By Deb Freedman, other
In most pioneer communities, the first minister came before the first church. Services might have been held in a school or a tent until a church was built, with a little cemetery eventually founded next to it.
Jews on the frontier generally did things in a different order, as they did in our area. The first Jew might have been a wandering peddler — it’s difficult to document. Then merchants came. As a town grew and more Jewish merchants arrived they would form a benevolent society — pooling their money to borrow when disaster hit. And their first concrete achievement was often a cemetery.
As the town continued to grow, men would bring wives and children, so they needed a school and a burial place. They may have been willing to set aside their strict daily religious practices, but their beliefs required a separate Jewish burial, which meant — quite early on — a Jewish cemetery.
As the pioneer Jews in the community grew more numerous, High Holidays services would be held in a rented hall. Then there may have been some problem with the facility, or Jews in a rival town may have started to raise money for a synagogue. These Jews would agree that by the following year they’d have their own building.
So they made pledges, raised funds and built a synagogue. Ten years later, when they burned the mortgage, they hired a rabbi.
The scenario was repeated throughout the Puget Sound.
It’s often written that Adolph Friedman was the first Jew in the Pacific Northwest, arriving in Steilacoom in 1845. However, no documented proof has been found. Since there wasn’t even a town of Steilacoom in 1845, even the date may be in question.
We do know that in 1853 the Bettman brothers opened a store in Olympia, the territorial capital. It is well documented that Isaac Pincus and Adolph Packscher arrived in Steilacoom in 1858. After they quickly sold most of their goods to Ft. Steilacoom soldiers, who paid with gold coins, they knew they’d found their new home.
In July 1873 it was announced the Northwestern railway terminus would be located in Tacoma. By then, August Louis Wolff had moved his family from Victoria and had his store up and running.
The Jews of Tacoma, Steilacoom and Olympia gathered together to form the First Hebrew Benevolent Society of Puget Sound in 1874. They purchased land for a cemetery in what is now Tumwater. The earliest known burial there was that of 12-year-old typhoid victim Celia Dobrin, daughter of merchant Morris Dobrin. He, too, had left Victoria quickly — to avoid legal difficulties. Over the next decade the majority of Tumwater burials were from Tacoma and Steilacoom.
In the fall of 1888, Jews in Tacoma organized the First Hebrew Benevolent Society of Tacoma. For $1 they purchased eight acres for a cemetery from the Tacoma Land Company. The cemetery land was strategically located on the streetcar line midway between Tacoma and Steilacoom.
Many of these Jews were from Germany, Poland, France and Hungary, and most had lived in at least two other states before coming to Washington. Some one-third were children of the Forty-niners, born in California. Many had shrugged off their religious upbringing and the growing Reform Judaism movement suited them. After Seattle and Spokane dedicated synagogues in 1892, Tacoma followed suit in 1893.
During the 1890s and early 1900s Tsarist pogroms brought a new wave of involuntary immigrants to Tacoma. Remember Adolph Friedman? He came back in 1885, followed by nephews and an extended family. These chain migrants came directly to Tacoma from Riga, Bauska, and Sassmachen in Latvia. They must have been shocked at Tacoma’s progressive Jewish lifestyle.
These new arrivals met daily for prayer and started their own Orthodox shul, commissioning a Torah in 1908. They purchased land for a cemetery in 1914, and began a chevra kadisha, the Hebrew term for a burial society.
Tacoma continued to have two congregations and two separate Jewish cemeteries until the congregations merged in 1960. The cemeteries were joined in 1979. Today Home of Peace Cemetery Association still functions as a benevolent society — perhaps one of the last in existence.
Often we speak of the burials of the wealthy or prominent. Yet Judaism teaches that we die as equals. Let us remember a few of the forgotten:
• Louis Soulal, age 3 months, died 1894. His French parents were in Tacoma for a jewelry trade show, and then returned to Europe.
• Sadie Shapeero, mother of 7, died 1900. Her children were sent to the Hebrew Orphans’ Asylum in San Francisco.
• Michael Schutzman, 25, died in 1922. A newspaper journalist from New York, he drowned while attempting to ride a raft down the Columbia River.
• Jennie Rammelsberg, widow of Julius Rammelsberg, died in 1944. She had supported herself by selling homemade noodles door-to-door.
Deb Freedman, a member of Temple Beth El in Tacoma, is retired from a 20-year career as a youth services specialist for the Tacoma Public Library. She is a charter member of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State and a member of the board of the Home of Peace Cemetery Association. This article originally appeared on the website SoundlyJewish.org.