Bnai Jacob Synagogue

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B'nai Jacob Synagogue is a Conservative congregation in Ottumwa, Iowa. Established in 1898, it was originally Orthodox. It constructed its current synagogue building in 1915, and joined the Conservative movement in the 1950s. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.HistoryThe first Jewish settlement in Ottumwa in the 19th century was dominated by German Jews, and in the early 1880s, there was an organized German congregation. By 1884, this had dissolved as most of the original German pioneers died out and their children left town. In 1886 there were about 20 Jewish families in town. The Ottumwa Jewish cemetery, founded by the Ottumwa Hebrew Association in 1876, was the lasting legacy of this period of Ottumwa's history.Edna Ferber lived in Ottumwa as a child in the 1890s. Her father operated The Fair, an Ottumwa department store. At the time, Ottumwa was a coal mining town, and the antisemitism of the town had a lasting influence on Ferber. She wrote of her years in Ottumwa: "I don't think that there was a day when I wasn't called a sheeny."By the turn of the 20th century, Ottumwa had fewer than 50 Jewish families, immigrants from Germany and across eastern Europe. Most were "in the junk and second-hand business", but there were also laborers, shoemakers, tailors and one prominent merchant. Some families were extremely observant, "wearing two types of phylacteries", while others believed "in no Judaism at all." One local Jew had a personal Torah scroll and a private mikvah, but there was no organized community.