worlds, the Jewish community, and the general community.

- I said, Eddie, what do you think it'll take for us to get a championship team?

- Al Fleishman wasn't just about baseball, beer, and big business.

He was active on community boards and committees, and served as President of the Urban League.

Race relations had long been an issue in St. Louis, and Fleishman was not the first from the Jewish community who reached across the city's deep racial divide.

- Fannie Cook was a writer, social activist, and prominent St. Louis civic leader in the mid 20th century.

- [Paul] Few people now know her name or read her books, but historians still pour over Fannie Cook's papers at the Missouri Historical Society as they research women's history, Jewish history, and African-American history.

- I can't overemphasize the importance in the 1920's and 30's of people like Fannie Cook.

- [Paul] She grew up in a well-to-do Jewish family, and went to college.

She taught literature at Washington University, and was married to a doctor at a Jewish hospital.

But Fannie Cook stepped out of her comfortable world and challenged others to do the same.

It was a time when the rapidly growing Black population in the city caused many to work to solidify segregation.

Separate but equal was the legal standard.

But Fannie Cook saw all St. Louisans, whites and Blacks, as part of one community, and was one of those who joined the first committees of Blacks and whites working together on race relations.

- She played a critical role during the interwar period in slowly but persistently making that point, that African-Americans were a part of the community as a whole.

- [Paul] She was among the St. Louisans who got involved in the 1939 sharecroppers strike, traveling to the boot heel to support and write about the mostly Black sharecroppers who had been evicted from their land.

In the 1940's, she concentrated on her writing.

Novels with social themes, portraying the intersecting lives of Blacks and whites, Christians and Jews.

Fannie Cook died in 1949.

She did not live to see the Supreme Court decision ending legalized segregation, or the emergence of an angrier and more confrontational civil rights movement.

(crowd chanting loudly) There was support for the civil rights movement in the Jewish community, from individuals and the clergy.

Rabbis marched in support of those arrested after the Jefferson bank demonstration.

They marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and invited him to speak in St. Louis.

But this was a turbulent, divisive era in America, in neighborhoods and families, churches and synagogues, like University City's Shaare Emeth.

- This was a terribly difficult time for our congregation.

The congregation was almost split in half.

I think 63 or 64, University City was the first municipality to pass an open housing law, and our congregation had endorsed it and had worked for it.

But at the same time, the congregation was losing members to the west.

I remember when I was there as the assistant rabbi, that, at every board meeting, they'd announce at least 10 to 20 families resigning, most of whom were going to Temple Israel.

- [Paul] Shaare Emeth would eventually move, along with many other synagogues, further west, once again leaving the old synagogue behind, and moving to a new neighborhood.

This was happening all over the country.

And then something very unusual happened in St. Louis.

A congregation moved back.

- I would use the garden spaces.

- [Paul] Central Reform congregation formed in 1984 with the purpose of re-establishing a Jewish presence in the city.

And in the mid 1990's, it was planning to build the first new synagogue in the city in 70 years.

But in many ways, it was an old story.

A group of Jews forming their own congregation, for their own reasons, and rooted in a tradition of social responsibility and community involvement.

- Very early on, one of the things we did was reach out to an African-American Christian congregation, called Brilliant Presbyterian Church, to make a relationship, and to work on issues in the city.

And, you know, it's interesting for us, because just down the street is the old Temple Israel, you know, and so there's a lot of history.

Just a lot of wonderful history in this neighborhood.

- Temple Israel's rabbi, Ferdinand Isherman, had challenged his congregation to look to their neighbors.

Poverty and luxury, he said, cannot continue to live side-by-side.

He encouraged young people to help others by performing public service, and this was the beginning of today's national organization, the American Jewish Society for Service.

In 1950, Rabbi Isherman said Jews were hungering for a strong faith, following a devastating war and brutal persecution.

- Good morning.

I'm very happy to see it's such a large group in here.

My name is Mary Lou Ruhe and I'm a Holocaust survivor.

- [Paul] There is more to Jewish history than the Holocaust, and yet in modern times, it is an overwhelming world event.

In the 1980's, 40 years after the end of World War Two, an effort began to establish the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center.

Since its opening in 1995, visitors, including many school groups, have come through to see exhibits and talk with survivors.

- Before that, I wouldn't even dream about speaking about it.

But then I saw that it was needed, that people have to know, not only because of the Jewish people, but for the whole world, so nothing like the Holocaust would ever happen again.

- [Paul] A few hundred Holocaust survivors were resettled in St. Louis, and many found here what others had found before.

Not merely a refuge, but a place where one could begin a new life.

- And we started working right away, and it was great.

Nobody ever said anything unpleasant to us.

Become Americans, that's what we wanted.

(emotional music) - The great story of Jewish life in America is that we have succeeded in becoming full parts of this nation.

But it has meant that now Jews are free to be whoever they want to be, to live wherever they want, to practice in whatever way they want to do.

We believe that there's something compelling, exciting, fulfilling, nurturing in Jewish life and in Jewish tradition, in being part of that incredible history.

(emotional music) - [Paul] For more than 200 years Jews have been coming to St. Louis, and being a part of St. Louis.

It is a community diverse in observance, and ideas, and backgrounds, but they have a shared history, and all of St. Louis shares it with them.

(emotional music) (slow music) - [Narrator] St. Louis Stories: The Jewish Americans is supported in part by Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Washington University in St. Louis Physicians, the Delmar Gardens Family, Harry Edison Foundation, Fox Family Foundation, Harvey and Judy Harris, The Jewish Federation of St. Louis, Mr and Mrs Ken Kranzberg, Millstone Foundation, Michael and Carol Staenberg in conjunction with the Staenberg Family Foundation, and by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.