Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

Of Max Baer, Joe Lelyveld and 8 Other Things About Jewish Nebraska

  1. Six thousand one hundred Jews live in Nebraska with the majority concentrated in Omaha and Lincoln.

  2. The Jewish Press, Omaha’s weekly Jewish newspaper, has served Nebraska and western Iowa since 1916.

  3. The Reform Temple Israel, established downtown in 1871, moved to midtown and, in 2013, to the western suburbs, where it occupies the grounds of the former Jewish Highland Country Club.

  4. Nebraska’s sisterhoods, B’nai B’rith, and the Jewish Community Center have published over 20 Jewish cookbooks.

  5. Omaha was home to Jewish peddlers, scores of mom and pop grocery stores and retailers of clothing, hardware and other goods.The Brandeis flagship department store was also here from 1881 to 1987.

  6. The 1923 Omaha reception for Israeli president Chaim Weizmann included a long cortège from the train station to the hotel where he was staying.

  7. Former Mayor Johnny Rosenblatt had a baseball stadium named for him that hosted the College World Series from 1950 to 2010. The stadium was imploded in 2012.

  8. Notable Omahans include Tillie Lerner Olsen, feminist novelist and short story writer; Louis Wirth, University of Chicago sociologist and author of “The Ghetto”; Howard Chudacoff, Brown University historian; Joseph Lelyveld, New York Times editor and author of “Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop” ; Hannah Logasa, who professionalized children’s school libraries; Joan Micklin Silver, director of “Crossing Delancey”; and philosopher Saul Kripke.

  9. Alvin Johnson, child of Danish immigrants, born near Homer, Nebraska, was director of the New School for Social Research. During the 1930s he rescued German and French Jewish intellectuals creating the “University in Exile,” partly funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. He entered the Nebraska Hall of Fame in 2014 in great part for his humanitarian activities.

  10. Omaha-born Max Baer was the onetime heavyweight champion of the world. He had a Jewish father, a Christian mother and an Orthodox boxing stance.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.