THE JEWS Oppression of Russia left behind for life in America

Editor’s note: Waves of European immigrants swept into the United States to escape the poverty and oppression of their homelands around the turn of the 20th century. This six-part series, which began Saturday, focuses on how Bangor, as an example of one Maine community, experienced this rush of humanity. Today’s story looks at some of the Jewish families whose descendants still live in the Queen City.

A legendary event in the history of Bangor Jews occurred early one morning in June 1918 at Union Station. A train containing 300 recruits for the Jewish Legion stopped on the way from New York City to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Legion was planning to fight in Palestine as part of the British army. One of its recruits was David Ben-Gurion, the future leader of what many years later would become the country of Israel.

Organized by a local Zionist activist named Myer Minsky, “almost the entire Jewish community marched from State Street down Exchange Street to the railroad station accompanied by a band. ‘Hatikvah’ [which means hope and is now the national anthem of Israel] was sung as the train came in and almost every Jewish woman brought with her sandwiches, pastry or some sort of refreshments,” according to one of several accounts. The event left a sufficient impression on Ben-Gurion that he referred to it in a Boston speech after he became prime minister of Israel.

Myer Minsky was 16 years old when he immigrated to the United States in 1904 from Kreva, Russia (now part of Lithuania), as part of a wave of Eastern European Jews seeking to escape religious persecution and grinding poverty. These were not the first Jews to come to Bangor. In the 19th century, two different groups of Jews, including Germans and possibly some Eastern Europeans, had arrived in much smaller numbers. Some, such as William Engle, a lumber baron, and Julius Waterman, a department store owner, became significant players in the area economy.

By 1910, the U.S. Census listed 561 Russian immigrants and 376 children of Russian immigrants living in Bangor. It gave no indication of their religious backgrounds. Another study, however, concluded that there were 193 Jews employed in Bangor by 1910, meaning a population of several times that when family members were counted, which seems to correspond roughly to the U.S. Census. Most of them lived in the area around Hancock Street at the center of Bangor’s melting pot. At one time there were four synagogues in the Queen City and more recently a kosher restaurant.

Back in Russia, Minsky’s father and grandfather were nonpracticing rabbis who spent much of their time studying and arguing over religious texts. The main source of income in the Minsky family had been from his mother’s small grocery store and from the bread she baked for a Christian church for use at Sunday services. She was always in debt from buying the flour, according to Myer’s son Norman, a Bangor lawyer who presented a class last fall on Bangor’s Jewish immigrants as part of the Penobscot Valley Senior College course “Into the Melting Pot.”

Myer, whose education consisted of attendance at local religious classes and two or three years at a yeshiva, joined an underground Zionist group when he was 12 or 13 years old before coming to America. He was already a committed activist working for a Jewish national state before he came to the United States.

He always emphasized to his children the importance of getting a good education. “Any Jewish person will tell you that their parents kept saying education, education, education,” said Norman. It was a way to become a professional and to rise above anti-Semitic discrimination.

In the United States, Myer lived first with a brother in Boston before moving to Bangor where four uncles, Harry H., Max, Israel and Hyman Epstein, lived. He tried several jobs. He worked briefly in a bakery on Hancock Street for a cousin, Barnett Kamenkovitch. He cut ice on the Penobscot River. He worked for Sterns Lumber Co. where he formed the first Zionist group in the area with several other immigrants. Gradually this group evolved into the Sons and Daughters of Zion, members of which greeted the Jewish Legionnaires in 1918.

Like many other immigrants, whether Irish Catholic or Jewish, Minsky became a peddler before becoming a storekeeper. With a partner named McDonald, he would take the train a few miles from Bangor, hire a team and travel through the small towns selling his wares, then take the train back to Bangor.

He opened his first store in Brownville Junction, stocking it with about $50 worth of kerosene lamps, representing his entire savings, and using $150 in credit to obtain stocks of candy and tobacco. Small loans were often available to immigrant entrepreneurs from synagogues, relatives or some banks such as Merrill Trust.

He worked to fit into the small-town society by joining several local organizations such as the Masons, joining hunting parties even though he didn’t hunt and helping with a local baseball team. He continued going back and forth to Bangor to participate in the activities of the Sons and Daughters of Zion. In 1916 he returned to Bangor from Brownville to open the Eastern Furniture Co. with James Cahners and later A.B. Friedman.

Then came World War I. Shortly after the Jewish Legion traveled through Bangor, Minsky joined the war effort in the summer of 1918. A short piece titled “Farewell dinner to Jewish soldier boys” appeared in the Bangor Daily News on July 27, 1918. The dinner was held at 1 a.m. at the Manhattan Cafe for Louis Weinstein, Phillip Shuman and Minsky. After the toasts and speeches and the singing of a medley of both Jewish and American songs, the group escorted Weinstein and Shuman to Old Town where they were scheduled to board the train at 6:55 a.m.

Kenneth Klein was one of the first from Bangor to die in the war. Abe Goldberg, another Bangor man near the front, wrote a letter home that was published in the Bangor Daily News on June 4, 1918, saying he had gathered up “10 Jewish boys, and got over there after more red tape and – well we buried Kenneth Klein as a good soldier, and as a Jew.” Two members of the Beth Israel congregation, Henry Lait and Hyman Hillson, also were killed.

Minsky spent the war as a cook and never went overseas. After he returned to Bangor, he and Edwin Epstein opened the National Confectionery Co., which manufactured and sold candy wholesale. Later he founded and became president of the Superior Paper Co. When the company opened a new building in 1968 when Minsky was 80, a newspaper advertising supplement pictured him at the ribbon cutting with his sons Leonard, who was general manager, and Norman, who was mayor of Bangor.

Myer continued his efforts for Zionism and many other Jewish causes. Three- or four-day car trips into Aroostook County might raise $200 or $300 for the Jewish National Fund, even though “half the time was spent digging the car out of mud roads,” according to a family history. He spent a great deal of time speaking for the Zionist cause throughout Maine and eventually became president of the State of Maine Zionist Council and vice president of the New England organization. Like many Jews, he eventually visited Israel in the 1950s and 1960s two or three times, recalled his son.

A citation honoring him in 1966 for his work at Congregation Beth Israel said he “stood out as one of those who most nearly approached prophetic inspiration” in his support of Zionism. “To us who are by now completely adjusted, his ideas appear self-evident. But 50 years ago, when the horizon of the Jewish people was very limited, few men had the foresight manifested in Myer Minsky.” Despite his foresight, his life was similar in many ways to that of the hundreds of Jewish immigrants who settled in Bangor.

Next: Thousands of Irish came after the famine.