Places
Aaronsburg
Aaronsburg, located in eastern Centre County, has never supported a Jewish community. In 1786, however, Aaron Levy founded the town and it became the first town in the U.S. founded by a Jewish person. The town’s Jewish origins remained largely unknown outside of Aaronsburg until October 23, 1949, when more than 30,000 people came to Aaronsburg for the “Aaronsburg Story,” a celebration of Aaronsburg’s multi-faith history and Jewish founder.
Lock Haven
Lock Haven, located in Clinton County, had the first permanent Jewish settlement in both Centre and Clinton counties. One Lock Haven Jewish family, the Clasters, operated a dry goods business and helped more than one hundred Jewish family members and friends immigrate to the U.S in the early twentieth century. These new arrivals, who initially worked as peddlers and later established their own businesses, serviced the Central Pennsylvania region and helped form some of the other early Jewish communities in Central Pennsylvania.
Philipsburg
Philipsburg, located in western Centre County, had a Jewish population as early as the mid-nineteenth century, but its Jewish community increased rapidly with the arrival of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the early twentieth century. Unlike the Jewish communities of Lock Haven, Bellefonte, and State College, whose histories are intertwined, the Jewish community of Philipsburg had little overlap with these other Central Pennsylvania Jewish communities.
Bellefonte and State College
Although a Jewish community existed in Bellefonte as early as the mid-nineteenth century, no formal Jewish religious institutions developed in central Centre County until State College, home of the Pennsylvania State University, began attracting a Jewish population in the early twentieth century. These Jewish institutions supported Jewish Penn State students as well as Bellefonte and State College Jewish community members.
Penn State Hillel on Locust Lane
In honor of Penn State Hillel’s return to downtown State College, explore the history of Penn State Hillel’s former location on Locust Lane in State College from 1952 to 1987.