EXHIBITS
100 Years of Congregation Brith Sholem: Honoring the Jewish Community in Ogden, Utah: Jacob Kertz
Jacob Kertz
Jacob Kertz was one of the first Jews who settled in Ogden, Utah. He was born in Austria in 1853 and came to the United States with his family at the age of twelve. He traveled to Ogden for reasons unknown but quickly formed his own business in 1879 as a pawnbroker at 165 Twenty-Fifth Street.[1] In January 1892, Kertz opened his own pawnbroker store at 278 Twenty-Fifth Street called Kertz Bros. with his son, Samuel. The business was in the Gasberg Building, which is now registered as a historical building.
In 1898 Jacob moved to New York both for business and pleasure as most of his family lived on the East Coast. He left his son, Samuel, in charge of Kertz Bros. He moved back to Ogden a few years later and continued running his business. Jacob suddenly died from a diabetes attack on April 15, 1910. A month after his death, his wife and five children moved to New York.
Although Congregation Brith Sholem was not established at the time Jacob Kertz was present in Ogden, he was heavily involved in Ohab Sholem and other Jewish religious celebrations. He was also friends with Ben Oppman and Samuel Rosenbluth. Jacob served as a pallbearer for Samuel at his funeral services on October 5, 1903.[2] On September 21, 1906, The Ogden Standard wrote an article about the Hebrew New Year celebration held by the local Jewish community at the Odd Fellows Hall. At this gathering, Jacob Kertz gifted the congregation “a silver and gold [yan] symbolical of the Jewish reading law Torah . . . [the yan] was not large in appearance but great and grand in its value as the token of remembrance from a sincere member of the society—a gift of a humble man to God.”[3] Although Jacob’s life was cut short, he held a significant role in Ogden’s early Jewish community and established himself as a prominent member of its first Jewish congregation.