Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities - Fayetteville, Arkansas
Overview
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Fayetteville serves as the seat of Washington County and the site of the University of Arkansas, the state’s land grant university. The town emerged as a small trading hub and educational center in the mid-19th century, but its location in the Ozark Mountains meant that it did not grow as quickly as the market towns of eastern Arkansas’s fertile Delta region. Following World War II, however, the rapid expansion of higher education and general economic development in Northwest Arkansas led to decades of growth for Fayetteville and nearby towns. In the early 21st century, it passed Fort Smith to become the second largest city in the state, behind Little Rock.
While only a handful of Jewish settlers lived in or around Fayetteville before the 1920s, economic and educational opportunities eventually attracted enough Jewish residents to develop Jewish organizations on campus and to plant the seeds of a permanent local community. A small Reform congregation, Temple Shalom, has called Fayetteville home since 1981. |
The Baum Family
Fayetteville and other Ozarks towns never attracted as many Jewish settlers as the towns of eastern Arkansas. Large Scale agriculture did not develop as quickly, and the surrounding countryside remained more sparsely populated. Still, at least a handful of Jewish peddlers and merchants made their way to the area shortly after the end of the Civil War. The first recorded Jewish settlers in Fayetteville were brothers Leopold “Lee” and Moses Baum. (Another brother, Joseph L. Baum, may also have lived in Fayetteville for a time.) The Baum brothers and their family had immigrated to St. Louis from Germany before the Civil War; according to local histories, one or more of the brothers visited Fayetteville while peddling along the military road that led to Fort Smith. Shortly after the war, they opened a clothing and general merchandise shop on the town square—reportedly the second business to operate in Fayetteville since retreating Confederates destroyed most of the town in 1862. Within three years, they opened a larger building; by 1870 twenty-four-year-old Moses Baum was known as one of the wealthiest property owners in town. He had recently wed Julia Heller of St. Louis, and the couple went on to raise eight children in Fayetteville.
Moses Baum and family in horse drawn carriage, c. 1909. Carolyn LeMaster Collection, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System.
The Baum & Bro. store (sometimes written “Baum & Bros.”) remained a fixture in Fayetteville for decades, despite a series of devastating setbacks. In 1880 a tornado tore through the town and destroyed the Baum’s large, two-story building. They quickly rebuilt, only to face a freakish hailstorm the following year when “hailstones as big as cannon balls bombarded the city.” Undaunted, the Baums restored and remodeled the building, which prospered until an 1894 fire gutted the property. Only a voluntary bucket brigade was on hand to douse the flames, and the tragic blaze inspired local citizens to establish Fayetteville’s first waterworks. The indomitable Baums rebuilt once more, erecting an even larger building with modern amenities. This time they proudly—or perhaps wryly—added the slogan “Time Tried, Storm Proven, Fire Tested.”
The Early 20th Century
The Baum family were not the only local Jews during the late-19th and early 20th centuries, but the handful of other Jewish residents did not set down roots in Fayetteville. The 1880 census, for example, recorded two twenty-something retail clerks who lived in a Fayetteville boarding house: Prussian-born Otto Cohn and Bavarian native Leopold Mandel. While available records do not prove that either of the pair were Jewish, their names and backgrounds make it likely, and they may have worked for the Baum brothers. Siegfried Adler, who had previously lived in Selina, Kansas, for two years, lived in Fayetteville in the 1890s. He married Isabelle Hellman of St. Louis in 1895, and the pair made their home in Fayetteville for at least a few years. In the late 1890s, Julia Baum’s father, M. Heller, also lived in town. Another Jewish family, the Emanuels, lived in Fayetteville by 1906 and had two children there. They relocated to Texas by 1914, however.
Although the Baum family family could not take part in a local Jewish community, they generally maintained their Jewishness. Even in the absence of a nearby congregation, the Baum & Bro. store closed for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Julia and Moses Baum imparted Jewish identity to their children at home, and six of their eight children married Jewish spouses. The family maintained strong ties with Jewish family and friends in St. Louis, and Baum children participated in Fort Smith’s Jewish society.
Although the Baum family family could not take part in a local Jewish community, they generally maintained their Jewishness. Even in the absence of a nearby congregation, the Baum & Bro. store closed for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Julia and Moses Baum imparted Jewish identity to their children at home, and six of their eight children married Jewish spouses. The family maintained strong ties with Jewish family and friends in St. Louis, and Baum children participated in Fort Smith’s Jewish society.
The small Jewish population in Fayetteville reflected the town’s small size, which stood at just more than 4,000 residents in 1900. Furthermore, the mobility exhibited by the Adler and Emanuel families, as well as other Jews who may have stayed in or near Fayetteville for short periods, typifies Jewish migration patterns at the time. As the University of Arkansas expanded in the early twentieth century, the town slowly grew and eventually attracted a few other longtime Jewish residents. Pine Bluff native Julian Waterman joined the university as its first Jewish faculty member in 1914 and became the founding dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1924. He ultimately rose to the position of vice president of the university and declined an offer to serve as president in the late 1930s. (At least one account alleges that he was passed over due to anti-Jewish sentiment among the board of governors.) The Silverman family—Louis, Dorothy, and son Bernard—constituted another important Jewish arrival. They moved from Kansas in 1919 and opened a jewelry store that soon offered high-end clothing as well. Whereas the Baum family maintained ties to St. Louis, the Silvermans’ extended family lived in Kansas City, Missouri and Leavenworth, Kansas.
The Jewish population remained miniscule, even with these additions. The university conducted a religious census in 1920 and found only three Jewish students among 708 enrollees. Fewer than ten Jews reportedly lived full-time in Fayetteville as of 1937. (Some 150 Jewish students reportedly attended the university, many from out-of-state.) The Baum and Silverman families hosted Jewish students for Shabbat dinners, and in the 1920s the Baum family invited Rabbi Samuel Teitelbaum of Fort Smith to lead occasional religious services in their home.
As the fledgling community grew, Jewish residents maintained an active role in the broader Fayetteville society. In 1912, when the wives of local businessmen established a charity named the Relief Association and Thrift House, Dorothy Silverman served a prominent role in the project. Moses Baum was a charter member of the local Masonic Lodge, and both he and his wife contributed significantly to the first local hospital. Leopold Baum, who never married, also played an active role in the Fayetteville community, donating money to the school district and serving as a director of the Electric Light and Power Company.
The Jewish population remained miniscule, even with these additions. The university conducted a religious census in 1920 and found only three Jewish students among 708 enrollees. Fewer than ten Jews reportedly lived full-time in Fayetteville as of 1937. (Some 150 Jewish students reportedly attended the university, many from out-of-state.) The Baum and Silverman families hosted Jewish students for Shabbat dinners, and in the 1920s the Baum family invited Rabbi Samuel Teitelbaum of Fort Smith to lead occasional religious services in their home.
As the fledgling community grew, Jewish residents maintained an active role in the broader Fayetteville society. In 1912, when the wives of local businessmen established a charity named the Relief Association and Thrift House, Dorothy Silverman served a prominent role in the project. Moses Baum was a charter member of the local Masonic Lodge, and both he and his wife contributed significantly to the first local hospital. Leopold Baum, who never married, also played an active role in the Fayetteville community, donating money to the school district and serving as a director of the Electric Light and Power Company.
Organized Jewish Life
The Temple Shalom/University of Arkansas Hillel Building, c. 1990. Photo by Bill Aron.
In the late 1920s enough Jews attended the University of Arkansas that Rabbi Teitelbaum and his wife, Bess, helped establish a chapter of the Menorah Society, a national organization for Jewish college students. Jewish enrollment increased during the 1930s, and the group eventually affiliated with the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation. The university also became home to a chapter of Tau Epsilon Phi, a historically Jewish fraternity, during the 1930s.
The University of Arkansas Hillel constituted the only Jewish organization in Northwest Arkansas for many years, and the tiny local Jewish population found it difficult to support the group’s members. Although Fort Smith’s Jewish community, nearly 60 miles south, included strong supporters of the student group, they struggled to recruit enough volunteers to host visiting university students.
The University of Arkansas Hillel went dormant in the 1940s or 1950s, and there was no organized Jewish life to speak of in Fayetteville for some time. New Jewish faculty began to arrive in the 1950s, however, including chemistry professor Jacob Sacks, whose wife, Dr. Wilma Sacks, served as a public health official and directed local family planning clinics. The Sacks and others helped revive the Hillel group in the mid-1960s. In 1967 Arkansas B’nai B’rith chapters raised money for a Hillel House, which was located at 912 Fairview Street. At that time, the Jewish student body and local Jewish population totalled approximately fifty individuals, and the new facility served both groups with regular religious and social events, as well as a small religious school. Rabbi Richard White of Fort Smith made semi-monthly visits to lead services. For high holiday services, the Hillel invited visiting clergy to lead services.
Both the growth of the university and continued economic development in Northwest Arkansas attracted new Jewish residents to the area during the 1970s. By the early 1980s a sufficient number of permanent Jewish residents had settled there to establish a congregation. The group formed a Reform congregation, Temple Shalom, in 1981 and initially rented space at the local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. They secured a Torah scroll that had once belonged to Camden’s Beth El Emeth and employed Emeritus Rabbi Norbert Rosenthal to travel monthly from Tulsa to provide religious leadership. A 1982 mailing list included 75 prospective and member households from the area, many of whom were young families affiliated with the university. As of the mid-1980s, the congregation’s 35 member households included fifteen adult members with doctoral degrees and 22 religious school pupils. In 1983 the Hillel House moved from its home on Fairview Street to a new location on Storer Avenue, which also served as the site of Temple Shalom social events and its religious school. While Hillel’s membership remained more-or-less stable during the 1970s and 1980s, the congregational membership did grow considerably, and Temple Shalom boasted 122 individual members from a 35-mile radius as of 1990.
The University of Arkansas Hillel constituted the only Jewish organization in Northwest Arkansas for many years, and the tiny local Jewish population found it difficult to support the group’s members. Although Fort Smith’s Jewish community, nearly 60 miles south, included strong supporters of the student group, they struggled to recruit enough volunteers to host visiting university students.
The University of Arkansas Hillel went dormant in the 1940s or 1950s, and there was no organized Jewish life to speak of in Fayetteville for some time. New Jewish faculty began to arrive in the 1950s, however, including chemistry professor Jacob Sacks, whose wife, Dr. Wilma Sacks, served as a public health official and directed local family planning clinics. The Sacks and others helped revive the Hillel group in the mid-1960s. In 1967 Arkansas B’nai B’rith chapters raised money for a Hillel House, which was located at 912 Fairview Street. At that time, the Jewish student body and local Jewish population totalled approximately fifty individuals, and the new facility served both groups with regular religious and social events, as well as a small religious school. Rabbi Richard White of Fort Smith made semi-monthly visits to lead services. For high holiday services, the Hillel invited visiting clergy to lead services.
Both the growth of the university and continued economic development in Northwest Arkansas attracted new Jewish residents to the area during the 1970s. By the early 1980s a sufficient number of permanent Jewish residents had settled there to establish a congregation. The group formed a Reform congregation, Temple Shalom, in 1981 and initially rented space at the local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. They secured a Torah scroll that had once belonged to Camden’s Beth El Emeth and employed Emeritus Rabbi Norbert Rosenthal to travel monthly from Tulsa to provide religious leadership. A 1982 mailing list included 75 prospective and member households from the area, many of whom were young families affiliated with the university. As of the mid-1980s, the congregation’s 35 member households included fifteen adult members with doctoral degrees and 22 religious school pupils. In 1983 the Hillel House moved from its home on Fairview Street to a new location on Storer Avenue, which also served as the site of Temple Shalom social events and its religious school. While Hillel’s membership remained more-or-less stable during the 1970s and 1980s, the congregational membership did grow considerably, and Temple Shalom boasted 122 individual members from a 35-mile radius as of 1990.
The Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries
By the end of the 20th century, Northwest Arkansas was the only part of the state—possibly other than Little Rock—with a growing Jewish community. Temple Shalom continued to use the Hillel House until 1999, when both Hillel and the congregation began renting space in a university owned property on the same block. The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship continued to host larger Jewish events. By the early 2000s, Temple Shalom started to outgrow the new rented space, even though the departure of some members for Bentonville’s Etz Chaim in 2004 temporarily reduced their numbers.
In 2005 Temple Shalom leadership launched a building campaign, seeking a permanent home for the congregation’s approximately 60 families. University of Arkansas Hillel sold its former house in order to subsidize the project, and a gift by Miriam Ella Alford provided important early funding. The congregation purchased land for a combined synagogue and Hillel facility in 2007 at the intersection of Sang Avenue and Cleveland Street. Additional support came from Fadil Bayyari, a construction company owner and Palestinian Muslim, who offered to waive his usual service fees for the project. (Bayyari’s relationship with the congregation drew national press coverage.) The congregation dedicated its new synagogue in 2009 and celebrated its ten-year anniversary in the building in 2019.
Temple Shalom has relied on visiting rabbis and lay leaders for most of its history. Lay leader and philosophy professor Jacob Adler enrolled in rabbinical courses through the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1998, however, and obtained an ordination in 2006. Rabbi Adler, who moved to Fayetteville in 1984, provided religious leadership on a part-time basis until 2020, which allowed the small community to enjoy the benefits of a dedicated clergy person that they would otherwise have been unable to afford. While he remains a member of the Temple Shalom community as of 2023, he also began organizing a regularly occurring experiential minyan in 2021, known as Minyan on the Hill.
In 2005 Temple Shalom leadership launched a building campaign, seeking a permanent home for the congregation’s approximately 60 families. University of Arkansas Hillel sold its former house in order to subsidize the project, and a gift by Miriam Ella Alford provided important early funding. The congregation purchased land for a combined synagogue and Hillel facility in 2007 at the intersection of Sang Avenue and Cleveland Street. Additional support came from Fadil Bayyari, a construction company owner and Palestinian Muslim, who offered to waive his usual service fees for the project. (Bayyari’s relationship with the congregation drew national press coverage.) The congregation dedicated its new synagogue in 2009 and celebrated its ten-year anniversary in the building in 2019.
Temple Shalom has relied on visiting rabbis and lay leaders for most of its history. Lay leader and philosophy professor Jacob Adler enrolled in rabbinical courses through the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1998, however, and obtained an ordination in 2006. Rabbi Adler, who moved to Fayetteville in 1984, provided religious leadership on a part-time basis until 2020, which allowed the small community to enjoy the benefits of a dedicated clergy person that they would otherwise have been unable to afford. While he remains a member of the Temple Shalom community as of 2023, he also began organizing a regularly occurring experiential minyan in 2021, known as Minyan on the Hill.
Updated March 2024.