How a road trip tracking the Jewish American dream led to North Dakota
From the shtetls to the Great Plains, the forgotten Jewish pioneers who shaped America
A Pilgrimage across America
As a fifth-generation born and bred American, the wanderlust for the open road is in our DNA. Road trips are more than just a journey for my family; they are a pilgrimage to uncover the history of Jews who helped build America. Distinct from our travels across Europe, where the Jewish story is one of tragedy and persecution, the American Jewish narrative is one of resilience and triumph over adversity.
I was looking for a more uplifting thematic that would instill pride in our American accomplishments instead of dread in our European miseries. America does not disappoint; the stories are incredible, and the spectrum is vast. We built railroads, cities, and flourishing communities that are as much a part of the American story as Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, albeit with a prominent yarmulka.
A Tisha B’Av Dilemma
A couple of years ago on a Tisha B’Av (date commemorating the destructions of the Temples) Sunday, we found ourselves in Minneapolis. We had spent the Sabbath there as guests of the most gracious and hospitable family in all of Minnesota. A big part of our annual trek is experiencing Shabbat in new and exciting locales, immersing ourselves in a Jewish community experience where the cuisine and customs are familiar, but the small-town camaraderie and civic pride are incomparable.
It was imperative that we leave Minneapolis for Bismarck, North Dakota, by early Sunday afternoon in order to be comfortably ensconced in a Holiday Inn by nightfall. The problem was that my wife steadfastly refused to travel on Tisha B’Av, as it is technically prohibited by Halachah (Jewish law). If you know my wife, then you are aware that rationalizing is futile, and, in three decades, I have yet to claim victory in an argument.
That is when I struck a cunning plan: there is a loophole in the Halachah that permits certain travel and specifically for the mitzvah of visiting the graves of Jewish ancestors.
The challenge now was to find Jewish dead people somewhere between Minneapolis and Bismarck. Dead Jews happen to be my wife’s Achilles heel, and she cannot resist the opportunity to make a pilgrimage and pay homage.
As luck would have it, Providence smiled upon us, as I discovered the mother lode of Jewish Americana cemeteries in Ashley, North Dakota. To give you some context, think of absolutely nowhere and multiply that by a hundred, plus cows, and endless wheat to the end of the horizon.
Jewish Settlers on the Plains

The story of how our brethren ended up in McIntosh County, North Dakota, is a story as old as our nation. After suffering for generations, Jews in Russia and what is today Romania finally packed their bags and headed for the new promised land. This area became known as Judenberg, or Jewish Hills in English, named after its newly arrived occupants.
Attracted by the Homestead Act of 1862, with the promise of 160 acres of free land, thousands of Jewish immigrants made their way to the hinterlands. In the Ashley region, starting from the 1870s, there were over 400 Jews living on 85 homesteads.
These were dreamers with faith, former tailors, cobblers, and market sellers, now transformed into farmers. Desperation breeds courage, and they threw themselves into this new country with fervor that was not always rewarded with bounty. Despite the challenges, they persevered for decades, ensuring that their children would inherit not just the land but their religious ideals and those of their newly adopted country.
Rabbis of Resilience
The first rabbi for the homesteaders, Rabbi Akiva Bender, was not just their spiritual leader; he was a fellow homesteader. During the day, he struggled with the toil of his farm, but by night and on the Sabbath, he transformed into a rabbinic presence, leading prayers, services, and offering guidance to a flock that were far removed from the shtetls of Russia.

Rabbi Bender also established the first Jewish Farmers Cooperative, bringing a sense of unity and purpose to this isolated but hardy group of Jews. His sermons, delivered in local barns and fields, reminded these pioneers that they shared a mission and that the seeds they were planting were for the future of our nation in America.
The community also availed itself of the services of a traveling rabbi who performed traditional rites for various farming communities. Rabbi Julius “Hesselson” Hess, a Lithuanian émigré, together with his horse and buggy were a spiritual lifeline for Jewish families across the Midwest. Rabbi Hess traveled hundreds of miles through snowstorms, dust clouds, and blistering heat to perform weddings, circumcisions, and funerals in the age-old tradition of their ancestors.
Legend has it he once braved a two-week journey to officiate at a bris for a family who never dreamed they would see a rabbi again. His dedication was not just to tradition, but to a belief in a future that Judaism could thrive even in the farthest reaches of the plains. Fun fact: his nephew was Al Jolson of Jazz Singer fame.
Silent Graves, Endless Gratitude

While we drove the 300-plus miles from Minneapolis to Ashley, across endless fields and rural roads, I painted a verbal portrait for my wife and kids about these incredible Jews and the challenges they faced. I described their hardships, their sacrifices, and despite it all, their commitment to faith and country. These tired, poor, and huddled masses built America and crucially proved that in this country, anything was possible. In America, we were no longer confined by the ghettos of Europe, only by the bounds of our imagination.

As we pulled up at the nondescript cemetery, a small overgrown plot surrounded by endless fields of wheat, my wife was uncharacteristically silent. She stood there gazing at the century-old graves, reading the inscriptions etched into the prairies-weathered stone, and whispered a prayer. In a moment of reverie, she expressed that she did not expect to feel so connected to people we had never met. Their struggles feel like ours, just written in a different chapter.
My kids, who are usually more engaged by the roadside wonders like the world’s largest ball of twine, asked poignant questions about the people who were buried here. How did they survive? Were they happy? Did they regret leaving Europe? It was their curiosity that reminded me why we take these trips in the first place.
An American Legacy
As we got back onto the road towards Bismarck, it hit me that these trips are not just a family tradition; they are a continuation of our long historical legacy. They remind us that our tradition is not confined to a place or time and can and have been transported from ghettos to the Great Plains, if not seamlessly at least successfully. Our inheritance was their resilience, and their sacrifices resulted in our privileges.
In Ashley, I found not just silent graves but a sense of gratitude to these pioneers who provided us with the grit and the faith that played no small role in making this country the home of the free and the land of the brave. This was a Tisha B’Av we would not soon forget.
“The land that I live in has God on its side.” — Bob Dylan
