T

emple Jacob is a small Reform
synagogue in the city of
Hancock in the Keweenaw
Peninsula, the northernmost part of
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The area,
like the temple, has a rich history.
The Keweenaw Peninsula was the
site of the first copper boom in the
United States, leading to its moniker,
“Copper Country.
”
The boom led to hundreds of
thousands of people who arrived in
the area that was rich with copper ore.
Along with the population boom in
the middle of the 19th century were
merchants who came there to support
the mines. Many of those merchants
were immigrants — and many of
them were Jews.
Over the course of the 19th century
and into the early 20th century,
those Jews formed a few different
congregations in the area; the one that
remains is Temple Jacob.
Temple Jacob started off meeting
in private spaces around the city
of Hancock. Eventually one of the
merchants, Jacob Gartner, bought a

piece of land and had a synagogue
built on the property.
The building was completed in
1912. Just one year later, in 1913, was
the big mining strike that became
symbolic of the beginning of the
end of the copper boom in Copper
Country.
“
Almost immediately as the
synagogue was built, there’s the big
strike in 1913,
” said David Holden,
Temple Jacob’s current president. “
And
the copper industry starts to die off
pretty rapidly thereafter in the 1930s,
1940s and 1950s. Now, there’s really no
copper mining here at all.
”
But the synagogue remains, and
Temple Jacob has been in the same
building for as long as the synagogue’s
existed — 110 years. “I believe it’s
the second-oldest continuously run
synagogue in Michigan,
” Holden said.
The synagogue, created for the
much-larger Jewish population during
the boom, was made to seat almost
250 people.
Temple Jacob does not have a
rabbi — everything is lay-led. For the

High Holidays, they bring in a service
leader, Debbie Massarano.
Temple Jacob serves a four-county
area — Keweenaw, Houghton,
Baraga and Ontonagon. That area,
Holden says, is larger than the state of
Maryland.
“Even in an area that large, we’re so
sparsely populated that we only have
20 or so families regularly attending
services,
” Holden said. “We’re a
small but mighty group of folks who
participate in the community. I think
we have an outsized influence in the
community, given our number.
”
Holden, president of the
congregation for five years and
originally from Detroit, describes
the congregants as wide-ranging,
including many affiliated with
Michigan Technological University —
the largest employer in the area.
“We just had our annual meeting
… We have parents with kids who
are in elementary school. We have
retirees; we have snowbirds. There’s a
lot more kids in the congregation than
there have been since I’ve been here,
”

Temple Jacob in
Hancock has been
around for 110 years.

A Rich,
Fascinating
History
DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER

20 | SEPTEMBER 29 • 2022





OUR COMMUNITY
SYNAGOGUE SPOTLIGHT