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

