Date of Award
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/10365/33149
Publisher
North Dakota State University
Rights
NDSU policy 190.6.2
URI
https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/policy/190.pdf
Abstract
When we unravel the stories of Jewish people in North Dakota, we see that they intersect with layers of Jewish experience across history. This community is both one of the most obscure and exemplary examples of the Jewish American story throughout the world and time - a scattered people, continually the “other” of society, whose future rests in the sacred rituals of remembrance that have sustained the culture for thousands of years. In the late 1880s, Jews were a notable minority among the waves of ethnic immigrant groups flocking to North Dakota. In the 1950s, the population of Fargo, alone, was around 500 people (Jewish Virtual Library, n.d.). Yet in 2022, it is estimated there are no more than 400 Jewish residents in the state of North Dakota. This number suggests the reality that the Jewish community in North Dakota is nearly invisible, dwindling and in need of a reinvigoration of communal memory. A cemetery chapel here holds the potential to become a destination of remembrance and an opportunity to participate in Jewish life. The fundamentally spiritual and communally mnemic nature of cemeteries holds the potential to illuminate the invisibility of Jewish stories in North Dakota while uniting them with Jewish experiences throughout history.
Recommended Citation
Hollander, Sophie, "Illuminating the Invisibility of the Other: Fargo Jewish Cemetery Chapel" (2023). Architecture Theses. 737.
https://digitalcommons.ndsu.edu/architecture-theses/737