Bellefonte and State College

The Establishment of Bellefonte

Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, is located in the Nittany Valley approximately two and a half miles from the geographic center of Pennsylvania. James Dunlop and his son-in-law, James Harris, founded the town in 1795. Agriculture, ironmaking, and limestone quarrying attracted early settlers and it quickly grew to the largest town in the region. As the economic, industrial, and political center of the area, it became the seat of Centre Country. Bellefonte has produced five Pennsylvania governors, including Andrew Curtin, James Addams Beaver, Daniel Hartman Hastings, and two governors for other states, Kansas and California.

By the mid to late-nineteenth century, Bellefonte’s wealth architecturally transformed the town with the increasing adornment of multistory Victorian public buildings and private homes, many of which still exist today. In the early to mid-1900s, however, the rising prominence of the Pennsylvania State College, later the Pennsylvania State University, located about twelve miles south of Bellefonte in State College shifted the economic and industrial center of Centre County from Bellefonte to State College.

Early Jewish Settlers

Similar to Lock Haven, the first Jewish settlers in Bellefonte were of Central European origin, including the Baum, Fauble, and Loeb families, and arrived in the mid-nineteenth century. Early Jewish families also included French Jews, such as the Lyon family. Some of these early Jewish settlers initially settled in Lock Haven prior to moving to Bellefonte, such as the Newman family, while others migrated from other areas of the state, such as Philadelphia or Danville, and either moved to Bellefonte for economic opportunities or at the insistence of prior Bellefonte Jewish residents.

Figure 3: Jewish Bellefonte businessman Martin Fauble and his wife, Jacobena “Bena” Loeb Fauble. Photograph from Justin Houser.

According to the obituary of leading Jewish Bellefonte businessman Martin Fauble in the Democratic Watchman and the Centre Democrat, for example, Fauble moved to Bellefonte around 1863 from another part of Pennsylvania at the instance of Bellefonte Jewish resident Abraham Baum. Fauble worked with Baum as a peddler in Centre County and the surrounding area for several years before working as a clerk for S. and A. Loeb, his brother-in-law’s business, in Bellefonte. Based on Fauble and Baum’s early employment, some early Bellefonte Jewish settlers also worked as peddlers before opening their own business, such as livery, butchering, or the sale of dry goods and clothing.

On May 3, 1875, Adolph Sternberg took office as the first Jewish mayor, known as chief burgess at the time, of Bellefonte. He served as mayor for one term and within weeks of taking office, on May 18, 1875, established the borough’s police department. In a Centre Daily Times article from January 1, 1995, local historian Hugh Manchester debated whether Adolph was the first Jewish mayor in Pennsylvania, and the greater U.S., or if the honor should be bestowed upon David Lowenberg, who was elected as president of the town council of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1874. Unsure if David’s role as president of Bloomsburg’s town council was equivalent to the role as mayor since Pennsylvania legislators never passed a law equating the two while in 1966 all chief burgesses in Pennsylvania were equated to mayors, Manchester named Adolph as one of the first, if not the first, Jewish mayors in the United States. Four years after Sternberg took office as mayor, at least seven Jewish businesses were open in Bellefonte, including: S. & A. Loeb, Joseph Bros. & Co., J. Newman, Jr., J. H. Bauland, Lyon & Co., H. D. Goldman, and J. Guggenheimer & Co. The election of a second Jewish mayor in Bellefonte, Stan Goldman, did not occur until 2000.

The only Jewish landmarks in Bellefonte emerged during this period of early Jewish settlement. The Jewish community of Bellefonte never formed its own synagogue, but the community supported two Jewish cemeteries. The first, located between two houses on the southside of East Logan Street, was the East Logan Street Israelitish Cemetery. Created in 1857 by Anselem Loeb, the cemetery remained in use until approximately 1912. The cemetery co-existed with the second Jewish cemetery, the Rodef Shalom Cemetery, located at 938 West Water Street, from approximately 1875 to 1912. It is unclear whether the East Logan Street Israelitish Cemetery functioned as a Jewish community cemetery or was a family plot for the Loeb family, who purchased the land for the cemetery and are the only people confirmed to have been buried in it. The Rodef Shalom Cemetery is still an active cemetery. It contains fifty burials with the two most recent being a mother and daughter buried in 1990 and 2019, respectively. Most of the burials, however, took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

 

Eastern European Jewish Immigrants and Jewish Communal Relations

By the late nineteenth century, Eastern European Jews began immigrating to Bellefonte from Lock Haven and other parts of Pennsylvania. Many worked as peddlers for Harris Claster’s whole sale store or collected scrap materials for the Claster junkyard in Lock Haven. Max Kalin, for example, a nephew of Harris Claster from Lithuania, began peddling in Centre County in 1904 and was headquartered at the Hotel State College. In 1914, he opened a shoe store in Bellefonte. Additionally, Walter Cohen, a London-born brother-in-law of Harris Claster, moved from Clearfield, Pennsylvania, to Bellefonte in 1911 to manage Harris’ clothing store, which he bought in 1914 and renamed Cohen’s Dress Shop. The store later became Krauss Corrective Appeal for Women after his son-in-law, Nathan Krauss took over the business. Charles Schlow, a Ukrainian-born Jewish immigrant, also moved to Bellefonte in 1919 from Philadelphia to purchase a ladies clothing store. Isadore Claster, the son of Morris Claster also moved to Bellefonte in 1926 to open a Claster’s store.

Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who were predominately Orthodox, differed religiously from the existing Central European Jewish community, who were largely Reform. Since Bellefonte never had a synagogue, it is unclear if, and where, Central European Jewish community members attended religious services. According to local historian, Justin Houser, however, the Bellefonte Jewish community brought in rabbis from Williamsport or Altoona for high holidays. Eastern European Jewish immigrants, however, attended services at the Beth Yehuda synagogue in Lock Haven, which practiced Orthodox traditions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and this trend largely continued until the establishment of a synagogue in State College.

According to an article in the Democratic Watchman on December 3, 1915, however, a Jewish Sunday school opened over the Claster’s Store in Bellefonte for all Jewish children of Bellefonte and the surrounding area. Stated to be the first Jewish Sunday school in Bellefonte, the class, approximately fourteen children, were taught by Mrs. Jacob Finkle in the former room of Harry Cohen’s music and victrola department. The following year, in June of 1916, a Democratic Watchman article noted Freda Baum, a Jewish Bellefonte resident, threw a lawn party for the scholars and teachers at the school.

The difference between the religious practices of Central and Eastern European Jewish community members also led to the founding of separate burial grounds for both Jewish communities. Eastern European Jewish immigrants largely chose to be buried at the existing Beth Yehuda Cemetery in Lock Haven rather than the two Jewish cemeteries, East Logan Street Israelitish Cemetery and Rodef Shalom Cemetery, in Bellefonte. According to a current Jewish Bellefonte community member, the Jewish cemeteries in Bellefonte were considered too reform for Eastern European Jewish immigrants and the Beth Yehuda Cemetery in Lock Haven was considered too Orthodox for Central European Jewish community members. As a result, both Jewish communities selected to be buried separately in their preferred religious tradition.

According to Jewish Bellefonte community member Jeff Krauss, the Jewish Bellefonte community was historically of Central European Jewish heritage. Similar to Lock Haven, however, many early Central European Jewish families, such as the Faubles, married Christians and abandoned their Jewish identity. Others, such as the Loeb family, remained Jewish, but moved to more urban areas like Philadelphia, New York City, and Long Island.

East Logan Street Israelitish Cemetery (1857-1912)

Figure 4: The location of both Jewish cemeteries in Bellefonte. Photograph from the The Cemeteries of Benner and Spring Townships, Centre County, Pennsylvania.

The first Jewish cemetery in Bellefonte was located between two houses on the southside of East Logan Street, behind the St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church. The plot measured 89 feet by 89 feet and existed from approximately 1857 to 1912. Individuals, however, were more than likely only buried there between 1857 and 1875. According to the late Centre County historian Hugh Manchester, East Logan Street used to be known as “Cemetery Hill” because both the old Catholic and Jewish cemeteries were located there. According to Justin Houser, scans from an 1858 map of Bellefonte do not show Logan Street extending past Allegheny Street. He believes the area must have been under development from 1857 to1861, which is around the time the East Logan Street Israelitish Cemetery was founded.

Anselem Loeb of Bellefonte, a Jewish butcher, purchased four acres of land on East Logan Street from John H. Morrison, a Bellefonte innkeeper, on October 10, 1855, for $500. Morrison retained the northeast corner of the plot, which Loeb later purchased from him on October 8, 1857. This plot is what became the “Jewish Burial Ground.” In a deed from April 12, 1860, Julia Loeb, Anselem’s wife, gave the plot of land to her son Jacob Loeb and his heirs “…to be for an Israelitish Cemetery or place of burial for the Israelites resident [sic] in said town of Bellefonte or in the vicinity.”

In an 1874 atlas of Bellefonte, pictured below, the Loeb’s East Logan Street property is shown as “J. Leob,” a misspelling of Loeb, and there is a house located on the property. The cemetery, however, is not visible or marked. Julia Loeb, who was buried in the East Logan Street Israelitish Cemetery on April 26, 1880, has the only known obituary that confirms someone was buried in the cemetery. In her obituary, her body was reported to have been, “…laid beside the graves of her friends who had preceded her into eternity.” Based on the transfer internment records of Anselem and Julia Loeb to the Mount Sinai cemetery in Philadelphia on April 25, 1900, from Bellefonte, Anselem was also buried in the East Logan Street Israelitish Cemetery.

Figure 5: The Loeb’s East Logan Street property, the location of the East Logan Street Israelitish Cemetery. Map from the A. Pomeroy & Co.’s the Atlas of Centre County, Pennsylvania: from an actual surveys.

It is unclear exactly when the Bellefonte Jewish cemetery moved from East Logan Street to the Rodef Shalom Cemetery at Bush Addition on Water Street. According to a Centre Democrat article, Miss Shields and Mrs. Hazel were quoted remembering the East Logan Street Israelitish Cemetery had a high board fence around it and it had became overgrown over the years. By 1912, the fence and tombstones were removed from the cemetery. Those buried at the East Logan Street Israelitish Cemetery were either transferred to the Rodef Shalom Cemetery, since some of the death dates on the headstones at the Rodef Shalom Cemetery pre-date the cemetery’s founding, such as Jette Sternberg and Jacob Sternberg, or elsewhere, such as the transfer of Anselm and Julia Loeb to the Mount Sinai Cemetery in Philadelphia.

 

Rodef Shalom Cemetery (1875-Present)

Figure 6: Entrance of the Rodef Shalom Cemetery. Photographed by Casey Sennett.

Figure 7: Layout of the Rodef Shalom Cemetery. Map from The Cemeteries of Benner and Spring Townships, Centre County, Pennsylvania.

Abraham Sussman, a Jewish merchant in Bellefonte, is considered the founder of the Rodef Shalom Cemetery, located at 938 West Water Street. On May 27, 1872, Sussman purchased a quarter acre of land, 200 feet by 70 feet, in Bush Addition in Spring Township, from D. G. Bush, a real estate businessman, and his wife, Louisa, for $250. At this time, however, the area was not called Bush Addition. Obituaries from individuals buried at Rodef Shalom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century commonly refer to the cemetery as the “Jewish cemetery at Roopsburg” or the “Jewish cemetery one mile south of Bellefonte.” While the purpose of the land is not listed on the deed, it might have been purchased with the idea of creating a new Jewish cemetery.

On August 26, 1874, the Hebrew Cemetery Association of Bellefonte was formed, and it was confirmed by the Court on September 18, 1874, with the purpose of purchasing a Jewish cemetery and selling burial lots. Members included Abraham Sussman, Adolph Loeb, Emil Joseph, Isaac Guggenheimer, and Simon Loeb. Together with Sigmund Joseph, they served as the associators of the cemetery.

According to Justin Houser, an unincorporated association is not able to own land, so while the 1874 cemetery association could manage the cemetery, the association could not own any real estate. As a result, the cemetery continued to be owned by Abraham Sussman, but was managed by the cemetery association. Sussman died on May 20, 1878, at the age of 66, in Philadelphia, and was buried in the Mount Sinai Cemetery there. In his will, he left money for a Hebrew School in Bellefonte, but his estate retained ownership of the Rodef Shalom Cemetery in Bellefonte.

After Sussman’s death, the cemetery continued to be managed by the volunteer association. The cemetery association became chartered as a corporation on August 7, 1894, as the Hebrew Cemetery Association Rodef Sholem of Bellefonte, with the purpose of maintaining the cemetery. The incorporators were Martin Fauble, Sigmund Joseph, Abraham Baum, Herman Holz, William Grauer, Emil Joseph, Moyer Lyons, Samuel Lewin, and Adolph Sternberg with the initial directors as Abraham Baum, Herman Holz, and Martin Fauble. Since the cemetery association was now incorporated under Pennsylvania law, it could own real estate. On September 3, 1894, the surviving executors of Abraham Sussman, Sussman’s wife, Dora Sussman, now Dora Hirsh, and Henry Lehman, deeded the cemetery to the cemetery association for $250.

 

Figure 8: Article about the Krauskopf Lecture on May 9, 1894. From the Democratic Watchman.

In the Democratic Watchmen, one article from April 27, 1894, pictured above, and another from May 4, 1894, described the forthcoming lecture of Dr. Joseph Krauskopf, a “distinguished Jewish Rabbi” of Philadelphia, in Garman’s opera house in Bellefonte on Wednesday, May 9. The April 27, 1894 article includes, “His [Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf’s] services have been secured by the Jewish residents of the town who for the first time come before the public with any charitable entertainment of their own. While it is the duty of every-one who can possibly afford it to attend the lecture, no one need think that it is being done solely for charity, for Dr. Krauskopf is a man of worldwide repute…He is one of the most forcible writers of his religion and is known as a great reformer. It is a duty which every-one awes to himself to hear such lecturers when the opportunity presents itself.” The events were organized to fund the improvement of the Jewish cemetery and the cemetery’s fund. The event focused on the topic of “Only a Jew” and encouraged all of Bellefonte’s residents, both Jewish and non-Jewish to attend. While it does not specify what Jewish cemetery it was benefitting, the fundraiser was more than likely raising funds for the new cemetery, Rodef Shalom.

 

Figure 9: Design plan of the Rodef Shalom Cemtery in Bellefonte, circa 1930. Map from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

 

Over the years, the number of people buried in Rodef Shalom has fluctuated. About half of the graves are from the mid to late-nineteenth century while the remaining half are largely from the early to mid-twentieth century. Since the 1950s, only two people, Rose Spiro Siemientek and her daughter, Gabriela Muller Hogg, have been buried in the cemetery. In the early 1900s, some individuals who left Bellefonte returned to move their family’s burial plots elsewhere. In 1927, for example, H. J. Holtz of New York returned to Bellefonte to transport the bodies of his grandmother, aunt, father, and several uncles from Rodef Shalom to the Temple Israel cemetery in Mount Hope, New Jersey, where his mother was buried. He had their headstones removed and shipped ahead via freight.

As the original incorporators of the Hebrew Cemetery Association Rodef Sholem of Bellefonte died and no one replaced them, the cemetery fell into disrepair and the cemetery association became inactive. In 1953, the Pennsylvania State Highway Department sought ownership of properties adjacent to the Rodef Shalom Cemetery in preparation for reconstructing Buffalo Run Road. With no incorporators, there was no one authorized to sign for the cemetery’s land. The Nittany Lodge of B’nai B’rith of Bellefonte and State College began researching the cemetery association to see who the last elected trustee(s) were. In the process, B’nai Brith discovered the existence of two trusts meant to maintain the cemetery. One was invested by the cemetery’s associators in 1894 to a bank in Philadelphia and another was established in the Harrisburg Trust Company in 1948 by Ida Fauble Tausig of Harrisburg. After obtaining access to the trusts, the cemetery association was reactivated, and new trustees were elected.

Alternatively, Nathan Krauss is attributed with “finding” the Rodef Shalom cemetery in the late 1940s, which was largely overgrown at the time. With help from the B’nai B’rith of Bellefonte and State College, Nathan researched the cemetery and in 1951, he and John Miller Jr., an attorney, found three trusts at the Philadelphia National Bank entrusted by people interned in the cemetery in the late nineteenth century. The original trusts valued approximately $4,5000, but over time had accumulated interest between $40,000 to $50,000. With this money, they created the Rodef Shalom Cemetery Association to assure the perpetual care and maintenance of the cemetery. It is unknown why the cemetery’s name changed overtime from Rodef Sholem to Rodef Shalom. Nathan Krauss, Arnold Kalin, and Robert Levy became the trustees of the association. Jeff Krauss eventually took over the management of the cemetery from his father, Nathan Krauss, and he, Arnold Kalin, and Robert Levy served on the cemetery’s board. Brit Shalom in State College is now in charge of the maintenance of the cemetery and raises funds to continue the cemetery’s upkeep through the Rodef Shalom Cemetery Fund (click here to learn more). The cemetery remains active with the last burial being of Gabriela Muller Hogg in 2019.

At least twenty-eight of the fifty people (56%) buried in the Rodef Shalom cemetery were born outside of the U.S. Of those twenty-eight people, nineteen were born in Germany, four were born in France, two were born in Russia, one was born in Austria, one was born in Poland, and one was born in Israel. Of the nineteen people born in the U.S., nine were born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, three were born in an unknown place in Pennsylvania, two were born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, one was born in New York, one was born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, one was born in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, one was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and one was born in Danville, Pennsylvania. Three people were born in an unknown place, either in the U.S. or abroad. Aside from being buried in a Jewish cemetery, their religiosity is unknown.

Not all the individuals buried at Rodef Shalom were living in Bellefonte at the time of their death. Only twenty-three of the fifty people (46%) buried in the cemetery lived in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, at the time of their death. Regarding the twenty-seven other burials, seven people lived in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, five people lived in State College, Pennsylvania, three people lived in an unknown place in Pennsylvania, three people lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, two people lived in Houtzdale, Pennsylvania, one person lived in Atlantic City, New Jersey, one person lived in Villanova, Pennsylvania, one person lived in Detroit, Michigan, one person lived in Tylersville, Pennsylvania, one person lived in Milton, Pennsylvania, one person lived in Lawrence, Pennsylvania, and one person lived in Columbus, Ohio.

 

Figure 10: Family portrait of the Baums, who have the most plots in the Rodef Shalom Cemetery. This photo, taken in July of 1890, was the largest family portrait in Bellefonte at the time. Photograph from Tara Mianulli U’Ren.

The cemetery includes the graves of a few larger families with a few unrelated couples and children. The largest family, the Baums, comprise eleven of the fifty graves (22%) in the cemetery. Those buried in the cemetery seemed to have been buried there for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, other family members being buried in the cemetery, such as the Baum family, or its proximity to their hometown, which lacked a Jewish cemetery, such as the Schmidt family who were from Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, which had no Jewish cemetery at the time. Two graves of note include Henry Tarkoff, a Penn State student who died in the early 1900s after falling down an elevator shaft on campus and whose family could not afford to send his body back to Philadelphia, so he was buried in Bellefonte instead, and Jacob and Jette Sternberg, the parents of Adolph Sternberg, the first Jewish mayor of Bellefonte.

The Relationship between State College and Penn State

State College, Pennsylvania, located in the Nittany Valley between Bald Eagle Mountain and Tussey Mountain near the geographic center of the state, was the ancestral home of the Shawnee and Delaware Indians. In 1784, Abraham Elder was the first European to settle in the region with additional settlers including English, German, Mennonite, French Huguenots, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. The Pennsylvania State University, originally named the Farmers’ High School of Pennsylvania, was founded in 1855 from a donation of 200 acres of land from James Irvin of Bellefonte. In the early 1880s, State College was a small town of approximately one hundred people with little to no infrastructure and public buildings. Reforms under Penn State’s seventh president, George Atherton, however, increased State College’s population to 600 by the mid-1890s and supported the construction of new roads and residential and fraternity housing. The Borough of State College was incorporated in 1896.

While attendance at Penn State incrementally increased over time, the end of World War II transformed the university and State College. Due to dramatic rises in the applications the university received, Penn State enrolled 11,000 students during the 1947-48 school year. As the university struggled to house all these new students, as well as additional faculty members, both Penn State and State College grew to accommodate the influx of new people. The development and growth of Penn State University continues to directly correlate with similar growth and development patterns in State College today.

 

Early Jewish Settlers

Early Jewish settlers, particularly merchants, arrived in State College from nearby Jewish communities, such as Bellefonte and Lock Haven, in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. These individuals included Morris Fromm, born in Lithuania, who peddled in Centre, Clinton, and Huntingdon counties before opening a store in Loganton in Clinton County. In 1913, he sold his business and moved to State College to open a men’s and boy’s clothing store at 130 East College Avenue. Morris’ name remains on the building, the “Fromm Building,” at 112-118 East College Avenue. Charles Schlow also moved to State College in the early twentieth century. He moved to State College in 1929 from Bellefonte and opened the Schlow’s Quality Shop and Schlow Furniture Store.

Some of State College’s earliest Jewish community members also included Penn State faculty members. Penn State’s first Jewish professor, Max Kriss, was a Russian immigrant who arrived in Philadelphia in 1910. Kriss, who studied animal nutrition, graduated with his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Penn State in 1918 and 1920, respectively. He later received his PhD from Yale University in 1936. Dr. Teresa Cohen, the first female, and Jewish, faculty member in the Mathematics Department at Penn State began teaching at the university in 1920. The first influx of Jewish families to State College, however, came in the late 1930s with the increasing growth of the university. Other early Jewish professors included: Dagobert deLevie in the German Department, 1941; Norman Davids in Mechanical Engineering, 1947; Leonard Zimmerman in Bacteriology, 1951; and Alfred Engel in Chemical Engineering, 1959.

Figure 11: Max Kriss, the first Jewish professor at Penn State. Photograph from the Kriss Foundation.

Religious and Social Life

The older of the two towns, Bellefonte had fewer, at least known, formal Jewish religious organizations and institutions. Following Bellefonte’s first Jewish Sunday School in 1915, Grace Cohen Rosenblum, daughter of Bellefonte business owner Walter Cohen, revived the Sunday School in 1924 in the music room of her father’s store. In Nadine Kaufman’s 50th Anniversary: Congregation Brit Shalom, Jewish community member, Stan Goldman, recalled the second floor of Sid Bernstein’s department store in Bellefonte functioned as a makeshift ‘synagogue’ in Bellefonte from the early 1930s to early 1940s. Stan Goldman remembered, “…[Sid would] move things to the back, so he’d have enough room for 20 people. The oldest person or the person who knew Hebrew best did the davening.”

Early Jewish religious organizations in State College included the Menorah Society, which began as late as 1918, and later became known as the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. The first formal Jewish religious institution began in September 1935 with the creation of the Pennsylvania State College’s chapter of the Hillel Foundation. Under the initial directorship of Rabbi Dr. Ephraim Fischoff, Penn State Hillel served the religious and social needs of both Jewish Penn State students and the local Jewish community. Rabbi Fischoff was the acting director of Penn State Hillel for two years before Rabbi Theodore Gordon replaced him in 1937. Penn State Hillel’s first permanent space was located at 133-135 Beaver Avenue, above the former Temple Market, now Green Bowl. The Hillel building, however, was not dedicated until November 9, 1939. The State College chapter of Avodah, a Jewish women’s group, organized State College’s first Jewish religious school in the inaugural Hillel building. Janice Shapiro, who grew up in Bellefonte in the 1940s and 1950s, recalled attending high holiday services at Penn State Hillel, but her family did not go every week because they “had a whole life in Bellefonte.” She recalled Bellefonte Jewish community members continuing to meet and gather in the homes of Jewish community members in Bellefonte for different events.

 

Figure 12: The first Penn State Hillel located above Temple Market on Beaver Avenue. Photograph from Congregation Brit Shalom.

 

Under the leadership of Rabbi Benjamin Kahn (for more information about Rabbi Benjamin Kahn, see: “Benjamin Kahn Dies,” The Washington Post, July 10, 2002, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2001/07/10/benjamin-kahn-dies/d57c69d6-3e83-4745-8155-c21bb7197474/), who served Penn State Hillel from 1940 to 1959, the Hillel building moved from 133-135 Beaver Avenue to 224 Locust Lane. On August 22, 1949, the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation Building Fund of Pennsylvania purchased land from the estate of Mrs. Ormelle H. Stecker of State College on Locust Lane. Combined with land donated from Charles and Bella Schlow in 1947, B’nai B’rith secured Philadelphia architect Louis Magaziner to renovate and expand upon the existing structure on the Locust Lane property. The new building included a first-floor reception area, lounge, and study, a second-floor classroom, club room, and library, and a third-floor residence, first for Hillel’s rabbi, but later rented the space to Jewish students and visitors. The new building provided Penn State Hillel with more space to accommodate the area’s growing Jewish population. The Albert M. Cohen Auditorium, for example, served as the center of the Jewish community’s social activities, including a dining room and entertainment hall. The building’s sanctuary included a bimah, alter, and ark, which contained the congregation’s Torah scrolls.

 

Figure 13: Construction of Penn State Hillel on Locust Lane in 1952. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

One of the prominent features of the Penn State Hillel building on Locust Lane was a 48-foot mural, titled “The Ideals of Judaism,” designed by art-education graduate student Antonietta Terrazas Maluenda for her master’s project under the guidance of Dr. Viktor Lowenfeld. Dedicated on April 10, 1954, the mural featured biblical scenes, such as Rabbi Hillel being challenged by a student and Moses with the Ten Commandments, as well as scenes of Jews in the United States, including the Statue of Liberty, and Israel, including a kibbutz, a type of collective farm prominent among Labor Zionists in Israel.

 

Figure 14: “The Ideals of Judaism” mural from Penn State Hillel on Locust Lane. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Figure 15: Students leaving Penn State Hillel on Locust Lane. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Figure 16: Lighting of the Shabbath candles at Penn State Hillel. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

While Penn State Hillel served as a place of worship for both Jewish Penn State students and local Jewish community members, beginning in the 1950s, members of the State College and Bellefonte Jewish communities debated about whether to remain with Hillel or form their own congregation. In 1957, the Jewish Community Council of the Bellefonte and State College was formed and on October 29, 1961, after outgrowing the Hillel building, members met and decided the Jewish Community Council of the Bellefonte and State College should build their own synagogue. The synagogue was dedicated on February 28, 1965. Originally named the Jewish Community Center, in 1979, it was renamed to the Congregation Brit Shalom. Located on East Hamilton Avenue, the synagogue continues to serve the Bellefonte and State College community today. Following the split, however, some Jewish community members chose to remain with Hillel, some chose to attend the new synagogue, and some chose to remain with both. Dr. Teresa Cohen, for example, attended Friday night services at Hillel and attended Saturday morning ones at Brit Shalom. Dr. Cohen always sat in the same seat at Hillel, and, in the Locust Lane Hillel building, a plaque was added to her chair dedicated to her and her contributions to Hillel.

Beginning in the 1990s, after the dwindling Agudath Achim congregation in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, located 30 miles south of State College, placed an advertisement in the Centre Daily Times inviting any regional Jewish community members to the High Holiday services, members of the State College Jewish community, some of whom were discontent with Brit Shalom, began attending service there. Today, Agudath Achim, completed in 1930 for Huntingdon Jewish families, mainly comprises of State College families and students from Juniata Hillel. The original Jewish families of Huntingdon are almost entirely gone from the region.

For Bellefonte and State College Jewish community members who maintained a kosher diet, their grocery shopping included many trips out of Centre County. Weis Market sold “token” Matzos, matzo meal, and gefilte fish in the mid-1950s, but kosher meats and Passover food required traveling to kosher butcher shops and markets in Altoona, Williamsport, Scranton, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill. After Empire Kosher Poultry, a New York-based company founded in 1938, relocated to Mifflintown in the 1960s, however, Jewish families increasingly traveled there for kosher meats. In Nadine Kaufman’s 50th Anniversary: Brit Shalom, Rodelle Weintraub recalled Stan and Charles Abramson using the Fromm laundry truck to drive to Altoona to get groceries and returned to Hillel to distribute them to congregants. After Jewish community members approached Weis Market, owned and operated out of Sunbury, Pennsylvania, by a Jewish family, if they could stock Passover food, the store agreed.

Bellefonte also had few formal Jewish social organizations. In the late 1930s, Bellefonte Jewish community members Walter Cohen, Bernard Goldman, Nathan Kofman, and Harry Tanney founded the Bellefonte Hebrew Center for the purpose of “…fostering social, charitable and religious activities among the Jewish residents of the area,” which, according to Jewish community member Stan Goldman, typically included card games and social gatherings. As the organization’s gatherings grew beyond the capacity of Jewish community member homes, the group bought a cottage in Mingoville. Following the closing of the group in the late 1950s, the Bellefonte Hebrew Center donated its funds to the Bellefonte-State College Jewish Community Council for the building of the congregation’s first ark and bimah.

In State College in 1945, B’nai B’rith established the Nittany Lodge (#1582) for men and the Avodah Chapter for women. The organization later expanded to establish B’nai B’rith Youth Organizations (BBYO): B’nai B’rith Girls (BBG) and Aleph-Zadik-Aleph Boys (AZA). In the 1970s, a Reform youth group, the State College United Federation of Temple Youth (SCUFTY) formed. Other Jewish community organizations included the Jewish Community Council Women of Bellefonte and State College (JCCW), formed in 1965, and the State College Chapter of Hadassah, a women’s organization, formed in 1974. According to Nadine Kaufman, however, Avodah and the JCCW dissolved by the early 1990s while Hadassah remained active.

The congregation has hosted art auction fundraisers, see below, Purim carnivals, New Year’s dances, speakers, such as politicians, authors, and singers, who commonly visited Penn State and hosted an additional event at the congregation, local history programming, and singing groups. Sponsored by Hadassah, the Food Fairs were also an annual event where Jewish community members could participate in food sales, including hot dogs and baked goods, and purchase Hannukah gifts. There were also Jewish community celebrations, such as when Brit Shalom paid off its mortgage, and mourning, such as the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018. Some events included both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities of State College and Bellefonte. Ron Hodes, who grew up in Lock Haven, but later moved to State College, recalled the prominence of the Jewish Joke Festival, which began in the 1960s and served as a fundraiser for the congregation. He remembered Joe Paterno, former Penn State football coach, would tell jokes at the annual event.

 

Figure 17: Poster advertising an art auction to raise money for the Jewish Community Council of Bellefonte-State College. Poster from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Professional Endeavors

Members of both the Bellefonte and State College Jewish communities have worked in a variety of capacities. In the mid-nineteenth century, the professions of early Central European Jewish settlers in Bellefonte included liverymen, butchers, clerks, and merchants. Abraham Baum and his son, Alfred, for example, operated a livery business from approximately 1874 to 1909 on East Cherry Lane. At least two Jewish butchers, Simon Lyon and Isaac Loeb, worked in Bellefonte and were competitors. On November 17, 1865, the Democratic Watchman praised the butchering establishments of Simon Lyon and Edward Brown, who gave Bellefonte community members cheaper meat prices compared to their competitor, Isaac Loeb, who “…have been so long sustained and patronized by the Bellefonte public that they have come to consider themselves the autocrats of the meat market. As such, with grasping meanness, they put on the highest cent, and though the public groan, they are fools enough to pay the price.” Simon Lyon and his family moved to Philipsburg in early 1881. He was supposed to open a butcher shop there, but he died before he could in May of 1881. Another Jewish community member, Martin Fauble, temporarily worked as a butcher with Simon Lyon in Bellefonte in the 1860s before clerking at S. & A. Loeb, a clothing store owned by his brother-in-law, Simon Loeb, and one of his cousins, Adolph Loeb. Martin worked as a silent partner at S. & A. Loeb before establishing his own business, the Rochester Clothing House, in 1887. Martin’s business operated under two other names: Fauble’s and M. Fauble & Son. Following Martin’s death in 1910, his son, Adolph operated the store until he retired in 1937.

Other Central European Jewish merchants in Bellefonte included Bernard Cerf Lyon, one of the founders of Lyon & Co., a dry goods store in Bellefonte, in the 1870s, and Jacob Sternberg, the father of Adolph Sternberg, the first Jewish mayor in Bellefonte, who operated A. Sternberg & Co. beginning in the late 1860s. Additional Jewish owned businesses in Bellefonte in the mid to late nineteenth century included: Joseph Bros. & Co., J. Newman, Jr., J. H. Bauland, H. D. Goldman, and J. Guggenheimer & Co.

Several Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Bellefonte and State College began working as peddlers, but eventually opened their own businesses. Max Kalin, for example, a nephew of Harris Claster, worked for his uncle in State College in the early 1900s, but moved to Bellefonte by 1914, where he purchase a shoe store. He later moved to State College after he and Walter Cohen bought the State College Fye Department Store. His children opened the Kalin’s Dress Shop and Arnold Kalin’s Men Store in State College. Max’s business partner at the Fye Department Store, Walter Cohen, was born in London, and moved from Clearfield to Bellefonte in 1911. While in Bellefonte, he managed his brother-in-law, Harris Claster’s, clothing store, which he later bought in 1914.

Other Eastern European Jewish business owners included: Nathan Kofman, who moved from Lock Haven to Bellefonte in 1910 and developed a scrap, later coal, business; Morris Fromm, who opened a men’s clothing and furnishings store at 130 E. College Avenue in State College in 1913; and Charles Schlow, who moved from Philadelphia to Bellefonte in 1919 after purchasing a ladies clothing store. Charles moved to State College in the 1920s and opened the Schlow Quality Shop and Schlow Furniture Store. During this time, State College’s Jewish community also included Penn State professors, such as Max Kriss and Teresa Cohen.

Simeon and Maurice Baum, second-generation Central European Jewish Americans from Bellefonte, established businesses in both Bellefonte and State College. Simeon, a permanent resident of Bellefonte, opened his clothing store, Sim the Clothier, in Bellefonte in 1900. He operated the store until his retirement in 1930. His younger brother, Maurice, worked with him and operated the Sim the Clothier store in State College from 1912 to 1920. Maurice also became involved in the theater industry in 1914, when he began leasing the Nittany Theater at 114 South Allen Street. In June of 1916, he began leasing the Pastime Theater at 116 South Allen Street. He built the Cathaum Theater, named after his wife, Catherine Baum, at 114 West College Avenue, which opened in 1926. As the proprietor of all three of State College’s theater, Maurice had a monopoly on the theaters in State College until he sold his leases to Warner Bros. in 1930. Maurice, involved in State College real estate, also created the only boulevard in State College. The Historic District Walking Tour of the Holmes-Foster Neighborhood in State College notes both the Baum Boulevard and 905 Robin Road, a home Maurice constructed, which was the largest single-family homes in the borough at the time of its construction.

 

Figure 18: Cathaum Theater, built and owned by Maurice Baum, and the First National Bank Building on West College Avenue, c. 1925. Poster from Penn State Forever: A Photographic History of the First 150 Years.

In State College, some of the early Jewish practitioners included: Dr. L. William Nieman, who opened his dental office in the late 1930s; Dr. Harold Zipser, who ran his podiatry practice from 1939 to 1945; Dr. Benjamin L. Alexander, who practiced from 1942 to 1987; Dr. Jerry Stein, who ran his optometry practice from 1949 to 1994; and Dr. Harold Kaiser, who ran his podiatry practice from 1945 to 1988. From 1945 to 1980, Jerome Weinstein, a journalism graduate from Penn State originally from Brooklyn, New York, served as editor of the Centre Daily Times. He began working at the paper as their sports editor a year prior to his college graduation, in 1937. According to Nadine Kaufman, Jerry helped the paper carry “…stories on every major Jewish holiday, building dedication, invited speaker, UJA appeal.” Other regional Jewish families and businesses included the Levine, Lipner, Petnick, and Goldman families in Bellefonte and the Hurr Men’s Clothing Store on College Avenue in State College.

According to one local Jewish community member, unlike other U.S. universities, the Pennsylvania State University, former the Farmers’ High School of Pennsylvania, the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania State College, never implemented Jewish enrollment restrictions. It is unknown who the first Jewish student at Penn State was, but by the early 1910s, Jewish fraternities existed at the university. In 1913, for example, the Beta Chapter of Beta Sigma Rho was established at Penn State, and it was incorporated in 1920. It later became an independent fraternity, Beta Sigma Beta. In his 1990 memoir, Louis S. Michael, a 1925 Jewish graduate of Penn State from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, recalled the Beta Sigma Rho house on Pugh street as a place where he “…began to learn not only the importance of homework but, with periodic dances and house parties to attend, I became attuned to the need for acquiring social graces.”

 

Figure 19: The two Beta Sigma Rho houses Louis S. Michael lived in as a Penn State student. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

 

Figure 20: Members of the Beta Chapter of Beta Sigma Rho during the 1920-1921 academic year. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Figure 21: Attendees of a Beta Sigma House Party in June 1921. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Figure 22: Members of the Beta Chapter of Beta Sigma Rho during the 1922-1923 academic year. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Other historically Jewish fraternities at Penn State included the Theta Chapter of Phi Epsilon Pi, founded at Penn State in 1914, which nationally merged with Zeta Beta Tau in 1970; the Gamma Chapter of Sigma Tau Phi, founded in 1921 at Penn State, which briefly became the independent Gamma Sigma Phi Fraternity before its national merger with Alpha Epsilon Pi in 1947, when the Pi Deuteron Chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi was chartered at Penn State; the Sigma Chapter of Phi Sigma Delta, founded in 1927, which later merged with Phi Alpha Fraternity in 1959, and went out of existence in 1971 at Penn State; the PA-Omega Gamma Chapter of Pi Lambda Phi, which was technically the first non-sectarian fraternity in the U.S., but was chartered at Penn State in 1942 and mainly served Jewish students; the Beta Eta Chapter of Phi Sigma Sigma, a non-sectarian sorority, founded at Penn State in 1945 and predominately served Jewish students; the Alpha Psi Chapter of Zeta Beta Tau, founded in 1946 at Penn State; Mu Lambda Chapter of Sigma Alpha Mu, founded in 1949 at Penn State, and closed in 2019; and the Phi Chapter of Sigma Delta Tau, founded at Penn State in 1943. Before the founding of any formal Jewish religious institutions in State College, it is believed the first bar mitzvah in State College, of Joe Kriss in 1931, occurred at one of Penn State’s Jewish fraternities with an out-of-town rabbi.

In 1922, Penn State mandated a policy of compulsory chapel service for all students. Jewish and Catholic students, however, were excused from the university’s sponsored services if they attended chapel meetings of their own faith. Jewish students met in Sparks, the Liberal Arts building, or at Jewish fraternities for their meetings. According to research from Nadine Kaufman, Rabbi Mantinband of Williamsport would occasionally visit campus to provide spiritual guidance to Jewish Penn State students and state-wide Jewish sisterhoods would help finance the activities of Jewish students on-campus. After the university ended compulsory services, the Judea Club formed at Penn State to promote Jewish social and religious life among students.

Since its founding in 1936, Penn State Hillel has supported Jewish life at Penn State. Janice Shapiro, who grew up in Bellefonte, but also attended Penn State, recalled being active in Hillel as a Penn State student. She remembered Hillel would host bagel brunches and Passover Seders. Another Penn State alumna from the 1950s recalled that each Jewish fraternity and sorority would rotate and lead different Friday night services. Until the Faculty Senate passed a resolution in the 1960s, which forced fraternities and sororities to rewrite their Constitutions within two years to allow students of different racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds to join, Greek life at Penn State was religiously and racially segregated. One alumna, who attended Penn State in the 1950s, recalled her husband, an engineering student at Penn State, wanted to join Triangle, a social engineering fraternity, but was prevented from doing so because he was Jewish.

Following the separation of the local Jewish community from Penn State Hillel in the 1960s, the organization’s focus has turned exclusively to students. In the 1980s, Penn State Hillel building at Locust Lane was rapidly deteriorating. Unable to make needed repairs and improvements to the building, Penn State Hillel’s building at 224 Locust Lane was condemned in 1987 and Penn State Hillel moved to the Eisenhower Chapel on Penn State’s campus. Hillel’s former Locust Lane property was sold by the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation on September 22, 1995, to Downtown Rental Center, Inc. of State College for $550,000 and the building’s destruction began on October 25, 1995. While attempts were made to salvage the “The Ideals of Judaism” mural within the building, they failed. The land of Hillel’s former Locust Lane building currently houses an apartment complex.

In 2003, the opening of the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center at Penn State led to Penn State Hillel moving from Eisenhower Chapel to the new shared space with other student religious and cultural organizations. In January of 2016, Penn State Hillel announced plans to build a new location in downtown State College on the corner of South Garner Street and East Beaver Avenue. The groundbreaking for the new 16,000-square-foot space, named the Bernard and Nancy Gutterman Family Center for Jewish Life, began in 2019 with the inaugural opening hosted on September 9, 2022. In an interview about the new building, Aaron Kaufman, Executive Director of Penn State Hillel stated, “…the facility will support the group’s mission to create a pluralistic, welcoming and inclusive environment for Jewish students where they can grow intellectually, spiritually and socially.” The new location includes lounge and study spaces, shared staff and student workspace, event space, and a private terrace. In addition to the new building, Penn State Hillel still maintains office space at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on Penn State’s University Park campus.

Aside from the various Jewish institutions at Penn State, Jewish Penn State students, faculty, and alumni have also made history at the university. In 1943, for example, Jerry Stein, while serving as a board member of Penn State Hillel, became the first Jewish person elected as president of the Penn State Christian Association. Regarding his decision to run, he is recorded stated, “I elected to go to the Christian association because I wanted them to know what a Jew was.” Jewish faculty member Jules Heller was the founding dean of the College of Arts and Architecture in 1963 and David B. Geselowitz founded the Bioengineering program in 1971. Herschel Leibowitz, of the Psychology Department, was the first Jewish Evan Pugh Professor in 1977 with Stanley Weintraub, of the English Department, being the second in 1986. Mimi Barash Coopersmith, a 1953 alumna of Penn State, became the first female chair of the Penn State Board of Trustees in 1987. Graham Spanier was Penn State’s first Jewish president, serving in the role from 1995 to 2011.

Penn State Hillel (1936-Present)

Figure 23: The Bernard and Nancy Gutterman Family Center for Jewish Life at the corner of Garner Street and Beaver Avenue during its grand opening in the fall of 2022. Photographed by Kellen Manning.

Penn State Hillel, currently located downtown State College at the Bernard and Nancy Gutterman Family Center for Jewish Life and on campus at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center, serves the approximately 5,000 Jewish students, including approximately 4,000 undergraduate and 1,000 graduate students, at Penn State. Rabbi Rob Gleisser, Peter J. Rubinstein Senior Jewish Educator at Penn State Hillel, helps “…cultivate spiritual services, rituals, and shabbat dinners” as well as build community. In addition to providing space for religious and cultural events, Hillel supports Jewish student organizations such as L’Chaim Ladies, Greek Team, Hillel Student Life Committee, Hillel Leadership Council Hillel, Hillel Exemplary Leaders Program (HELP), Campus Engagement Fellowship (CEF), Nazun, formerly Challah for Hunger, Chicken Soup Hotline, Live for Every Victory (LEV), and Lions for Israel. Hillel also serves kosher holiday and weekly Shabbat meals and sponsors Birthright Israel Trips and Alternative Breaks.

The Jewish Community Council of Bellefonte and State College and the Congregation Brit Shalom (1954-Present)

On April 25, 1954, State College and Bellefonte Jewish community members met at the Hillel Foundation on Locust Lane to discuss the formation of a Jewish Community Council to represent the needs of local Jewish community members and their families. On May 23, Charles Schlow, Sidney Friedman, Nancy Kalin, Nathan Krauss, Sylvia Stein, and Jack Brumberg were elected to the first Executive Committee. At the committee’s first meeting, Charles Schlow was elected president, Cliff Nelson as vice president, Milton Krauss as treasurer, and Ruth Lipner as secretary. The Jewish Community Council of the Bellefonte and State College Area was registered under the Commonwealth’s Nonprofit Corporation Law on September 24, 1957, with Harold Zipser, Milton L. Krauss, Sidney Friedman, Rodelle Weintraub, Benjamin M. Kahn, and L. W. Nieman as incorporators.

The State College and Bellefonte Jewish communities, however, were divided over whether the council should officially split from Penn State Hillel. For years, residents saw the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation as their congregation’s primarily cultural and religious organization as well as that for Penn State students. On October 29, 1961, however, members met and decided the council should build their own synagogue. Charles Abramson, Edward Mittleman, M. I. Claster, Charles Schlow, Nate Krauss, Sid Freidman, Is Steinberg, and Cliff Nelson formed a Building and Finance Committee with Robert Levy as the building fund treasurer. In 1964, the congregation purchased two lots on Hamilton Avenue and an additional strip of land on Hamilton Avenue was purchased in 1969, totaling $13,304. As the congregation built a synagogue, they continued to attend services at Penn State Hillel and contribute to the organization.

On October 3, 1965, Sunday School began at the synagogue on Hamilton Avenue with Hebrew School beginning on October 4 with 95 Sunday School students and 25 Hebrew students. On February 28, 1965, the synagogue was dedicated. Divisions within the Jewish community continued to grow as some argued the council should only serve the education and social components of the Jewish community while others thought the center should also serve the religious aspects of the Jewish community. In April of 1965, however, the council obtained their first Torah, a gift from the Temple Beth Zion, Beth Israel in Philadelphia, with a bimah being built for Shavuoth services in June. The June 6 service, conducted by Cliff Nelson and Gary R. Dalin also held the congregation’s first confirmation.

At the beginning, the council hired rabbinical students to lead services one Friday a month with additional holiday services. On May 20, 1966, Hebrew Union College student Anthony D. Holz from South Africa conducted the first Friday night service. The first high holiday services for adults were held in September of 1966 by rabbinical student Roy Tanenbaum. The synagogue’s second Torah came from the Kalin family in memory of Max and Miriam Kalin and the third was a gift from the Philipsburg’s Sons of Israel Congregation, which closed in the 1990s. The High Holiday prayer books were gifts from Mr. and Mrs. Morris Fromm. The Torah pointer from Norman and Fran Davids and the Shofar from Barna and Jake Kofman.

Marshall Goldstein, president of the congregation from 1969 to 1970, suggested the congregation should hire a rabbi and Robert A. Kaufmann of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, became the congregation’s first full-time rabbi. During the 1970s, various changes transformed the congregation. In 1971, for example, the Hillel Nursery School was moved from Penn State Hillel to the congregation and in 1973, full religious rights were granted to female members. “Rabbi Jeff,” or Rabbi Jeff Eisenstat, succeeded Rabbi Kaufman in 1976, and served as both rabbi and Religious School director. Rabbi Eisenstat changed the congregation’s affiliation to Reconstructionism and accepted Jewish community members with patrilineal descent. In the spring of 1979, the congregation decided to keep the organization’s name of the Jewish Community Council of Bellefonte and State College, but to adopt a Hebrew congregation name. Brit Shalom was selected as the name.

On September 14, 1982, a groundbreaking ceremony took place for Brit Shalom’s building expansion. A new sanctuary, Youth Lounge, and larger classrooms were dedicated on December 11, 1983. During the construction, Sunday School, Hebrew School, the Purim Carnival, and some meetings took place at the University Baptist and Brethren Church. By 1985, Religious School enrollment expanded to 130. The building’s entry way was later remodeled in the early 1990s.

Rabbi Eisenstat left in 1990 and was succeeded by student Rabbi David Stern for a year. Then Rabbi David Mivasair led the congregation until 1995, when Rabbi Jonathan Brown succeeded him until 2001. Student Rabbi Daniel Bronstein then led the congregation until Rabbi Kennard Lipman succeeded him from 2002 to 2005, when the congregation affiliated with Reform Judaism. Rabbi David Ostrich came to the congregation from Pensacola, Florida, in 2005 and continues to lead the congregation today.

Figure 24: The Bernard and Nancy Gutterman Family Center for Jewish Life at the corner of Garner Street and Beaver Avenue during its grand opening in the fall of 2022. Photograph from the Congregation Brit Shalom.

Reflecting on the changes to State College’s Jewish community over the last few decades, Mimi Barash Coopersmith, one of the youngest charter members of Brit Shalom, in her memoir Eat First, Cry Later wrote, “Everyone eats ‘Jewish’ in State College now—you can enjoy a lox and bagel at Irving’s, and soon, they predict, we might have a kosher deli in the new Hillel…In 2013, the congregation completed an endowment campaign of nearly $3 million to ensure the future of our Jewish traditions, hopefully into perpetuity. In the 1960s, we were living through a time when all of this seemed remote but possible, and we felt it was our responsibility to take the lead in building a strong and enduring Jewish community in and around State College.”

Centre County Memorial Park Cemetery (1954-Present)

The closest Jewish cemetery to State College was the Rodef Shalom Cemetery in Bellefonte. In 1954, Charles Schlow encouraged Jewish community members to establish a Jewish section in the Centre County Memorial Park Cemetery, which was formed in 1942, on the Benner Pike. In December, members of the Jewish Community Council passed a resolution to establish a “traditional Jewish” section in the cemetery. To secure it, however, the council needed eighteen Jewish families to commit to being buried at the Centre County Memorial Park. Two of the congregants who committed to being buried there were Mimi Barash Coppersmith and her first husband, Sy Barash, at the ages of 24 and 31, respectively. In her memoir, Mimi recalled how the new Jewish section was established to follow the rules of an orthodox Jewish burial. In 1984, to accommodate for the growing diversity of the State College Jewish community, a second Jewish section opened in Centre County Memorial Park and allowed for the burial of spouses and children of inter-faith marriages. Shrubby separates the two Jewish sections of the cemetery.

 

Chabad Penn State (2001-Present)

Founded in 2001, Chabad Penn State is led by Rabbi Nosson Meretsky and his wife, Sarah. Chabad serves both Penn State students and the State College community. For current undergraduate students, Chabad provides Birthright Israel, Chicken Soup Delivery, classes, cooking club, mezuzah bank, holiday and shabbat dinners, and the Sinai Scholars program. For Penn State Graduate students, Chabad offers similar programming through JGrads. Chabad provides additional services, such as Mommy and Me, Jewish Women’s Circle, bar and bat mitzvah lessons, Torah Studies class, CTeen events, Gan Israel Day Camp, a community mikvah (ritual bath), and more, for State College Jewish community members.

Aaron Katz (1844-1919)

Aaron Katz, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1844, moved to the American South as a young man to engage in business. During the American Civil War, he served in the 53 Regiment of the North Carolina Infantry in the Confederate Army. He was eventually promoted to the rank of Sergeant Major. During the Battle of Gettysburg in July of 1863, he was wounded in the hip and captured by the Union Army. According to his obituary, “Though he served with the Confederate army during the war, Mr. Katz held no animosity against the people of the North.”

After the war, he returned to the North and married Maria Lewisson of Philadelphia in 1871. They had two sons, Joseph Katz and Bill Katz. He and his family moved to Bellefonte in April of 1895, where Aaron started the Katz & Co. Globe Store, which was a dry goods and millinery store, located on Allegheny Street. Within Bellefonte, his obituary noted he was elected an honorary member of the Gregg Post. According to Nadine Kofman’s research on Jewish community members in Bellefonte, Edith Kolsky Katz, the widow of Aaron’s grandson, Alan, said “Every time there was a parade in Bellefonte, he [Aaron] wore his Army of the Confederacy uniform…He was the only one wearing a Confederate uniform.” Aaron’s son, Will, took over the Globe Store after Aaron retired in 1918 because of his failing health. Aaron died in June of 1919 and was buried in the Mount Sinai cemetery in Philadelphia.

 

Jacob Marks (1857-1930)

Jacob Marks, born Marcius Podolsky in 1857 in Russia, immigrated to the U.S. around 1880. He stayed in New York with his sister until 1881 or 1882, when members of Lyon & Co., a dry goods store operated by Bernard Lyon and his two sons, Gustave and Moyer, in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, solicited him to work as a clerk for their store. Jacob never married or had any children. The only surviving relatives listed in his obituary were his nieces and nephews. He served in the Spanish-American War in 1898.

Jacob worked at Lyon & Co. for approximately twenty-nine years. He retired in 1910. Additionally, he owned real estate and served as a landlord. His properties included two homes on Bishop Street, two homes on Ridge Street, one home on the corner of Ridge and Logan Streets as well as tracts of land in Rush and Spring townships as well as in Pleasant Gap and Bellefonte.

In Bellefonte, Jacob was a member of the Bellefonte Elks and the Logan Fire Company. In 1904, 1908, 1910, and 1915, he served as an elected trustee of the Bellefonte Elks. In 1905 and 1909, he was the elected trustee of the Logan Fire Company. He was also elected as the third assistant of the Logan Fire Company in 1911 and the elected treasurer of the organization in 1909, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1921, 1925, 1926, and 1928. On March 19, 1909, the Democratic Watchman reported a fire in the Brockerhoff dining room and Jacob Marks was one of the responding volunteer firemen. On August 25, 1916, the Democratic Watchman reported Jacob Marks represented the Logan Fire Company at the annual convention of the Central Pennsylvania district Volunteer Fireman’s association in Clearfield. He was also a member of the “Has-Beens” fishing club in 1910.

Jacob died at the Centre County Hospital in Bellefonte in January of 1930 from kidney trouble and other complications. His funeral was held at the Elks home on High Street, and he was buried at the Rodef Shalom Cemetery in Bellefonte.

 

Mathilde Lyon Grauer (1858-1942)

Mathilde “Tillie” Lyon Grauer, born in France in 1858, was born to Bernard Cerf Lyon and Estelle Hanan Lyon. In 1864, she immigrated to the U.S. with her parents and five siblings, Melanie, Gustave, Moyer, Pauline, and Victorine. The Lyon family settled in Danville, Pennsylvania, before moving to Milesburg, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1865 and to Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, in 1870.

Mathilde married Louis J. Grauer of Baltimore, Maryland, on April 29, 1895, and they had two children: Edward Grauer and Estelle Grauer Payne. In the early 1870s, Mathilde’s father, Bernard, and her two brothers, Gustave and Moyer, established Lyon & Co., a dry goods store, in Bellefonte. The store originally opened in the Reynold’s Arcade, but in 1878, the store moved to Allegheny Street. After Bernard died in 1886, the management of Lyon & Co. passed to Moyer, who maintained it until his death in 1901. Mathilde began working in the store as early as 1896, but she and her husband managed the store after Moyer’s death. When Mathilde’s husband died on February 21, 1927, Mathilde began solely managing the store. In April of 1927, according to the Democratic Watchman, she sold the store because she did not feel equipped to continue running the business.

On July 15, 1927, the Democratic Watchman reported, “Going into the Lyon & Co store as a girl she [Mathilde] quickly became an expert saleslady and while yet quite young in years assumed the responsibility of comanager of the store. In this capacity she continued for more than a quarter of a century, or until her recent sale of the store to Harry Bernstein.” Harry Bernstein changed the name of the store to B and B Underselling Store. The Democratic Watchman noted, “For the first time in many years Mrs. Louis Grauer is now enjoying a life devoid of all business cared and responsibility.”

Mathilde moved from Bellefonte to Philadelphia with her daughter, Estelle, around 1930. Mathilde died at Estelle’s home in Philadelphia on September 17, 1942, and her remains were transported to Bellefonte for burial at the Rodef Shalom Cemetery.

 

Max Kalin (1883-1953)

Max Kalin, born in Lithuania in 1883, immigrated to the U.S. in 1898. His uncle, Harris Claster of Lock Haven, sponsored Max’s immigration in exchange for him working as a peddler for Harris. Max peddled in both Centre and Clinton counties. He also operated a Claster’s store in State College from 1904 to 1906. In 1908, while operating a Claster’s store in Durbin, West Virginia, Max married Miriam Sykes of Lock Haven, who was also originally from Lithuania. Max and Miriam had five children: Arnold Kalin, Mildred Kalin Steinberg, Caroline Kalin Nieman, Pauline Kalin Disick, and Sanford “Bill” Kalin.

Max and his family moved to Bellefonte in 1914 after his store in Ford City, Pennsylvania, was destroyed in a flood. In Bellefonte, he operated a shoe store. With three of the Kalin children enrolled at the Pennsylvania State College, the family moved to State College in 1928. Max purchased a storeroom at 128-130 Allen Street, where he and his family operated several businesses, including Kalin’s Dress Shop and Kalin’s Men Store.

Max and Miriam were both members of the early Jewish community of State College. They belonged to the Jewish congregation in Lock Haven until the establishment of the Hillel Foundation in State College in the 1930s. They and their children were founding members of the Jewish Community Council of Bellefonte and State College and the Congregation Brit Shalom in the 1960s. In 1964, Max and Miriam’s children donated a Torah in memory of their parents to Brit Shalom in State College. It is one of the congregation’s three Torah scrolls.

 

Charles Schlow (1886-1981)

Figure 25: Charles Schlow on a float for State College’s 75th Diamond Jubilee in 1971. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Charles Schlow, born in Russia in 1886, immigrated to the U.S. at the age of five. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Charles worked as a schoolteacher in Philadelphia for several years before moving with his wife, Bella Silversmith Schlow, to Bellefonte in 1919. While in Bellefonte, he operated a women’s clothing store on the corner of Bishop and Allegheny Streets. Charles and Bella had two children, Frank Schlow and Irma Schlow Zipser. After Bella’s death, which occurred in 1957, Charles remarried Blanche Schlow, who died in 1974.

In the 1920s, the Schlow family moved to State College, where Charles opened the Schlow’s Quality Shop and Schlow Furniture Store. Schlow first opened a clothing store on Allen Street, but after a fire destroyed the block, he purchased land on College Avenue from the Metzger Company to build the Schlow Building in 1925, the current location of Irvings Bagels on East College Avenue. The building, located at 106-108 East College Avenue, included twelve-unit Campus View Apartments located above the storefront. In the 1930s, Schlow closed his dress business in Bellefonte.

The Schlow’s Quality Shop, a clothing store, operated for forty-three years in the Schlow Building under the leadership of first Charles and Bella Schlow and later their daughter and son-in-law, Irma Schlow Zipser and Harold Zipser. Charles and Bella’s son, Frank Schlow, operated the Schlow Furniture Store, an interior design and furniture store, first located at 320 East College Avenue then at 129 South Atherton Street, the current location of the Graduate Hotel at on South Atherton Street, from 1937 to 1966.

In State College, Charles served as the chairman of the Water Authority, president of the borough council, and the founder of State College’s first library. The State College Community Library, opened on January 17, 1957, was originally located in a two-room storefront Charles donated on West College Avenue. That same year, Charles’ wife, Bella died, and he donated money in her memory to expand the building. In 1958, the library’s name was changed to the Bella S. Schlow Memorial Library in memory of Bella. In 1966, the library moved to its current location at the corner of Beaver Avenue and Allen Street, the building of the former State College post office. The library’s name was changed in 1967 to the Schlow Memorial Library to honor the entire Schlow family. After being reconstructed in 2004, discussions surrounding a new name reflecting the areas the library served was considered. Discussion amongst the descendants of the Schlow family, the State College, and other municipal leaders decided to keep the Schlow name because of concerns the library’s founder might be lost. The library’s new name became the Schlow Centre Region Library.

 

Figure 26: The first library in State College, which Charles Schlow opened in 1957 on the first floor of this home on 222 West College Avenue. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Figure 27: The Bella S. Schlow Memorial Library on West College Avenue. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

 

For more than fifty-five years, Charles Schlow also served as the lay chaplain for Jewish prisoners at the State Correctional Institution at Rockview. Two of his grandchildren, Judy Lang and Ruth Zipser recalled their grandmother, Bella, would make Challah, herring, and other foods for Charles to bring to prisoners on Jewish holidays. Charles and Bella, in the early 1970s, were also allowed to bring the Jewish prisoners to their home to celebrate the high holidays and Passover. Charles was also one of the founders of the Hillel Foundation in State College and served as the first president of the Jewish Community Council of Bellefonte and State College.

Dr. Teresa Cohen (1892-1992)

Figure 28: Dr. Teresa Cohen. Photograph from the Pennsylvania State University’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library.

Dr. Teresa Cohen, born to Benjamin and Rebecca Cohen in Baltimore, Maryland, on Valentine’s Day in 1892, attended the Friends School in Baltimore before earning her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physicals at Goucher College in 1912. She earned both her master’s degree and Ph.D. in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University in 1915 and 1918, respectively. She taught at the Johns Hopkins summer school from 1918 to 1920 until she received a telegraph from Joseph Willard, the head of the mathematics department at Penn State, in September of 1920. Joseph, in need of a mathematics instructor for a last-minute class, heard from a colleague at Johns Hopkins, who was Dr. Cohen’s uncle, about Dr. Cohen. Dr. Cohen accepted the teaching position and arrived in State College two days later.

Dr. Cohen was promoted to assistant professor in 1921, associate professor in 1939, and to full professor in 1945. She was the first female faculty member in the mathematics department at Penn State and one of the first few female university professors in the U.S. She retired in 1961 due to Penn State regulations, but continued working with students as a free tutor for twenty-four years. Each day she walked to her office on-campus and made herself available from 9:30am to 4:30pm to students and filled in for sick colleagues, when necessary. She continued working with students until she was in an accident at the age of ninety-four and was forced to enter a nursing home in Baltimore. She died in Baltimore in 1992 at the age of one hundred. She never married or had any children.

Dr. Cohen taught at Penn State for more than sixty-years. In 1982, the Department of Mathematics at Penn State honored her with the establishment of the Teresa Cohen Service Award, an award for excellent undergraduate teaching. The award is given every two years to a faculty at Penn State’s main campus, University Park, and one of the university’s commonwealth campuses. In 1987, the department also established the Teresa Cohen Tutorial Endowment Fund to develop an undergraduate tutoring program. The program became known as the Sperling-Cohen Program in 1991.

Dr. Cohen was a member of the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, Pi Mu Epsilon, and Sigma Delta Epsilon, the national honor society for women in science. She was also a charter member of the Penn State chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. At Penn State, she was honored with the Lion’s Paw Medal from the Alumni Association and the Outstanding Service Award from the College of Science. Within the local Jewish community, Dr. Cohen was one of the founding members of the Hillel Foundation at Penn State. A devoted member of both Penn State Hillel and the Congregation Brit Shalom, she regularly attended Friday evening services at Penn State Hillel from the 1930s until her departure from State College. A plaque was dedicated to her at the Locust Lane Hillel building in her usual seat, located in the back row on the right side.

 

Nathan Krauss (1908-2001)

Nathan “Nate” Krauss, born in 1908, was the son of Benjamin and Freda Krauss, both Russian immigrants, and grew up in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvanian. He served as mayor of Bloomsburg from 1938 to 1941. While in Bloomsburg, he met Bellefonte native, and future wife, Florence Cohen. Nathan and Florence had two children: Janice Krauss Shapiro and Jeffrey Krauss. Nathan and Florence moved to Bellefonte in 1942 when Florence’s father, London-born Walter Cohen, the owner of the Cohen’s Dress Shop in Bellefonte, died. While unfamiliar with business, Nate had training in accounting and took over the management of the business, later changing the name of the store to Krauss’s Corrective Apparel for Women.

Within the region’s Jewish community, Nate served as the self-appointed “Jewish Ambassador” to Centre County Christendom. For forty-years, he was a well-known speaker at religious, service, and fraternal oriented organizations in Bellefonte, State College, and the surrounding region. He is believed to have spoken in every church in Centre County at least once. He also wrote the first known document about Jewish life in Centre County and helped find, repair, and set up the perpetual maintenance of the Rodef Shalom Cemetery in Bellefonte.

Nathan’s son, Jeff, remembered him as a highly respected member of the Bellefonte community. Nate was the first Jewish member of the Peoples National Bank Board, and his volunteer work with local health organizations led him to be awarded the Centre County Medical Society’s Benjamin Rush Award in 1965. Nate and his wife also had a park, located on West Lamb Street between Dunlap and North Water Streets, named after them, the Krauss Park, for their “…significant impact on the local community.”

 

Sid Friedman (1920-2009)

Sidney “Sid” Friedman was born in Altoona, Pennsylvanian, in 1920 to Meyer and Bessie Friedman, both immigrants from Russia. He attended Penn State and graduated with a degree in journalism in 1944. To fund his college, he opened a bicycle rental agency and sandwich store on East College Avenue, the current location of The Tavern restaurant at 220 East College Avenue, as a first-year student in 1938. He met his wife, Helen Sevel, originally from Tyrone, Pennsylvania, at Penn State and they married in 1942. Sid and Helen had two sons: Ronald and Edward Friedman.

While at Penn State, Sid also sold advertising for the Centre Daily Times. He worked as the advertising manager of Centre Daily Times before he was hired in 1945 as the first commercial manager of WMAJ, at the time, a new radio station in State College. In 1948, he founded Nittany Advertiser, formerly Morgan Signs and Commercial Printing, and in 1963, he sold his businesses to focus on real estate development. In 1971, he and his sons purchased the Corner Room and Hotel State College, the Cathaum Theater, and adjacent properties. In 1976 and 1982, he built the Calder Square buildings in the alley, later known as Calder Way, between Beaver Avenue and College Avenue in downtown State College. In 2003, he and his wife donated the State Theater for it to become a community arts center.

Sid received numerous accolades for his contributions to Penn State and State College: in 1978, he received the College of the Liberal Arts Alumni Society’s Service Award; in 1989, Sid received Penn State’s Distinguished Alumni award, the highest honor the university bestows upon alumna or alumnus; in 1991, he was named the Renaissance Honoree, which honors an individual or couple who has greatly contributed to Penn State and State College and has deep roots within the Centre Region; and a recipient of the Borough of State College Legacy Award. He and his wife both contributed to various endowments at the university, including Penn State Centre Stage, Palmer Art Museum, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hillel Foundation, and many others.

Sid died in April of 2009. Following his death, a park, the Central Parklet, between the U.S. Post Office and the Memorial Field on South Fraser Street, was renamed in August of 2009 to the Sid Friedman Park in his honor.

 

Jay Claster (1931-2015)

Jay Claster, born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, in November of 1931 to A. H. “Orie” and Miriam Herr Claster, he was the grandson of Morris Claster, the founder of the Morris L. Claster Coal & Feed Company, later known as M. L. Claster & Sons and Claster’s Building Materials. Jay graduated from the Lock Haven High School in 1949 and from the former Carnegie Technical College in 1953 with a degree in Industrial Engineering. He served in the U.S. Army as a member of the Military Police (MP) for a couple of years. Jay Claster had one child, Saundra Claster, with his first wife, Barbara Claster, and no children with his second wife, Grace Grove Claster.

In 1955, Jay returned to Lock Haven and joined the family business. By 1988, Claster’s Building Materials, which he served as president of until 1993, had expanded to 270 employees across its eleven branches. The business was ranked among the top 150 lumber companies in the U.S. and had sales of $44,000,000.00. In 1993, Jay retired from the company and sold the remaining branches to Your Building Center.

Outside of his business, Jay worked as a volunteer with the American Heart Association for more than thirty years while also serving as State Board Chairman and National Vice President for four terms and on the boards of Penn State, Geisinger, and the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association.

 

Mimi Barash Coppersmith (1933-Present)

Marian “Mimi” Barash Coppersmith was born in 1933 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Penn State with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1953 and a double master’s degree in Speech and Journalism. While an undergrad in 1953, Mimi met her first husband, Sy Barash. Sy was a World War II U.S. Marine Corps veteran and an advertising student at Penn State. Mimi and Sy married in 1954 and stayed in State College. They had two children: Carol and Nan Barash.

Sy and Mimi began an advertising company, Barash Advertising, in the basement of their State College home in 1959. In 1960, Sy and Mimi were two of the youngest charter members of the Jewish Community Council of Bellefonte and State College. In 1966, they founded the Town&Gown Magazine, a publication dedicated to things to do in and around State College. Sy died from lung cancer in 1975. Mimi later re-married Senator Wallace Louis Coppersmith. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate from 1969 to 1980. He died of a heart attack in 1989. In 2008, Mimi sold Barash Media to Gazette Printers, a division of Indiana Printing & Publishing. She served as a consultant for their firm until 2021, when she decided to step down to focus on her volunteer and philanthropic work.

In State College, Mimi has served as president of the State College Area Chamber of Commerce, the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, and the Renaissance Fund. Her philanthropic contributions include the American Cancer Society, Pennsylvania Pink Zone, the Girl Scouts, Centre Safe, the Youth Service Bureau, Jana Marie Foundation, Strawberry Fields, and the Centre County Historical Society, as well as scholarship funds through Centre Gives and Penn State. At Penn State, Mimi was elected as the first woman chair of the Penn State Board of Trustees in 1990, which she served as for two years. She is also an Elm Member of the Mount Nittany Society, a designation of the highest level of Penn State’s donors with more than $1 million in lifetime giving.

The Jewish communities of Bellefonte and State College were combined into a single page because it is difficult to depict each town’s Jewish history without the other. Bellefonte, the industrial and political center of Centre County for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, had an earlier Central European Jewish community than State College, but the lack of documentation and oral histories from this period makes it difficult to create a robust historical narrative about Jewish life in Bellefonte prior to the existence of a parallel Jewish community in State College.

By the early to mid-twentieth century, the increasing prosperity of the Pennsylvania State College, later the Pennsylvania State University, and the decline in industry in Bellefonte led to State College overtaking Bellefonte as Centre County, and the greater region’s, political and economic center. During this time, Bellefonte’s Jewish community increasingly invested in real estate and opened businesses in State College, ultimately moving from Bellefonte to State College. The growth of Penn State also attracted Jewish professionals and professors to State College from other areas. Unlike the Central Pennsylvania Jewish communities in Lock Haven and Philipsburg, both of which suffered membership declines in the mid to late nineteenth century, State College’s Jewish community, grew during this period of time. While the Bellefonte and State College Jewish communities were officially combined in name in 1957 as the “Jewish Community Council of Bellefonte and State College,” Bellefonte’s Jewish community was very small in 1957. There are only a handful of Jewish residents living in Bellefonte today.

While Lock Haven was the center of Jewish life in Central Pennsylvania in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, State College emerged as the new center of Central Pennsylvania Jewish life in the mid-twentieth century. As Jewish congregations began to close in other Central Pennsylvania towns, such as Philipsburg in the 1990s and Clearfield in 2010, the Congregation Brit Shalom in State College has begun serving as a space to hold and preserve Jewish religious artifacts, such as one of Philipsburg’s Torah scrolls, and provide the region’s remaining Jewish community members with a congregation in the absence of other congregations.

Figures

Figure 1: A. Pomeroy & Co., Bellefonte map, 1874, Atlas of Centre County, Pennsylvania: from actual surveys via the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, https://digital.libraries.psu.edu/digital/collection/maps1/id/25454.

Figure 2: Sanborn Map Company, State College map, Oct. 1929, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from State College, Centre County, Pennsylvania via the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, https://digital.libraries.psu.edu/digital/collection/maps1/id/26152/rec/1.

Figure 3: Martin and Jacobena Fauble, n.d., photograph. Photograph from Justin Houser.

Figure 4: Bellefonte Jewish Cemeteries Map, 1996, map, in The Cemeteries of Benner and Spring Townships, Centre County, Pennsylvania by Centre County Genealogical Society. State College: Centre County Genealogical Society, 1996.

Figure 5: A. Pomeroy & Co., Bellefonte map, 1874, Atlas of Centre County, Pennsylvania: from actual surveys via the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, https://digital.libraries.psu.edu/digital/collection/maps1/id/25454.

Figure 6: Casey Sennett, Rodef Shalom Cemetery Entrance, personal photograph, March 29, 2023.

Figure 7: Rodef Shalom Cemetery Layout, 1996, map, in The Cemeteries of Benner and Spring Townships, Centre County, Pennsylvania by Centre County Genealogical Society. State College: Centre County Genealogical Society, 1996.

Figure 8: The Krauskopf Lecture, 1894, newspaper article, Democratic Watchman, April 27, 1894.

Figure 9: Carl W. Wild, Rodef Sholem Cemetery Design Plan, Spring Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania, c. 1930, sketch. Donated by Mark Lafer on behalf of Congregation Brit Shalom in 2019 to the Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 9982, Box 1.

Figure 10: Shaffer, Baum Family Portrait, July 1890, photograph, Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. Photo from Tara Mianulli U’Ren, a descendant of the Baum family. According to the Democratic Watchman on August 1, 1890, this photo of Abraham and Mary Baum and their thirteen children was the largest family photo taken in Bellefonte.

Figure 11: Max Kriss, n.d, photograph, in “Max Kriss at Penn State, 1918,” Kriss Foundation, https://krissfoundation.org/vignettes.php?ref=Max%20Kriss.

Figure 12: Penn State Hillel Above Temple Market, n.d., photograph, in “History: The First 70 Years,” Congregation Brit Shalom, https://www.britshalomstatecollege.org/history.

Figure 13: Penn State Hillel Construction, September 15, 1952, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 01190. Photographic Vertical Files, Students, Box 71. Folder: Religion, Jewish/Hillel (b&w).

Figure 14: The Ideals of Judaism, n.d, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 01190. Photographic Vertical Files, Students, Box 71. Folder: Religion, Jewish/Hillel (b&w).

Figure 15: Outside of Penn State Hillel on Locust Lane, n.d, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 01190. Photographic Vertical Files, Students, Box 71. Folder: Religion, Jewish/Hillel (b&w).

Figure 16: Lighting the Sabbath Candles, n.d, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 01190. Photographic Vertical Files, Students, Box 71. Folder: Religion, Jewish/Hillel (b&w).

Figure 17: Art Auction Poster, n.d, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 09591. Daniel Walden papers: series 03: Professional, Box 6. Folder: Jewish Community Council of Bellefonte Art Auction poster.

Figure 18: West College Avenue, c. 1925, photograph, in Penn State Forever: A Photographic History of the First 150 Years by Centre Daily Times, 46. State College: Centre Daily Times, 2004.

Figure 19: Beta Sigma Rho Houses, c. 1920s, photographs. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 00635, Louis S. Michael Papers Box 1, Folder: Scrapbook- Penn State University, Undated.

Figure 20: Beta Sigma Rho Membership 1920-1921, c.1920-1921, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 00635, Louis S. Michael Papers Box 1, Folder: Scrapbook- Penn State University, Undated.

Figure 21: Beta Sigma Rho House Party, June 1921, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 00635, Louis S. Michael Papers Box 1, Folder: Scrapbook- Penn State University, Undated.

Figure 22: Beta Sigma Rho Membership 1922-1923, c.1922-1923, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 00635, Louis S. Michael Papers Box 1, Folder: Scrapbook- Penn State University, Undated.

Figure 23: Kellen Manning, Penn State Hillel, September 2022, photograph, in “Penn State Hillel Celebrates Opening of new Building,” Penn State News, https://www.psu.edu/news/campus-life/story/penn-state-hillel-celebrates-opening-new-building/.

Figure 24: Congregation Brit Shalom, n.d., photograph, in “Welcome,” Brit Shalom State College, https://www.britshalomstatecollege.org/.

Figure 25: Charles Schlow at State’s 75th Anniversary, 1971, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 01196. Photographic Vertical Files, Town and Environs, Box 34. Folder: Anniversary, 75th (color), July 1971.

Figure 26: First State College Library, c.1957, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 01196. Photographic Vertical Files, Town and Environs, Box 20. Folder: Schlow Memorial Library (b&w).

Figure 27: Bella S. Schlow Memorial Library, c.1962, photograph. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 01196. Photographic Vertical Files, Town and Environs, Box 20. Folder: Schlow Memorial Library (b&w).

Figure 28: Teresa Cohen, n.d., portrait. Available at Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Call Number 01212. Photographic Vertical Files, Portraits, A-C, Box 52. Folder: Cohen, Teresa.

 

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