Who We Are

As it does in most of Wyoming, Jewish presence and tradition extend back in Casper to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The town of Casper began to flourish with the development of the oil fields of The Teapot Dome and Midwest in the first quarter of the last century. Casper became the administrative center of the oil and, later, the mineral industries in Wyoming.

Many of the pioneers in both fields were Jewish immigrants from Germany and the Benelux countries of Europe. With and following them came Jewish peddlers and merchants who built the businesses which developed to service those operations and also supply the necessities of those longer established families in ranching and farming.

The cohesive community of Jews in Casper covered the spectrum from mineral extraction to ranching to merchandising to inn keeping and hospitality, and it interacted socially and politically with the non-Jewish community of which it was a part in the territory and later the state of Wyoming. As time passed, the Jews established social and religious institutions emblematic of their heritage. Coming from northern Europe, Casper's Jews were predominantly ashkenazic of Reform Jewish background with a sprinkling of Sephardic Jews who quickly absorbed themselves into the numerically dominant Reform Jewish majority.

The first formal association of the Jewish Community in Casper took place sometime in 1928. The congregation of Temple Beth-El itself (legally constituted and styled as the Jewish Community Association of Casper) has existed as the corporation's synagogue for more than seventy five years. It has been sustained through the foresight and generosity of several Jewish pioneers of Casper, among whom are counted Fred Goodstein (oil), Harry Yesness (merchant and land owner) and Sid Tolin (metals).

In the early 1950's Harry Yesness generously donated to the Association, land on Poplar street, south of Wyoming Boulevard, the land on which now stands the Association's synagogue. In 1982, a year before his death, Fred Goodstein endowed the Association with sufficient funds to permit the Association to be self-sustaining in the maintenance of its synagogue property and to be able to offer its membership weekly Shabbos services in addition to High Holy Day and other festival day services in the course of the Jewish calendar.

Visitors to the synagogue admire the bimah which is the first thing they see on entering the synagogue sanctuary. Its ark and lecterns were designed and built by a local Casper cabinet maker and craftsman in consultation with Rabbi Wiseman; they were installed and put in place under the direction of the cabinet maker himself. The ark and lecterns are the gift of Marcelle Torczyner, the late mother of Denise Wiseman. Marcelle will always be in the warm memory of our congregation.

2007 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the building of the Association's synagogue. In the past Winter season of 2010-11, braving the winds and hardships inflicted by sub-zero temperatures and driving gales, the synagogue's directors undertook the replacement with metal sheathed frames of all the external and deteriorating painted wooden elements of the synagogue building, in a color congenial to match that of the dominant wooden architectural elements of the building itself. As the building now stands, its exterior is a respectful evocation of the style of wooden synagogues once found throughout Eastern Europe.

Communal Activities

Temple Beth-El's congregation has consistently and collegially reached out to the general community of Casper.More than twenty years ago, when St. Stephen's Episcopal Church and Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church were building their sanctuaries to the south of the Temple, the Association made its synagogue available to the congregations of those churches for their Sunday prayers.The affection engendered by that act of kindness has continued to this day and is memorialized by a joint service of thanksgiving conducted by the priest of St. Stephen's, the minister of Shepherd of the Hills and the synagogue's rabbi and held, not so strangely, during Thanksgiving week every year in one of the churches, either of which is large enough to accommodate the several hundred members of the three congregations. When the service concludes, the members adjourn to the common hall for a buffet dinner prepared and served by all three sisterhoods.

Temple Beth-El also maintains strong cordial ties with several of the evangelical Christian churches in Casper, in recognition and support of the ties of those churches with and to the State of Israel and their appreciation of the issues that commonly confront Christianity and Judaism in the world today. Their members and their ministers often attend our regular and festival services.

The synagogue maintains a small section in the Highland Park Cemetery here in Casper under the control of the rabbi and the directors of the Association. The section has been demarcated by an eruv within which only the remains of Jewish decedents may be interred. Questions in this regard should be directed to the rabbi or Mike Smith.