The Saint Louis
Jewish Community

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The history of the Jewish community in St. Louis is complex, interwoven, as the story of modern Judaism is, with strands of local culture, secular issues, personal concerns, and the different ways of living the Jewish faith. Thus the story in which History Happened Here invites you to participate is necessarily incomplete. Perhaps a more accurate, and more exciting, statement is that this story, like the Jewish community itself, is a work in progress, chapters from the past examined and expanded by the living generation and passed on to those who come after us and continue the story.In the early days of the trading post called St. Louis throngs of unrecorded people passed through: trappers, traders, merchants, even settlers and thieves. There is persuasive evidence that Jewish merchants and their agents worked near and in St. Louis shortly after its founding. However, the first resident identifiable as a Jew was Joseph Philipson, who was doing business at a St. Louis address in late 1807. In 1807 St. Louis was a bustling and boisterous village of about 1,500 people, most of them French Creoles or natives of Virginia or Kentucky. Philipson was one of the few, perhaps the only Jewish resident. At any rate, the first known minyan or “Jewish prayer service” which required ten men was conducted almost thirty years later, in September of 1836. Even then, some of those men were probably salesmen or traders just passing through during the High Holidays. Like so many cultural groups, especially early immigrant peoples, the stories are almost ephemeral and the factual evidence often difficult to pursue.By 1907, a hundred years after Philipson’s arrival, Jews in St. Louis numbered more than 40,000, or about 6% of the population. The Jewish community had become an integral part of the life in St. Louis, and their contributions had enriched the commerce, politics, civic culture, and St. Louis life in general. During most of the nineteenth century the St. Louis Jewish community had a prevalence of German immigrants. As the century waned, immigrants from Eastern Europe brought a vastly different set of traditions and rituals to the community. Steeped in Orthodox Judaism, the newcomers clashed with the Reform-minded German Jewish St. Louisans.At that time Jews were less concerned with their local roots than they were attempting to forge a more unified “American Jewish” community, resolving internecine difficulties and maintaining stability in non-Jewish America. Jews from many parts of the world fled to America from deadly persecution; they required advice and assistance to learn to live in this strange new land. The development of this community is a story that takes us through much of the twentieth century. History Happened Here -- in this place, in this community. Although we cannot know the whole story, just as no part of the past can come to us complete and intact, we can explore and investigate and make this story a part of our own.