Writing and photos by Wes Cipolla
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on June 1, 2021.
Dolores Delin, acting president of Pottsville's Oheb Zedeck synagogue, views her husband's name on the Yahrzeit wall.
Introduction
I have fond memories of Route 61. During my childhood summers, it was a yellow brick road to the paradise that was Knoebels Amusement Park. The lush mountain scenery and small towns my family and I passed through, along with the increasingly elaborate billboards advertising the park (a 3-D ferris wheel!), made the journey as exciting as the destination. Last winter, I had the idea to do a column about interesting places people can visit on the way to Knoebels. During my research, I found that Knoebels is surrounded by an unusually large number of religious sites. Route 61 is a sort of pilgrimage route, probably the only one on Earth that ends with roller coasters and baked potatoes. You can call it El Camino de Kozmo. In this column, I seek to reveal the histories of these holy places and what they mean to the people who worship there. From great churches to one man’s passion, these sites tell diverse stories of faith, love and humanity’s relationship with the divine in Northeast Pennsylvania. In the first installment of this series, I take a look at the history of the Oheb Zedeck synagogue in Pottsville.
POTTSVILLE - In Judaism, on the anniversary of a loved one’s death it is customary to observe yahrzeit. On the day of yahrzeit, Jews recite the Mourner’s Kaddish, a 13th-century prayer, in synagogue. To Dolores Delin, acting president of Pottsville’s Oheb Zedeck Synagogue since 2012, it is a familiar ritual. As she walks past the bronze yahrzeit memorial plaques that line the halls, she remembers those whose names are written there.
“Harry Jaffe, he had a paint shop in Pottsville. Jerome Golin, he was in the junk business. Here we have Gittleman, he was in the shoe business. Attorneys, doctors. They made up a whole community. They helped make the community grow.”
Although she is not a religious woman, Delin has dedicated her life to maintaining Oheb Zedeck’s historical archives. It is a position she has held since the 1950s, when she first moved to Schuylkill County and joined the synagogue.
Dolores Delin views historical records of Oheb Zedeck and the Jewish Museum of Eastern PA.
“I always was interested in maintaining the records of the community,” she said. “I felt that if nobody kept the records, there would be nothing left to remember us by.”
In her office, records dating back over a century are piled high. On her desk, there are photocopies of the Mourner’s Kaddish and a laminated newspaper article: “Jewish community laments closing of synagogue.” It is a story that she has seen play out time and time again. Once accommodating hundreds of Jewish families, in the last several decades Oheb Zedeck has dwindled down to 30 families occupying a small building on West End Ave.
“People die,” Delin said, “people move to Florida, most of the young people when they graduate go to college and they don’t come back.”
To Delin, the future of the synagogue looks “very bleak.”
“There’s so many synagogues that closed,” she said, “we’ll just be one of them.”
Oheb Zedeck is also home to what remains of the Jewish Museum of Eastern PA. First opened in 1987, the Museum was home to everything from an exhibit on the life of composer Leonard Bernstein to paintings and poems from children who survived Nazi concentration camps.
“We had exhibits that travelled all over the world that were brought to Pottsville,” Delin said.
The Museum closed to the public in 2014 because too few people were around to staff it. The one-room exhibition can still be viewed by appointment only.
In her 66 years collecting records, Delin has seen firsthand how easily Jewish history can disappear, not just due to carelessness but due to those who wish to destroy it. The Museum once exhibited a Torah from the Czech Republic that was desecrated during the Holocaust. The Museum still contains Jewish artifacts donated from around the world, including textiles from Israel and metal sculptures of Bible stories done by a man in Florida. One generous donor was Oheb Zedeck member and philanthropist Abe Cramer. One painting he donated to the museum, of a woman simply known as “Jewess,” still hangs today. The most curious item in the museum is a grogger, a wooden noisemaker used during the Jewish holiday Purim. On Purim, the grogger is played whenever Haman, the figure in the Book of Esther who wanted to kill all of Persia’s Jews, is mentioned. This grogger, found in a concentration camp, is carved with swastikas. The words “Cursed be Haman” and “Cursed be Hitler” are written on it in Hebrew.
“The only way you leave your mark is by preserving history,” Delin said, “or else there’s no evidence that you even existed. There’s nothing that says ‘I was here, I helped build this community.’”
Dolores Delin adjusts an Israeli textile in the Jewish Museum of Eastern PA.
Oheb Zedeck was founded by ten Jewish immigrant families in 1856. At first they worshipped in their homes or rented a public space. The hand-carved pews and ark (the wooden chamber which holds the Torahs) from 1856 are still in use. The Torahs are printed on sheepskin and handwritten in ink crushed from flowers. Warm light spills into the sanctuary from a stained-glass window from a synagogue in Reading that closed. Two electric menorahs, from a closed synagogue in Mahanoy City, have “wicks” carved to give the appearance of wax dripping from the lightbulb candles. This is where, on yahrzeit, the Mourner’s Kaddish is read. Despite its name, it does not mention death - it only praises God. To Delin, this is what sets Judaism apart from other religions.
“We feel that we have to do nice things now while we’re alive on this Earth,” she said.
The ark and Torahs of Oheb Zedeck synagogue.
In 1861, five young men who worshipped at Oheb Zedeck joined the Union Army during the Civil War. Pottsville’s first Jewish immigrants were Reform Jews from Germany. These early immigrants started businesses in the area. One rabbi, Moses Phillips, would sell the shirts that his wife made to miners. Later in life, he became the head of the Phillips-Jones Corporation, makers of Van Heusen shirts. In the late 19th century, waves of Orthodox Jews from Poland and Russia immigrated to Schuylkill County, fleeing poverty and organized anti-Semitic violence.
“You don’t leave your country when good things are happening,” Delin said. “You leave when you’re starving, when you’re oppressed, you’re picked on, you don’t have a chance.”
In 1898, Pottsville’s Orthodox and Reform Jews merged together under a single synagogue. In 1912 the synagogue moved to Third and Arch Streets, in a new building large enough to hold the swelling Jewish population. In 1954, when the synagogue housed 200 families, Oheb Zedeck again moved to a larger building on Mahantongo St.
The Jewish Museum of Eastern PA's art collection.
It was around this time that Dolores arrived in Schuylkill County with her husband Arnold Delin. Born Arnold Delinsky, he served as synagogue president from 1960-61, and again in 1973 and from 1997-98. Somewhere along the way, he dropped the last syllable of his name. Several portraits of him are on Oheb Zedeck’s walls, along with crooked pictures of other synagogue presidents and photographs of long-closed synagogues that once served the Jewish communities of Minersville, Shamokin, Mount Carmel, Frackville and Shenandoah. Arnold died in 2015 at age 89, and his name is on the yahrzeit wall. When remembering him, Dolores refers to him in the present tense - “is,” not “was.”
“I still think of him as a part of me,” she said.
Born in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, Delin did not realize that she was, in her words, “different” until she came to Schuylkill Haven and made friends with gentiles. At that time, local clubs and organizations did not welcome Jews, making Oheb Zedeck the hub of all social activity.
“In those days there was a lot of discrimination in this area,” she said.
However, over time attitudes became more accepting.
“Schuylkill County is a very close-knit community,” Delin said. “Once they grow to accept you, you become part of their family. I was very happy here, I loved the people here. They were very friendly and I was right at home.”
Though smaller than it was in its heyday, Oheb Zedeck remains a close-knit congregation with a wide impact. Delin gets phone calls from across the country from people curious about their family histories.
“I’m very proud to be Jewish,” she said. “I’m a good person, I do kind things, I think. I’m ready to help anybody. I’m very proud of what our religion stands for.”