Chosen Towns - The Story of Jews in Wisconsin's Small Communities

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They live in Rhinelander and Kenosha, Sheboygan and La Crosse - and many places in between. Jews have been a part of more than 300 communities across Wisconsin since the 18th century.

Whether members of a small, struggling synagogue in Appleton or the only Jewish family in Viroqua, all have faced the same enduring dilemma: how to balance their Jewish identities with the practical need to assimilate.

This issue is sensitively explored in the new documentary film "Chosen Towns: The Story of Jews in Wisconsin's Small Communities." The hour-long film follows the lives of nine Jewish families who span the breadth of the state and 150 years.

From a short-lived Jewish farming experiment in Arpin to the dynamic "miracle" synagogue in Wausau, from a Rhinelander boy who received little Jewish education to the Janesville girl who became Kenosha's Rabbi Dena Feingold, the complexities of small-town Jewish life emerge in this unique documentary.

"Chosen Towns" first aired statewide on Wednesday, October 15, 2008, on Wisconsin Public Television and Milwaukee Public Television. A series of free public screenings at locations throughout Wisconsin led up to the television broadcast. Screenings included talkbacks with the student filmmakers, participants in the film, and local historians.

"Chosen Towns" was produced by docUWM, a documentary media center based in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Peck School of the Art's film department that offers students opportunities to produce professional work under the guidance of faculty. "I'm amazed by and proud of our students for making such a professional and thoughtful film," said docUWM director Brad Lichtenstein.

The documentary is a partnership between docUWM and the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning's Wisconsin Small Jewish Communities History Project. The Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, Inc., is a statewide non-profit organization whose mission is to foster, encourage and support Jewish learning, scholarship and research. docUWM students worked for two years in tandem with the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning to research and produce "Chosen Towns."

"Chosen Towns" was made possible by a generous grant from the Helen Bader Foundation. Additional funding was provided by The LE Phillips Family Foundation, Inc., and The Lucy and Jack Rosenberg Philanthropic Fund.

The Leopold family, led by Max (back, right) and wife Fanny (center), were the last of the pioneering Jewish farm families to live in Arpin.

Some of the people and families featured in "Chosen Towns" are:

The Hoffmans - who are struggling to maintain Jewish religious life in Sheboygan, once home to 1,000 Jews and three Orthodox synagogues.
The Felixes - who owned and operated a clothing store for 101 years (and three generations) in Viroqua.
The Elkons - who were part of a successful group of 10 Jewish merchant families in Rhinelander and were avid fishermen.
The Lavines - who blended Jewish involvement and community activism in Superior and Chippewa Falls.
Esther Bubley - the groundbreaking photojournalist who developed her interest in the lives of everyday people during her childhood in Superior.
Rabbi Dena Feingold of Kenosha - whose career as a Jewish educator began unofficially with her gentile -childhood friends in Janesville.
In Appleton - the congregants of Moses Montefiore Synagogue, who sold their 36-year-old synagogue in order to move to a smaller building better suited to the congregation.
In Arpin - the approximately 20 Jewish immigrant families that farmed for a generation and built Wood County's only synagogue.
In Wausau - the descendants of German Jewish and Russian Jewish immigrants to Wausau, who worship together at Mount Sinai Congregation with more recently arrived Jews from throughout north-central Wisconsin.