Although initially formed as an Orthodox synagogue, Temple Jacob eventually changed to become a Reform synagogue, as did many other small synagogues throughout the U.S. In the 1930s a local businessman and retailer, Norbert Kahn, who had come to the Upper Peninsula from Germany in the mid-1920s and married into the Gartner family, brought a number of his relatives from Germany to escape the hopeless situation of pre-World War II Germany.
