Jewish Community (Lawrence, MA)

The first Jewish settlers going inland from Newburyport were small business men and artisans and mostly German Jews.  They often aligned themselves with Universalists rather that invest in their own Jewish institutions.  You will see Jewish names pop up in one directory or another, rarely staying long.  They would start small businesses and work the area closing up and moving on as economic conditions permitted.  (Lawrence directories show a William J. Silver sold furniture in Lawrence in 1848)

East European Jews began arriving in the 1870s reaching a torrent in the 1880s and 1890s.  Unlike their German predecessors many worked in the mills and lived near them.  Some would often come directly from Ellis Island in New York by way of the Industrial Removal Board or the United Hebrew Charities of New York.  Others with entrepreneurial ideas in mind drifted north from Boston looking for more commercial opportunities in the industrial areas growing along the banks of the Merrimack.  They never intended to return to the old country so they put down roots, bought homes, and established businesses and institutions.

Hebrew free loan societies were formed to aid new immigrants as well as Credit Unions.  Social welfare was affiliated with the synagogues and Landsmanshaften.  Although Arbeiter Ring (Workmen’s Circle) was formed to unite secular Jewish workers with a socialist persuasion.  It would provide education and health benefits.  The Lowell chapter was small but the ones in Lawrence and Haverhill were active.

The Lawrence Jewish community started at about the same time as the other urban centers in the Merrimack valley.  L.H. Ginsburg immigrated to Lawrence around 1881.  He would later run the Bee-hive clothing store on Essex Street.  Max Berenson came a few years later.  By the beginning of the 20^th century there was a distinct Jewish community in Lawrence.  They settled around Common, Valley, Lowell, Hampshire, and Concord Streets.   Sons of Israel at 70 Concord Street, near Hampshire (by 1910) was the first shul.  Anshai Sfard was next at 85 Concord Street.  Another little settlement would form around Park, Walnut, Spruce and north Hampshire Streets near Ansha Shulim at 411 Hampshire Street, a 2-family residence which was purchased and renovated for use as a synagogue in 1919. The first home of Temple Emanuel, a reform congregation, was a refurbished and house and barn at the corner of Lowell and Milton Streets in 1920.  Later they would build higher up on Tower Hill; then remove to Andover.  There was another congregation called Tefereth Anshai Sfard located at 492 Lowell Street.  It was in the 1950 city directory.

With the community came the butcher (Kimball), the grocery (Rosenberg), and the bakery (Schwartz).   The YMHA was started in 1906 Schaake building 236 Essex St.  By 1914 a YWHA and Sunday School was incorporated.  In 1930 the organization moved to 48 Concord Street once the home of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Moskwa Cooperative Association.  For many years starting in 1935 a fund-raising minstrel show was the hallmark of the year called the Black and White Review.  At the end of the 2^nd World War the YMHA changed its name to the Jewish Community Center and started raising funds for a new building, but the needs of the new state of Israel put that goal on hold.  The new JCC in 1956 on Haverhill Street, was an agency of the Greater Lawrence United Fund and was affiliated with the Jewish Community Council and the New England section of the National Jewish Welfare Board.

Lawrence Jewish Businesses

The Lawrence Jewish community started out like all the others as working class.  Like all the other ethnic groups they worked in the mills.  In the years leading up to the 20^th century the promise of work was enough to bring new immigrants to the Merrimack Valley.  By 1912, the year of the Bread and Roses strike, the community was still very much a part of the working poor.  Weekly pay checks for most workers were less that $10 per week.  Lawrence Jews ran a soup kitchen for strikers during the cold winter of 1912 and started a Ladies Aid Society, A Free Loan Organization, and cooperatives to purchase kosher provisions.  Deplorable working conditions: long hours, air filled with lint particles, mind numbing noise and the ever present fear of loosing employment drove Lawrence workers to look for ways to improve their lot.  Education and commerce were their way out.

Their children entered the public schools, the next step on the road to prosperity.  The experiment with Americanization during the first decades of the 20^th century was very successful, but nowhere more so than in the Jewish community. At least 26 members of the 1920 LHS class were Jewish from a total of 176.  I find this a very remarkable figure considering how small the community was.  Many would continue on to higher education.  As the community educated their own doctors, families would invest in a 50c/week health plan. Jewish entrepreneurs sprang up within a few years.

Jewish War Veterans post #40 was created after the 1^st World War.  18 young Jewish men were killed.   Jewish men joined Knights of Pythias and Independent Order of Brith Abraham.  As the community prospered they left the 2 and 3-deckers in the Lawrence stetls and started to build or buy homes on Tower Hill.   The community was well represented in the NRA Blue feather parade of 1933.  All ethnic groups were there helping to pull the country through the Great depression.  29 years later there was no Jewish representation in the 1962 God and Country Parade.  The move had already begun to the suburbs.  These urban neighborhoods of these industrial cities were showing the proof of their own success.

All the communities along the Merrimack bought land for cemeteries, formed organizations to help newcomers, formed branches of the Workmens’ Circle (Arbeiter Ring), founded their own lodges, and various Jewish organizations like Hadassah, Bnai Brith, and Ladies Helping Hand.

Congregation Ansha Shulim is still in Lawrence.

The Lawrence Roll of Honor was placed in the new JCC in 1956 and later moved to Beth Israel.  It includes Jewish veterans from both world wars. The JCC had been the last place where the panels had been displayed; they were moved to the Lawrence Heritage State Park for storage.  A committee of Joseph Axelrod, Milton Issenberg, Charles Lane, and Linda Siegenthaler saved the panels from further deterioration.

Lawrence Jewish Veterans