Berkleigh Country Club

Berkleigh Country Club, one of the premier courses in southeast Pennsylvania, has always been on the edge.

The Lehigh Valley and the Schuylkill Valley in the United States are tied together by a thick ribbon of Germans and Eastern European peoples—many of whose families have lived there since the 1700s. Until very recently, well within the lifetime of this author, Jews living in this ribbon were regarded as undesirable riffraff, rough, grasping, uncouth, and uncivilized—not to mention Christ-killers.

And so, Jews were not allowed to play on the area golf courses.

Period.

But, by the 1920s, the children and grandchildren of the Jews who had immigrated to the US in the 1870s through the 1890s wanted to play golf. So, the Jewish population of Berks County and the Lehigh Valley undertook a subscription drive to build a course. They bought a farm—very far outside of town rather understandably—a…