Jews have lived in Southern Alberta for just over one hundred years.

      Almost all who came here late in the 19th century and early in the 20th sought better lives and greater opportunities than could be found in the old country. Many saw emigration as an escape route from intolerable social conditions. At their worst these conditions included such persecutions as the organized massacres that gave our language the infamous term "pogroms."

      But while that century has been a tumultuous one for world Jewry, the Jews of Southern Alberta have been blessed with peace and relative prosperity. The growth in numbers has been matched by the development of strong communal institutions and major contributions to Jewish causes both near and far.

      The first permanent Jewish settlers in Southern Alberta were Jacob and Rachel Diamond, who came to Calgary in 1889 five years after the railway reached the city. Their eldest son Joseph was born here three years later.

      Diamond led the first formal Jewish religious service in Calgary (1894), underwrote the purchase of Jewish cemetery (1904), brought in the first Rabbi (Hyman Goldstick, 1906) and presided over

the erection of the first synagogue building (Beth Jacob, 1911) - a major structure for a community of only 600 Jews, most of them immigrants from Eastern Europe.

      Jews also came early in this century to Alberta from Europe to homestead in philanthropist-sponsored agricultural colonies, mainly in the Rumsey, Trochu and Sibbald areas. These Jewish farming communities had, briefly, Hebrew schools, Rabbis and sizeable populations.

      A few Jewish families stayed on the land, but many moved as merchants to neighbouring towns, or to the larger cities where Judaism could be continued with less difficulty. Some immigrants went directly to small Alberta towns; nearly every rural community had one or two Jewish families, generally retailers, during the 1920's and 30's.

      Lethbridge and Medicine Hat developed sizeable Jewish communities, each building synagogues, acquiring cemeteries and running busy Jewish organizations.