UPDATE 5/20/2022: This program will be conducted virtually. Patrons are welcome to gather at BPL in the Large Community Room, but our presenter will join us virtually.
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85906447704
Join Ellen Baumler from Humanities Montana for a presentation on Montana's Jewish Pioneers. This presentation is brought to BPL in conjunction with ALA and USHMM's traveling exhibit, Americans and the Holocaust. Learn more on our webpage.
The gold rush brought Jewish pioneers to Montana. Opportunity drew these adventurers to mining settlements where business and religious beliefs brought them together. Jews set up the first businesses at Bannack, Alder Gulch, and at most mining boomtowns. Jews seized entrepreneurial opportunities and became miners, bankers, attorneys, and cattlemen, but it was especially in the stepping-stone roles of merchant and provider that many achieved economic stability and civic status in a single generation. It was not easy without rabbis or synagogues, but these pioneers established benevolent societies and burial grounds, maintained holidays and traditions, and planted the roots of Judaism. In doing so, they laid the foundation for Montana’s modern, resurging Jewish congregations.
Ellen Baumler earned her Ph.D. in English, classics, and history from the University of Kansas. She was the interpretive historian at the Montana Historical Society from 1992 until her retirement in 2018. She is an award-winning author and collector of Montana’s little-known stories. Researching and writing the National Register nominations for Jewish landmarks in Helena led to a passionate interest in Montana’s Jewish history.
