History Department

Laurel’s Jewish congregation peaked early in its history, and spent most of its years in slow decline.  The earliest Jews of Laurel, Mississippi first arrived as itinerant peddlers in the 1890s and gradually began building businesses in the town.    By 1900 enough Jews had arrived in Laurel to form a minyan, and they began meeting in private homes for lay-led Orthodox services.  Previously, many of the Jewish residents of Laurel would travel to Meridian for services.  As the Jewish population grew, they were better able to worship together, and in 1903 the Congregation acquired their first Torah.  In 1906, Laurel Jews formally chartered their congregation, naming it Knesseth Israel (“Gathering of Israel).  Its charter members were D.B. Pollack, Abraham Marcus, Phillip Lefkowitz, Nathan Weinberger, and Jake Kastleman.  At least four of the five were immigrants from Eastern Europe, and were retail business owners.  Two were tailors, one was a shoemaker, and the other was a dry goods merchant.  Lefkowitz was the first president of the fledgling congregation.  Since most all of the members were immigrants, the congregation kept it early minutes in Yiddish, their native tongue.  In its early years, the congregation was Orthodox.

 The members of Knesseth Israel moved quickly to build a synagogue.  They received incredible support from their gentile neighbors, who reportedly donated the large majority of the money to build Laurel’s first Jewish house of worship.  On September 5, 1907 dedication services were held for the new temple, located at the corner of Fifth Street and Sixth Avenue.  The ceremony featured the depositing the scroll in the Ark, a prayer by Rabbi Jacob Kaplan of Selma, Alabama, a sermon by Rabbi Max Raisin of Meridian, and a Choir performance of “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah.”  They even invited Reverend L.W. Rose from the Episcopalian Church to speak about the history of the Jewish faith and Reverend R.L. Campbell of the Presbyterian Church to address the relationship between the Laurel Jews and Christians.  Reverend Rose declared that members of the congregation should be proud to be Jewish, and that he would proud if he had been born Jewish.  He also noted that both Jews and gentiles serve the same God. Reverend Campbell of the local Presbyterian  Church congratulated the congregation on its new building.  The service lasted two and a half hours, and included a host of musical and spoken entertainment. 

When the synagogue was built, the congregation also formed a religious school under the direction of Mrs. A. Lefkowitz.  In 1910, the congregation sent delegates to Meridian for an annual convention held by The Jewish Religious School Teachers of Mississippi, designed to improve the quality of Sunday school instruction in the state.  The school was never very large; at its peak, it had 35 students.  In 1931, it had 15 kids.

Laurel Jews also established a B’nai Brith Lodge in 1908 and a Temple Sisterhood in 1915.  The sisterhood had 25 members when it was formed, but declined soon afterward.  In 1931, it had 10 members; the sisterhood disbanded in 1971.  In 1917 the Congregation purchased a plot of land to be used as a cemetery which was named the Knesseth Israel Cemetery.

Laurel never had a large enough Jewish population to hire a full-time rabbi, so they depended on their neighboring congregations for rabbinic services.  In the early days of the congregation, they sometimes received services from the full time rabbi who served the Meridian congregation.  As populations shifted, however, Laurel entered into an agreement with Hattiesburg to share a rabbi, who lived in Hattiesburg, but visited Laurel regularly.

Founded as an Orthodox congregation, Knesseth Israel was split over whether to introduce elements of Reform Judaism.  One faction wanted to maintain traditional practice, while another group sought to change.  According to a member of the congregation writing in 1931, “there are not enough of either [faction] to pull itself away in an absolute assertion of its position.  With the house divided, nothing at all is accomplished.”  By 1940, this dispute had been resolved, and Knesseth Israel officially embraced Reform Judaism.

In 1927 the temple changed locations due to a real estate trade.  Eastman-Gardiner wanted the land to build a hotel, and in exchange for the land, the Laurel Jews were given a new plot of land on Fifth Avenue and Eight Street to construct a synagogue.   For several years, they were without a building.  In 1931, they built a small brick building that was intended to become an education building once the congregation grew large enough to build a more substantial synagogue.  That day never came, and the congregation used the small building for the rest of its existence.  Services continued to be held in this temple until 1969, at which point too few Jews remained in Laurel to maintain a congregation.  That year, the building had been damaged in a railroad car explosion, and the congregation decided that it did not have the money or the members to repair it.  In 1970, the building was torn down and the furnishings from the old temple were donated to two African American churches in the area.  In 1973, the congregation sold its lot; the profits from this transaction were placed in a Knesseth Israel Charitable and Educational Trust Fund, which distributes money to 25 worthy causes.

At its peak, Knesseth Israel had 45 member families.  By 1931, the congregation was already down to 14 members.  Over the next four decades, Knesseth Israel remained very small, until if officially disbanded.