Looking Back
From the William Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit History
accessible at www.djnfoundation.org
118 | MAY 19 • 2022
‘The UP’s Jewish Soul’
I
recently wrote about Holocaust education
in Michigan. While researching this topic
in the William Davidson Digital Archive
of Jewish Detroit History, I ran across the
name of a Holocaust educator that you may
not know: William L. Cohodas, known to all
as “Bill,
” did not have a degree in Holocaust
studies, but he left his mark on this field of
study in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, or the
“UP
.
” As the JN stated in its July
21, 2016, issue, Cohodas was
“The UP’s Jewish Soul.
”
For more than 100 years,
Jews have lived in the UP
.
Indeed, the first known Jew in
Michigan, Ezekiel Solomon,
was a fur trader who moved to
Michilimackinac (Mackinaw
City today) in 1761 and traded in the UP area.
Once copper and iron mining began in the
1840s, and lumbering in the 1870s, thousands
of migrants began to populate the UP
. And
like elsewhere in America, Jewish peddlers
and storekeepers soon followed the miners
and lumberjacks.
In 1889, the Jewish population in Hancock,
Mich., was large enough to establish the UP’s
first congregation. Temple Jacob still stands
today as the oldest synagogue in the UP
.
Cohodas was born in 1914, in Menominee,
the southern-most tip of the UP. Sadly, his
mother died when Cohodas was 6 years
old, and his father sent him to live with his
grandmother in Ishpeming. Cohodas would
become one of the city’s most prominent
businessmen and a civic leader. For example,
he was a supporter of such UP institutions as
Northern Michigan University (NMU), the
Bay Cliff Health Camp for children with chal-
lenges and the Ishpeming-Marquette Cancer
Society.
Along the way, Cohodas married his
beloved Lois (nee Wenk) in 1939.
Cohodas’ Jewish heritage was, how-
ever, always in the forefront of his life.
He co-founded Temple Beth Sholom in
Ishpeming in 1953 (Beth Sholom moved to
Marquette a few years ago). Cohodas was a
staunch supporter of Israel. He was a board
member of the American Friends of Hebrew
University and, as an amateur archaeologist,
made many trips to Israel to visit the sites of
new discoveries.
Perhaps the greatest impact that Cohodas
had upon the UP was in the field of Holocaust
studies. He believed that the lessons of
the Holocaust were universal. To this end,
Cohodas introduced Holocaust education to
UP schools, funded a Holocaust Information
Center at NMU and
sponsored an Interfaith
Holocaust Memorial
Service that has been held
for nearly 50 years in
Marquette.
I particularly liked
a story from April 20,
2001, JN, that demon-
strated the legacy of
Cohodas. It is about
a display that sev-
enth-graders Brandi
Barens and Erica
White created for a
Holocaust Memorial
Day at the Ishpeming
Middle School.
Cohodas passed away in San Antonio,
Texas, at the age of 101 in 2016 (July 21,
2016). Shortly after, Michigan enacted
the Governor’s Council on Genocide and
Holocaust Education (Oct. 27, 2016, JN). Bill
would have liked this.
This week’s JN is a big one and one of our
favorite issues of the year. We honor our
Jewish community graduates and, in a new
feature, the JN’s “Educators of the Year.
” Mazel
tov to all of them.
I thought this is an appro-
priate issue for the story of
Bill Cohodas, “The Jewish
Soul of UP
.
” He is missed.
Want to learn more? Go to the DJN
Foundation archives, available for
free at www.djnfoundation.org.
Mike Smith
Alene and
Graham Landau
Archivist Chair