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Jewish American Ben Rich is a decorated World War II veteran and has been running Rich Food and Liquor, famous for its ham salad, at the corner of 19th Street and Mitchell Avenue since 1948.

Ben Rich pulled an old and faded yellow piece of paper from behind the counter and ran a wrinkled finger down the list of names of the St. Joseph B’nai B’rith-Joseph Chapter No. 276.

Prominent and familiar St. Joseph Jewish names. More than 100.

Harvey Beck. Leo Burnstein. Paul Block. Lester Einbender. Phil Eveloff. Sam Freed. Hy Garelich. Julius Glaser. Julius Hochman. Jake Rosenthal. Ben Magoon. Robert Meyer. Albert Shanin.

Mr. Rich found his name on the list, too. A short list of Jewish people still living and residing in St. Joseph.

“I say there use to be at least 1,200 families and each family had two or three kids,” Mr. Rich said. “Now there’s nobody here anymore. I say there are less than 200 Jews in town.”

Dorathea Polsky put the number much lower. Much lower than the number of Jewish families living here when she came in 1953 as a single school teacher from Milwaukee.

“I understand there are about 140 Jewish people living here,” she said. “When I came here, I was immediately made a Sunday school teacher and there were 98 children in the Sunday school class.”

No one really knows when this Diaspora of the St. Joseph Jewish population began, but the number of Jewish people living in St. Joseph has been steadily decreasing over the years.

The reasons are varied.

There’s no hard numbers available, but empty seats in the two synagogues and the dearth of what once was a thriving Downtown Jewish business community tell the story.

“Let’s see, there was Leibowitz downtown, A.J. August, Einbenders, Leon Block, everybody knows Leon, Harvey Beck ...,” Allan Lowenberg rattled off the names. He owned the LaMode clothing store Downtown.

“There were a lot of Jewish furniture stores on South Sixth Street, most below Edmond,” Mr. Lowenberg added. “Of course, there were doctors and lawyers.”

According to a 1908 issue of the Reform Advocate on the history of the St. Joseph Jewish community, the first Jews probably came to the city in the late 1840s. Like everyone else, they stopped off here on their way to California as part of the Gold Rush. The congregation of Temple Adath Joseph was organized around 1860. Today, there’s also the B-nai Sholem Temple.

Mr. Lowenberg said from his research, he learned that the German Jews came here before the Russian Jews.

“Both groups came because of persecution where they were living, and everybody thought the streets were paved with gold,” he said.

Most Jews in those early years were grocers and dry goods merchants. And the population continued to grow during the Civil War years.

But success didn’t come easy for those in the early Jewish community here or in other parts of the country. Jews faced prejudice and persecution in St. Joseph as well as in other places for several years.

“The Junior League didn’t take in Jews until about 20 years ago,” Mr. Lowenberg said.

“When I was growing up, a lot of the businesses wouldn’t hire Jews,” added Mr. Rich, 93. “Put down you were Jewish, that was it.”

That forced many of them to become peddlers, hucksters and independent businessmen in order to make a living. Many others obtained good educations and became doctors and lawyers.

“The Jews had to find a way of making a living, so they became entrepreneurs in themselves. They got stores, went on to professions and became dentists, doctors and lawyers because they couldn’t get work otherwise,” said Dr. Joe Friedman. “They had made a situation for themselves so they wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else for their livelihood.”

Dr. Friedman also added that to his recollection, no Jews in St. Joseph have ever been on the dole or forced to rely on charitable organizations to survive.

“We always took care of our own here,” he said. “We had a society, and my dad was very much involved in that.”

According to several sources, it was sometime during the years of World War II when the Jewish population in St. Joseph started to dwindle. The war itself took many away, where they found more opportunities in other places. Some found spouses abroad.

“The war was a big matrimonial bureau in St. Joseph,” Dr. Friedman said. “My three sisters all married Army men. Those that were able went away to college, where they met their spouse ’cause there was nothing here to come back to. They went to the big cities, where they could get work. It isn’t just the Jews, you know.”

The businesses dried up, too, because of opportunity elsewhere. Not just Jewish kids, but many Gentile ones, too, didn’t want to go into the family business.

“When my son was in high school, I had a retail store and I said to Brent one day, ‘Would you be interested in coming in with Dad or taking over?’” Mr. Lowenberg said. “He said, ‘No way. I don’t want to work seven days a week. I want to work five days a week,’ so he went to a larger city to get a better job.”

Alonzo Weston can be reached at alonzow@npgco.com.