Counting Idaho’s Jews
In 1877, the first year for which numbers are available, Jews made up approximately 0.26% of Idaho’s population. In 2017, the most recent year for which numbers were available, Jews made up an even smaller share of the state’s population: 0.12%. But behind those small numbers lies an interesting story.
The closest that we have to “official” numbers come from the American Jewish Year Book, published annually since 1899 by the Jewish Publication Society and later the American Jewish Committee. The Year Book shows a population of 2,000 Jewish Idahoans in 1899 and 1900 and then a precipitous drop to 300 Jewish Idahoans in 1901. The number fluctuates between 135 and 1,160 over the next century, with the exception of a single-year spike in 1972 (likely a typo), before rising above 2,000 once again in 2015.
When I first saw these numbers, I wondered if the high Jewish population at the end of the 19th century was a reflection of Idaho’s mining boom. In her book History of the Jews in Utah and Idaho, historian Juanita Brooks points out that, although few Jewish men became miners, many were involved in commercial activity connected to mining. Jewish immigrants became leading merchants and businessmen in mining towns across the American West. Brooks also points out that there was an active Jewish community in Salt Lake City by the 1880s, some of whose members moved north to participate in the mining boom.
We know that the Jews of Idaho experienced several important milestones around the turn of the 20th century. The state’s first synagogue was founded in Boise in 1895 and Moses Alexander was elected Idaho’s first Jewish governor in 1914. In the Wood River Valley, local Jews gathered for the first Yom Kippur services in 1884; in 1903, S.M. Friedman was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Village of Hailey; and in 1910, the residents of Hailey elected a Jewish Postmaster (Joseph Fuld) and a Jewish representative to the Idaho State Assembly (Samuel Friend).
But measuring Jews has always been challenging. The Pew Research Center devoted two full pages to explaining its methodology for “Who is a Jew?” in its landmark 2013 study of Jewish Americans. The U.S. census has rarely collected information about religious affiliation. For most of its 122-year history, the American Jewish Year Book has relied upon population estimates provided by local Jewish congregations around the country.
When I explored the statistics further, it became clear that Idaho’s early Jewish population numbers were not even provided by a local congregation. The Board of Delegates of American Israelites had estimated in 1877 — before there were any Jewish congregations in Idaho — that the state’s Jewish population was 85 people. In 1897, a communal leader in Philadelphia named David Sulzberger used math to hypothesize that Idaho’s Jewish community had grown from 85 to 2,000 people over the previous two decades. His calculations relied upon assumptions that now seem specious, including that the wave of Jewish immigrants arriving from eastern Europe in the 1880s and 90s had reached all corners of the country with equal intensity. But once Sulzberger’s estimates were printed in the American Jewish Year Book, they were entered into our historical record.
The historical record became more accurate over time, as communication methods improved and new congregations were organized in Pocatello and the Wood River Valley. In 2001, the Wood River Jewish Community became large enough that the Year Book began printing specific population numbers for Ketchum, Pocatello, and Boise as part of the state’s total. According to the record, there are now 2,125 Jews in Idaho, of whom 350 are in Ketchum. That number may generously include part-time residents.
Even if Sulzberger’s early estimates had been correct, Idaho would still have had one of the smallest percentages of Jewish residents of any state at the turn of the 19th century. It has remained at the bottom of the list since then. Today, Idaho’s Jewish population is, at 0.12% of the state, the second smallest in the country — just above South Dakota and below Mississippi.
One of the effects of this tiny size is a lack of attention from American Jewish historians and institutions. The only book ever published about Jews in Idaho is Juanita Brooks’ History of the Jews in Utah and Idaho, but Brooks was a scholar of Mormonism rather than Judaism, and her book focuses almost entirely on Utah, with just a handful of pages exploring Idaho’s history. There are few historic newspaper clippings about Jews in Idaho and even fewer academic journal articles.
Although a lack of attention from the outside makes it more challenging to know and teach our history, it also provides an opportunity for us to tell our own story — a story shaped in part by our community’s small size, but also by the qualities of the place we all call home (for part or all of the year). Jews in Idaho have been particularly connected to the wilderness and the values of the American West. Jews in Idaho have been resilient and tenacious, building communities where there were none. Jews in Idaho have formed the type of deep bonds with Christian neighbors that are necessary to flourish here, while Jews in New York and Los Angeles have the option to remain more insular.
Because Sun Valley draws Jewish transplants from around the country, it has also become a unique melting pot of Jewish experiences and traditions. In that way, I believe the Jews of the Wood River Valley today share something in common with our predecessors in the 1880s, who came to this place from around the world in search of silver and copper. Brought here by a shared goal, they established the earliest infrastructure of our community from a patchwork of languages and customs.
It’s clear, from both the numbers in the American Jewish Year Book and the lived experience of everyone here, that our community has grown significantly over the last forty years. It’s also clear that there are more Jews in the Wood River Valley today than there have ever been before. Opening the doors of our synagogue this year will be a beautiful way to mark that reality in the historical record.
This essay was originally published in the spring 2021 edition of the Wood River Jewish Community’s quarterly magazine, The Shofar.
