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Hebrew Institute Society 1917 · Jewish Community Council of St. Joseph County 1945 · Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley 1978 · Kurt and Tessye Simon Jewish Community Building opened fall 2000
The Hebrew Institute: The Hebrew Institute Society was founded in 1917, and in 1920 it built a large building at 420 South Franklin Street at a cost of $25,000. For more than forty years the Institute served the community as a center for weddings, dinners, youth and adult events, and education. It was razed in 1963 for a parking lot.
Lodges and societies: Around the Institute grew a dense associational life, catalogued in the National Register nomination. The Sinai Society, a social and literary club, organized in 1916 — no source consulted connects it to the Sinai Synagogue founded in 1932. A B'Nai B'rith Lodge and the Louis Sandock Lodge organized in 1918, and the Hebrew Educational and Athletic Association at about the same time. The nomination also lists the Daughters of Israel, the Hebrew Ladies' Loan Society, the Sisters of Lenas Hatzedek, the congregational sisterhoods, and a Temple Beth-El Council of Social Services, together with branches of the Workmen's Circle and the Jewish National Workingman's Alliance. A Jewish War Veterans Post was founded in 1947 and met at 301 South William Street until 1962. A 1960 survey counted the community the institutions served at 805 Jewish households and 2,652 individuals; the numbers fell through the end of the twentieth century as younger generations moved to larger cities.
Council to Federation: In 1945 Jewish leaders from South Bend and Mishawaka established the Jewish Community Council of St. Joseph County. In the Federation's own telling, the Council aided Holocaust refugees, responded to incidents of anti-Semitism, promoted religious pluralism in the public schools, supported youth activities such as Camp Ideal, and raised funds to help Israel house and feed Jews returning to the new Jewish homeland. The Council was reorganized in 1978 as the Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley, the name the community's central organization carries today.
The Federation campus: In the late 1990s Kurt and Tessye Simon funded a centralized community center as the official headquarters of the Jewish community, and in the fall of 2000 the Federation opened the new Kurt and Tessye Simon Jewish Community Building at 3202 Shalom Way, South Bend. The Federation describes a 28-acre campus just off McKinley Avenue holding, beside the Simon Community Building, the Holocaust Memorial and its gardens, Camp Ideal — the Federation's day camp, supported since the Community Council years and still operating — and a pavilion, playground, picnic shelter, basketball court, gaga pit, baseball and athletic field, low ropes course, and walking paths in a shaded, park-like setting. Temple Beth-El has worshipped in the building since 2023.
Jewish Family Services: Jewish Family Services is the community's human-services agency, operating within the Federation; its stated mission is to strengthen and preserve life in the Jewish community through every stage of the life cycle, with support services and referrals aimed at helping people in difficult times get back on their feet. Its documented services include a kosher food pantry, food and gas cards, limited financial assistance given as interest-free loans or gifts after application, and assessment, referral, and case management; services are free and inquiries confidential. Under director Sandy Levine, who came out of retirement to modernize the agency, it instituted a professional case-management and documentation system, transformed the pantry into a gift-card system, secured additional funding, and created an intern position. Rabbi Fred Nebel was its director in the Federation's 2021 impact report and still signed as director in 2025, when his Passover Pantry appeal sought $8,000 for the agency's virtual food pantry.
Recording the community: The Michiana Jewish Historical Society, founded in 1994 by a group led by Mendel, Louis, and David Piser and Chuck Simon, preserves this institutional history: it has published booklets on the Federation, the synagogues, and the cemeteries, and it placed the state historical marker at the site of the community's first cemetery.
Rose Hill Cemetery: Rose Hill, at 1616 South Miami Street, is the oldest Jewish burial ground in South Bend. It began with the Hebrew Society of Brotherly Love, founded in 1859 (JewishGen's cemetery record gives the society's founding as 1853; the society's minute book, quoted on the state marker, the National Register nomination, and Temple Beth-El all give 1859), which first buried its dead along the St. Joseph River near Niles Avenue. The society bought new land on South Miami Street in 1883, and the graves were moved to the new site — the state marker and JewishGen date the reinterment to 1884. JewishGen's record, compiled from the Historical Society's 2002 cemetery booklet, says Rose Hill was named the officially sanctioned Reform Jewish cemetery in 1952, that the Temple board assumed responsibility for the Rose Hill Association's board in 1975, and that ownership was formally transferred to Temple Beth-El in 1997; the Temple's own page says Rose Hill was incorporated into the Temple's operations in 1999. The cemetery is open to the entire Jewish community, with Temple members preferential in lot purchase; it is the only Jewish cemetery in the South Bend area that permits cremated remains, and it permits burial of non-Jewish family members alongside Jewish family. A lay committee manages it under Temple Beth-El's Board of Trustees.
Hebrew Orthodox Cemetery: The Orthodox community's cemetery stands across the river in Mishawaka. The Hebrew Orthodox Congregation's 1887 Articles of Association included provision for the burial of the dead among its objects, and about five years later, around 1892, the congregation bought cemetery land at what is today Jefferson Boulevard and Logan Street. The county genealogical society locates the cemetery on Calhoun Street southeast of Jefferson and Logan, in Penn Township; current listings give its address variously as Calhoun Street and as 1001 West Jefferson Boulevard. It is maintained by the Hebrew Orthodox Cemetery Association, which rents office space from the Federation, and it has a chapel in which funeral services are held. The Federation's newsletter reported that the storm of 17 November 2013 devastated section four of the cemetery, around the chapel: more than a hundred years' growth of tall trees was lost, tree removal alone cost $8,000, and — the association called it a miracle — not one headstone was knocked down or damaged.
Sources:
- National Register nomination, Sons of Israel Synagogue — the Hebrew Institute and its Franklin Street building, the societies and lodges, the 1945 Council and 1978 reorganization, and the 1960 survey.
- Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley, "Our History" (thejewishfed.org) — the 1945 Council's work and the Simon Community Building; Federation Impact Reports 2020 and 2021 — the 28-acre campus and its contents, and Jewish Family Services' services and modernization; Our Community News, May 2022 — the JFS mission; April 2014 — the Hebrew Orthodox Cemetery storm report and the kosher food pantry; April 2025 — Rabbi Nebel's pantry appeal.
- Temple Beth-El, "Rose Hill Cemetery" page — the cemetery's history, openness, and rules; JewishGen Jewish Online Worldwide Burial Registry, Rose Hill record (from Roger Birdsell's 2002 Michiana Jewish Historical Society booklet) — the 1853 variant, 1952, 1975, and 1997 dates; Indiana Historical Bureau, "Jewish Cemetery Site" marker — the 1859 society and the 1884 reinterment.
- South Bend Area Genealogical Society, cemetery locations list — the Hebrew Orthodox Cemetery's Mishawaka location; Jewish Federation, Our Community News, April 2012 — the 1887 burial provision and the cemetery-land purchase; Michiana Jewish Historical Society, about page — the Society's 1994 founding.