Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society
Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society
Denver’s East European Jewish population began with a trickle in the 1870s, but this early group was soon augmented by a major influx of Russian Jews in the 1880s. Many were part of a larger immigration fleeing economic hardships and religious discrimination in Russia and were attracted by the promise of new opportunities in America, known in Yiddish as the Goldineh Medinah or the “Golden Land”. To alleviate the resulting problems of overcrowding and poverty in major eastern urban centers, some Jews were encouraged to go west.
In 1882 fifty Russian immigrants arrived in Cotopaxi, Colorado, to pursue their dream of farming, an occupation long denied to them in their homeland. However, within two years the settlement was abandoned, and many of the colonists, including members of the Shames, Milstein, and Grimes families, made Denver their new home, settling in the west-side immigrant enclave (first located along the Platte River, and then gradually expanding and moving westward) with other East European Jews, working primarily as peddlers and small shopkeepers. Shul-Baer Milstein, the patriarch of the Cotopaxi colony (although he was not an actual colonist himself), and his wife and seven children came to Denver in 1883. Milstein found success in the cattle business and became one of the founders of the first synagogue in West Colfax, Congregation Zera Abraham, organized in 1887 and first located near the Platte. Ed Grimes, the young Cotopaxi colonist who had walked to Denver in 1883, later served as the congregation’s first president. Congregation Zera Abraham is the only one of the early neighborhood synagogues that remains in existence and active today. It’s second location was farther west at the former home of the Jewish Labor Lyceum on Julian Street before moving to its present home on Winona Court off of West Colfax Avenue.
Before long the area was filled with numerous small synagogues, modest businesses, particularly those who catered to the mostly Orthodox Jewish immigrants (such as kosher bakeries, grocery stores, and meat markets); and many Jewish social and welfare organizations. Cook’s Baths and a Yiddish Theater also flourished in the neighborhood for many years. Many young Jewish boys (and a few girls!) provided the bulk of Denver’s “Newsies,” who hawked newspapers on Denver’s corners to earn a few dollars to help augment modest family incomes.
The Jewish section was comprised of well over 1,500 individuals by 1904 and over the next decades Jewish stores almost exclusively dotted West Colfax Avenue from Federal to Sheridan Boulevards. In many ways the area mirrored New York City’s famous Lower East Side largely Jewish neighborhood, yet as one observer commented it was a far cry from the typical urban ghetto and exhibited a distinct open western flavor. In a 1904 study, Dr. Maurice Fishberg, head physician for the United Hebrew Charities of New York asserted,” The homes of the poor living here [in Denver’s West Colfax area] are as a rule tidy and clean, nothing like the overcrowding seen in Jewish quarters in New York or Chicago. The environment here looks more like that of the average small western town, than like a Jewish district of Europe.”
The small immigrant Jewish community was largely composed of people of very modest means but they were centrally involved in philanthropy and a myriad of Jewish benevolent societies such as the Chesed Shel Emes (True Loving Kindness) Society which provided free burials flourished. A large Hebrew School for Jewish children, the Yeshivas Etz Chaim Talmud Torah, was established in 1910. Channah Milstein, a Russian Jewish immigrant and a former colonist a Cotopaxi, was known for her extraordinary personal commitment to charity. For many years she was a fixture in the West Colfax immigrant community as she relentlessly urged local residents to contribute to her collections for the needy. Mary Kobey, originally from Poland, was a traditionally observant Jewish midwife in Denver who earned the nickname “Denver’s Angel of Mercy” for her selfless concern for poor new mothers in the immigrant Jewish community. She volunteered her services at no charge to those who could not afford to pay and was frequently seen collecting money and clothing for baby layettes from merchants in the area.
In the early 1900s, the West Colfax Jewish immigrant neighborhood was also augmented by an influx of impoverished immigrant Jews who came to “chase the cure” to seek a remedy for tuberculosis, the leading cause of death in the United States at that time. Colorado, with its dry and sunny climate, drew tuberculosis victims like a magnet and soon earned the nickname of “The World’s Sanatorium.” Since no publicly supported institutions for consumptives' existed at the turn of the century, the challenge of adequate care for these people was left to private institutions. The Jewish community was the first to come to their aid with the founding of the formally non-sectarian National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives', which opened in 1899. Founded largely by acculturated, well- to-do German Reform Jews in Denver, the sanatorium treated all patients free of charge. Its motto was “None May Enter Who Can Pay, None Can Pay Who Enter,” reflecting its benevolent origins. However, NJH generally treated only patients with incipient tuberculosis and lacked a kosher kitchen in the early years. Moreover, many of the East European immigrant Jews felt their German co-religionists often acted in a condescending manner to the newcomers who brought with them their “Old World” manners, language, religious customs, and dress.
In 1903 a group of Jewish working class immigrants in the West Colfax neighborhood banded together for form the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society to treat patients in all stages of the disease in a more Jewish environment and managed to raise $1.10 between them to launch the institution. They were joined by several prominent local Jewish east European physicians, most notably Dr. Charles Spivak, who served as the executive secretary of the JCRS from 1904 until his death in 1927, and Dr. Philip Hillkowitz, who served as president of the JCRS from 1904 until his death in 1948. Dr. Hillkowitz’s father, Rabbi Elias Hillkowitz was regarded as the “dean” of the west side Orthodox Jewish rabbis in the early years of the twentieth century.
The JCRS opened its doors in September of 1904 with seven patients housed in white wooden tent-cottages to maximize their exposure to fresh air. Animated by traditional Jewish imperatives of tzedakah (commonly translated as charity but more literally meaning justice) its motto taken from the Talmud, “He Who Saves One Life Saves the World,” personified its philosophy. Over the next fifty years the JCRS provided all of its services free of charge and 10,000 patients would pass through its doors before it changed its mission to cancer treatment. It was formally non-sectarian, but for its first decades the majority of patients at the institution (as was the case at NJH) were east European Jews, many who helped swell Denver’s Jewish population which rose to about 15,000 by 1912. Located on West Colfax Avenue in Lakewood, Colorado, the JCRS sanatorium served as a beacon of hope to thousands of victims of tuberculosis from throughout the United States.
Not only did the Denver Jewish community care for its sick, but it also extended its concern to the children of tuberculosis patients. In 1907, under the guiding spirit of Fannie Lorber and Bessie Willens, the Denver Sheltering Home for Jewish Children was founded on the West Side and evolved into a large complex at 19th and Julian Streets. Over the years as tuberculosis became less of a threat, it changed its name several times and in 1939 was renamed the National Home for Asthmatic Children. It merged with National Jewish Medical and Research Center in the 1980s and won national acclaim for its asthma treatment program. The Jewish community also established the Beth Israel Old Folks Home and Hospital in the 1920s. The buildings were taken over by St. Anthony Hospital in the 1990s and Beth Israel moved and was transformed into Shalom Park in Aurora.
Through the 1930s and 1940s the West Side neighborhood remained heavily populated with Jewish residents and the Colfax Viaduct was said to have been jokingly referred to as the “Jewish Passover.” As the West Colfax immigrants became Americanized and their children passed through the American education system via Cheltenham Elementary and the popular Dickinson Branch Library, succeeding generations entered the professions or other businesses and became Denver community leaders. Many of the small synagogues ceased to exist and Congregation Zera Abraham and the Hebrew Educational Alliance, a more modern Orthodox synagogue dominated the neighborhood, and a number of residents moved to more upscale neighborhoods in other parts of Denver and the suburbs. Following the migration trend, he HEA moved to the southeast, but today a strong core of Orthodox Jews still anchor the neighborhood, which now hosts a Yeshiva high school and graduate school for advanced Jewish education and a Jewish girls high schools. Although the Jewish population numbers are smaller today then they were a century ago, the sprit of Jewish benevolence and traditional observance still unite the close knit community, heir to the traditions of the first Jews who settled in the area.
