Kate Dietrick has trained the Jewish community well. In her 12 years as the archivist at the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, Dietrick said the community knows that while paper and photos are fine, she doesn’t take large, three-dimensional items.
Until something fascinating showed up in her inbox.
“I got an email from a community member that said, ‘Hey, I saw this in the Minnesota Mammalehs Facebook group, and someone had posted that they had seen this at an antique shop in Two Harbors, and it was for sale and the shop was closing,’” Dietrick said. “And they were like, ‘you know, someone should buy this.’
“This felt different.”
“This” is a 14-foot-high ark that belonged to Agudas Achim synagogue in Superior, Wis. The ark now sits in the North Shore Architectural Antiques shop in Two Harbors, Minn, which is going to be closing its doors at the end of this month. It does not include the cabinets that held the torah scrolls.
The ark from the former Agudas Achim synagogue in Superior, Wis.
Dietrick and her husband went on a scouting trip to see the artifact this past weekend in order to confirm the size and condition, and learn how it can be broken down to a smaller size for transportation. In their short time in the store, several people approached Dietrick as they heard her and the shop owner, John McCarthy, talking about the piece.
“One man wearing a Star of David necklace asked what was happening to this,” she said. “He said, ‘I always wanted to buy it, but I don’t have a space for it. And I heard this place was closing, and I was really nervous.’”
Prior to the trip, the shop owner confirmed that he had acquired the ark and some pews. Dietrick isn’t taking the pews, but McCarthy is throwing in a box of assorted items, which includes a Torah cover and a velvet piece of frabric that may have been hung at some point in front of the cabinets that held the Torah scrolls, although a photo from the late 1990s before the building was razed showed that it was a white cloth.
McCarthy told Dietrick that he had recently sold some items, including a Torah cover.
“He said a 92-year-old local Jewish man purchased some of these materials and said he would find a home for them,” she said. “So I have kind of a side quest now to find [who bought them]. If he’s looking for a home for them, I want to find him and let him know that we will take it.”
Agudas Achim was in existence for about a century, however, the archives from 1895 to 1985 had mysteriously disappeared and were never recovered. The building was shuttered soon after, according to an article on the history of the Superior Jewish community.
“What this meant was, at one point, they did have archives and they are no longer anywhere,” Dietrick said. “Is this ark and these artifacts all that’s left to tell this story? And if so, that makes it even more imperative that we get it here into the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives.”
The shop owner isn’t looking to make a profit; he’s willing to sell it to the archives for $1,500. Dietrick started a fundraising effort with an email to several members of the community who have posted the letter on Facebook, where it has gotten some traction. She’s looking to raise at least $1,800, which includes the cost of getting the item down to the Twin Cities. Check out the end of the article to learn how to donate.
“I’m taking this one day at a time, but I am sure that the condition of it is going to be poor, so it might need some conservation,” Dietrick said. “It might need custom storage to keep it safe if it’s not on view; if it is on view in the building, how are we going to do that? And then just my time as an archivist and like the work that we do in terms of teaching with things and outreach and all of that.
“So if we are so blessed to get more money, there’s still plenty of work that can be done around securing this and kind of keeping it safe here in the archives.”
Long history, complicated ending
Cantor Daniel Singer has worked at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York for nearly two decades, but his connection to Agudas Achim goes back to his childhood. His family moved to Superior from Milwaukee, and his father worked as a librarian, historian, and English professor in the area.
A photo (circa 1998) from inside Agudas Achim synagogue in Superior, Wis. (Courtesy/Robert Davis).
“In the early 80s they were trying to get enough people for a minyan, I was brought there even though I legally [wouldn’t count],” he said. “I remember they had, the doors were locked with chains, you know, they had, they had a padlock on it, because people were already starting to break into the building. It had really fallen into disrepair.”
By the time Singer started attending services at the synagogue, the shul had been without a rabbi for several years. Rabbi Alex Hyatt, who inherited the pulpit from his father Rabbi Morris Hyatt, left in the mid-1970s after they were no longer able to get a minyan.
“When we got to Superior 1980, it was already a dilapidated building,” Singer said “The building was really falling apart. They were barely able to get a minyan ever. And there was a group of elders there who didn’t really have a plan to shut the place down.”
Texas architect Robert Davis wrote about the history of the synagogue and the architecture of the building for his website. He touched on some of the controversy that arose towards the end of the building’s existence, including “an East-coast sharpie [who] breezed into town from New York City and who knew where else. They were desparate and the sharpie could daven. But he had a shady past and a shaddier local sidekick. No one asked too many questions even when small items began to disappear.”
It’s believed that the century of synagogue records were among the items that disappeared. A Torah had also disappeared but was recovered after a workman found it in the basement of a nearby home.
“It was promptly recovered by the Police but the six remaining members of Agudas Achim had had enough, voted to shut the place down, and soon found a buyer willing to pay $30,000 for building,” Davis wrote. “Then, for their grande finale the sharpie and friend demanded 25% of the sale price, claiming to be members seven and eight respectively. And where were the records to prove they weren’t? Faced with a difficult and likely wrenching legal battle, the old guys just locked the doors and walked away.”
Singer said that in 2000, his first year of cantoral school, the building was quietly razed.
“I don’t think there was even a news article about it that ever appeared in Superior or Duluth, and I checked with the researchers at the library,” Singer said. “The superior Public Library has an amazing history, but none of their archives [or] none of their newspapers are digitized. So old history is untold history.”
Singer said that getting drawn back into history he was a part of is moving to him.
“I got a message about this on the Friday before Shabbat started the weekend of Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Temple,” he said. “It’s like Raiders of the Lost Ark, and discovering the Ark of the Covenant.”
If you would like to make a contribution to help the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives preserve this local history, you can give an online donation through their Make a Gift webpage. In the Special Options section, click “Add Special Instructions” and add a note “Save the Ark!” so that we can make sure to route the donation correctly.
How can we see this in person? Looks like an old beautiful site.
The link, Make a Gift, took me to donations for the University of Minnesota library. Is that correct?
that’s correct. The Upper Midwest Jewish Archives is part of the University of Minnesota Libraries