Source: The New York Times
On February 4, 2001, The New York Times published an article on the "Jewish migration westward to New Mexico by wagon train along the Santa Fe Trail. Their number was not great -- by 1917, fewer than 1,000 called New Mexico home -- but these Jews helped shape the economy, culture and political landscape of the region." A new exhibition at the Palace of the Governors of the Museum of New Mexico called "Jewish Pioneers of New Mexico" tells their story. The first settlers were from Germany. "They moved west from the East Coast beginning in the 1840's, ...into isolated areas, lived among the Indians, established community institutions and formed synagogues where none existed." Unlike Europe and the eastern United States, "the West remained full of opportunities for entrepreneurs and was largely free of anti-Semitism and religious divisiveness, mainly because Anglos there needed one another to survive...The show looks at the contributions made by Jewish merchants, bankers, miners, ranchers, soldiers, sutlers and traders throughout the region...The exhibit is largely based on loans and donations from families in New Mexico (an estimated 15,000 Jews live here today)...Jewish pioneers were mostly young single men" who later persuaded the rest of their families to follow them west. "By 1860, half of the Jewish population in the territory was related, the museum says. But there was also intermarriage with the local Hispanic and Indian populations...Before 1870, there were no banks in New Mexico, so merchant families functioned as financial institutions by holding deposits, extending credit and even mortgages...Before synagogues, Jews maintained civic affiliations through membership in the Order of Masons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Germania Club and as founders of the Historical Society of New Mexico. As Reform Jews, these pioneers were initially satisfied with private expressions of their faith. The first synagogue, Temple Montefiore, in Las Vegas, was founded in 1884...'They made every effort to fit in, and that applies not only economically but politically,' said the historian Henry J. Tobias, author of A History of the Jews in New Mexico. 'It's part of the heritage they left. In some ways you might think of them as part of the glue that held society out here together.'"