SALEM — Recent research documenting the history of Salem’s organized Jewish community highlights the enduring legacy of a community that while never large in number has left its mark on the city — and on the nation.

The research conducted by Austin Reid in collaboration with the Salem Public Library and Columbus Jewish Historical Society charts the history of Salem’s Jewish community from the arrival of Salem’s first confirmed Jewish resident Emanuel Greenberger, a Hungarian immigrant, in 1888, to the ongoing philanthropic and legislative efforts of Los Angeles County California Superior Court Judge Dean Hansell.

A native of Lancaster Ohio, Reid is himself Jewish and began his ongoing project to record the history of Ohio’s small Jewish communities during his undergraduate studies in history as a capstone project in 2017, charting the history of Lancaster’s former Jewish community. Reid explained that during his research he found that like in Lancaster, many of the surrounding municipalities had small organized Jewish communities that had since dissolved, the histories of which had never been formally recorded. Since then he has been working to document and preserve the stories of these communities before they are lost to time.

“In the last 20 years across the state synagogues have been closing and communities disbanding as part of a trend that started after World War II, with the loss of manufacturing jobs and an associated overall decline in population. So that’s been one of the things motivating this project — trying to capture the histories of these communities while there’s still people left that remember them,” said Reid.

Since then, Reid has chronicled the history of 18 communities throughout the state of Ohio, and with the completion of his work in Salem, the only remaining municipality he is aware of with a large enough Jewish community to have had an organized community or congregation that has not already been covered by himself or another historian is Lima. Reid explained that throughout this project he had found that recording the history of these communities “often fills gaps in the local historical records of the larger community that people may not even have realized were present.”

“The goal of this project is really twofold — I hope that it provides a way for non-Jewish residents in rural Ohio to see the contributions that their local Jewish communities have made and for Jewish readers I hope it can act as a means for them to learn about their own local cultural history and to reconnect with their family history,” said Reid.

Reid explained that while never especially large, with only 55 members at its largest, Salem’s Jewish community was particularly well organized with an active local chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) formed in 1948 that organized both community events and programming and support of philanthropic efforts, domestic and abroad.

“Something that surprised me about Salem in particular is that despite how small the community was it was very heavily involved in non-profit and humanitarian work, both locally, supporting the Red Cross, Community Chest and the Heart Fund and globally with organized efforts to send relief packages to impoverished European families recovering after World War II and to send school supplies to a Kindergarten in Israel,” said Reid.

Salem’s Jewish residents were also among those who served directly in World War II, with “at least five members of the local community” known to have served their country including Mathan Bahm, Alroy Bloomberg, Max Caplan, Alan Freed and Elliott Hansel, who was awarded the Flying Cross and Purple Heart. Ronald Kaplan, a Salem native who had left the city prior to the war, was also known to have served. Katherine Bloomberg served with Salem’s chapter of the Red Cross during both World Wars.

The significant philanthropic impact of Salem’s Jewish community is perhaps less surprising when one considers the impact it has had on Salem at large since its inception. Reid’s research found that Greenberger opened the Golden Eagle clothing store after his arrival, which remained a locally owned fixture of the city until its sale to the Strouss-Hirshberg Company in 1957, after which it operated under the name Strouss’ Golden Eagle.

Reid explained that typically Jewish newspapers as well as local news archives of the period, grave markers in Jewish cemeteries, annual publications that highlighted Jewish congregations and communities like “the Jewish Yearbook” and, when available, oral sources provide the bulk of the information when unraveling the history of a community and that they can often “link you from source to source.”

“One thing I noticed early in the process is that similar to Amish newspapers, Jewish newspapers in larger communities would run social columns and notices about the activities of smaller communities in the surrounding areas, and that families and even entire communities would use these to keep in contact,” explained Reid. “I’ve been able to use these historic newspapers to get rough ideas about the communities and the notable families in them, and once you have a few notable families, it can become easier to trace those back to the larger community’s history.”

Reid also explained that the Salem chapter of the NCJW ran notices about their events and activities in these larger Jewish newspapers for “several decades,” which had not only highlighted their leading role within the community but presented records of their valuable contributions.

It was through archived Salem News reports that Reid found that observations of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur would be held locally for the first time in 1912, and that in October 1917 a “nascent Jewish congregation was organized.” However, this congregation proved to be short lived, with reports as early as 1931 stating “local Jewish residents traveled to Cleveland, East Liverpool, Pittsburgh or Youngstown to attend Yom Kippur services” and reports of community members traveling to Alliance for religious services in 1942.

Reid said that collaboration with local historians is vital when he conducts his research, as they possess important historical knowledge that someone from outside of the community would not possess. Reid explained that this is particularly important in communities like Salem which have seen street names and numbers changed from those listed in period documentation, which Reid said he would never have known without the collaboration of community members including David Shivers of the Salem Historical Society, Carla White of the Salem Public Library, Holly Wolfe, and Randy and Dean Hansell.

“It really is vital to get not only that local perspective and account, but local eyes on the work that will catch things an outsider might have missed,” said Reid.

Fortunately, Reid said that local communities are typically happy to collaborate with him and often will reach out to him directly upon learning of his work. Reid said that his research of Salem’s community was prompted by communication with Wolfe and Randy Hansell, who encouraged him to take on the project.

“I think in general that people are excited the history of these communities are being recorded. For some congregations in these small towns, they’re already thinking about how to preserve the history of their community when it comes time for the congregation to dissolve. For smaller religious communities of any faith, it doesn’t take the loss of many families to reach the point where sustaining an organized congregation is extremely difficult,” said Reid.

The influence of Salem’s Jewish residents has grown far beyond their home city, with many of Salem’s most famous residents being Jewish. This includes the iconic Freed, whose radio show played a significant role in the popularization of the musical genre and term “rock and roll,” which has since become globally recognized. Freed, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1985 and awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1991, is also noted for his organization of racially integrated concerts at a time when this was rare.

Another culturally significant member of Salem’s Jewish community was Max Fisher, who had “a notable business career in Detroit,” which funded his arguably more significant philanthropic efforts which included both his home communities, funding the Max Fisher Athletic Scholarship to support Salem High School graduates and, in his second home of Detroit, providing a significant contribution for the construction of the Max and Marjorie Fisher Music Center, “which is home to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.” The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business is also named after Fisher.

Reid also highlighted the significant political and legal influence of Salem’s Jewish residents, including Herbert and Dean Hansell.

Herbert served as a principle legal advisor to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance during the 1970s, during which time he assisted in drafting the 1978 Camp David Accords, “which established peace between Egypt and Israel,” and played a “prominent role” in the negotiation of the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977, ensuring the neutrality of the region, and the Salt II Accords in 1979, “which limited the number of nuclear weapons possessed by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States.”

Dean has also had a prominent legal career, being appointed to the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, California in 2016 by Gov. Jerry Brown. During this time Dean has served as chair of the Los Angeles County Citizens Oversight Commission on the Sheriff’s Department Working Group, and been a member of the boards the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Police Foundation, the California Bar Foundation, the Los Angeles City College Foundation, Denison University, the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and the Los Angeles LGBT Center. In his native Salem Dean funded the Dean Hansell Training Scholarship to financially assist Salem High School graduates who attend a vocational school, trade school, technical school, certification training program or credential program.

Full copies of Reid’s research are available at the Salem Public Library and Salem Historical Society or digitally through the Columbus Jewish Historical Society’s archive at www.columbusjewishhistory.org/histories/history-salems-jewish-community for anyone wishing to learn more about the enduring impacts and legacy of Salem’s Jewish community.