9/16/2008 8:53:00 PM
Exploring local Jewish history
Exhibit honors Alexander Levi, first Jewish immigrant to Dubuque
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by Cid Standifer
Like synagogues across the country, Beth El honors the dead four times a year with the Yizkor, a memorial for all of the deceased members of the temple.
And it was a name on the Yizkor list that led the temple to honor the founder of Dubuque's Jewish community, Alexander Levi, in a different way.
Galena resident Barbara Alexander began her research into the Yizkor list in an attempt to find funding for the congregation. Unlike many churches, which ask their members to donate once each week, Beth El only asks for a donation from its members once each year, when the congregation says a prayer called the Kaddish on the anniversary of a loved one's passing.
"We're a very small, very, very small congregation," she said. "Our temple being extremely short of funds, having major construction issues, I had this thought, how many times can you go back to the same well?"
But there were multitudinous descendants of people on the Yizkor list spread all across the country. Alexander hoped to remind them of the service the temple performed for their ancestors at each high holiday, and send a contribution back to help keep their names alive.
In the process, Alexander stumbled upon Dubuque's oldest Jewish resident, Alexander Levi. In fact, she discovered that Levi arrived in the area the same year that Dubuque was founded, making this the 175th anniversary of his arrival.
Beth El member Karin Pritikin took up the idea of honoring Levi with an exhibit exploring Dubuque's Jewish history, and won a $5,000 grant from the City of Dubuque to put it together. The funding was part of a program to celebrate the city's anniversary, and the Levi project was awarded the largest grant the organization had to offer. Pritikin then sought out a matching grant of $3,000 from Humanities Iowa and The National Endowment for the Humanities.
Pritikin's research went beyond the story of Levi, and delved into the past of the Jewish enclave that once thrived in Dubuque.
"This really was a story about a whole community that had migrated ether across from Ohio or up the Mississippi," she said.
Pritikin hit the archives, digging through the River Library, Carnegie-Stewart and Loras College collections to find Levi family genealogy and photographs, as well as documents on the Jewish community in general.
The exhibit is also the beneficiary of a fortuitous coincidence. Levi's 65-year-old granddaughter, Louise Greilsheim, surfaced unexpectedly while Pritikin was in the process of her work, and donated family documents to the Spertus Museum in Chicago. Curators informed Greilsheim about the project in Dubuque, and she contacted Pritikin.
Greilsheim filled in the holes that Dubuque archives had left in the family's history. Pritikin had been unable to find documents tracing Levi's descendants past the 1920s, and some branches of his family tree were missing completely. Greilsheim was able to supply not only names and photographs, but the details of family legend that bring history alive.
Over the months she spent at work on the project, Pritikin collected far more documentation than she could use.
"It took a long time," Pritikin said. "I had no idea how long it would take, but a lot of it had to do with just taking a look at what was there and winnowing it down."
Pritikin tried to tell the broader story of Jewish history and migration, and gradually narrow the focus between panels down to the local community and the Levi family in particular.
And the history of Judaism in Dubuque is surprisingly rich. In the 1880s, the city was home to three different Jewish congregations serving over a thousand people. Most of them lived in the same neighborhood, where they could travel to synagogues and kosher butchers on the Sabbath, when they couldn't ride in carriages. Temple Beth El was dedicated in 1939, just as Hitler was rolling across Europe. At the time, a local newspaper article reminded residents that a community is judged by its tolerance.
In the process of tracing Dubuque's Jewish history, the exhibit asks visitors to think about their own ancestors, and the path that their families took to get where they are.
Pritikin enlisted M-Studios of Galena to bring parts of the past to life. Andy Steil was in charge of creating a video exhibit featuring Jewish songs from all over the world, illustrated with images and text. Pritikin selected songs from Renaissance Italy, Morocco, Spain, Poland, and even Uganda, and performed them herself, including all of the harmonies.
"I wanted to do things that even Jewish people weren't necessarily familiar with," she said. The Ugandan song was from a village in Africa that decided to convert to Judaism with its leader. Other songs were regional versions of tunes popular throughout the Jewish world. Each is accompanied with lyrics that scrolled across the screen.
M-Studios gave Pritikin a discounted rate, and Steil said he quickly became interested in the project on more than just a business level.
"While I'm always learning technical things about audio and video and things like that, programs like these are cool because I get to learn something that I never would have gone out and learned on my own," he said.
Steil said he was blown away by Pritikin's knowledge and creativity, and he was particularly impressed by her musical talent.
For another video installation, Pritikin called on the oldest member of the Beth El congregation, Frank Farber, who was filmed as he walked through the Jewish section of the Linwood cemetery. Levi donated the land for the graveyard to the city on the condition that they set aside a section for Jewish burials.
Farber talked about the deceased as his old friends. "He told stories about everybody there," said Alexander. "He knew everybody."
The exhibit opened to the public at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium on Aug. 23, and will remain on display until Dec. 31. Afterwards, Pritikin plans to pack up the panels and take them on tour to locations throughout the area.
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Posted: Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Article comment by:
Karin Pritikin, Project Director/Exhibit Developer, The Alexander Levi Heritage Project
Thank you for the wonderful article about our "labor of love."
(The virtual exhibit can be found at www.levicelebration.com )
One small correction == Louise Greilsheim, 86, is actually Alexander Levi's great-granddaughter. Also, we were very grateful to Galenan Tacie Campbell, Curator at The National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium for her help and encouragement thoughout the project!
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