The Rabbi Came By Dogsled
Polonsky, Lester
The only thing I succeeded at— ever—was temple work. In high school, my greatest joy was the youth group; my proudest achievement was becoming its president. And so I suppose it was predictible...
...I explained my position on intermarriage...
...Then there is Anchorage, a bustling metropolitan city that has almost everything—Sears, J.C...
...Since this is not the case, there is no reason why we can't name the baby here at Beth Sholom...
...So she turned to the synagogue for advice...
...Maurice Eisendrath, then president of UAHC: "Your check for $10,000 for our building fund arrived at 5:30 p.m...
...With good reason: food prices begin at expensive and rise to exorbitant...
...For the next 14 years, most activities were held in the new building, but High Holiday services and other special events took place at the Air Force base in order to take advantage of the presence of the military chaplain...
...Then, too, there is the matter of our relationship with the total Anchorage community...
...Lettuce, for example, is sold by the pound, not by the head...
...Please keep in touch...
...A Search Committee debated these questions for a solid year...
...According to congregational minutes, "we were all too busy trying to survive the worst earthquake this continent had ever experienced...
...The father was a native, an Inupiat Eskimo...
...And when the groom was ready for the mikvah, the bride announced that she, too, wanted to enter the mikvah, so that everything would be "legal, formal and right...
...Together with the Ritual Advisory Committee, I developed a policy statement to deal with these questions...
...meanwhile, we make do, inventing as we go along...
...There, they button-holed virtually every rabbi in attendance, trying to establish the criteria that would be used to guide them in the creation of an Alaskan rabbinate...
...But again, things are not always so simple...
...Yet the seasonal change and the balance between light and darkness, as well as the distance from the "lower 48," produce a special culture and lifestyle rooted in honesty, sincerity, and a warmth that belies the temperature...
...To many people, Alaska conjures up the image of Sergeant Preston mushing through the frozen wilderness with his lead dog, King...
...and Mrs...
...There are about 400,000 people in Alaska, most of whom (75 percent) live in Anchorage or Fairbanks...
...All four stations were most cooperative, and we've repeated the project for Passover and the High Holidays...
...Average Friday evening attendance is 35-50...
...Stop shaking already...
...Our average age is in the late 20s, our average income is 20 percent higher than the national mean...
...Of course, I agreed...
...Now, I must say...
...The growth and development of a community is a beautiful thing to behold...
...The approval was to be made public at the community's Passover seder, scheduled for March 27, 1964...
...Anything you ask, but no more shaking...
...As far as the bride was concerned, I was prepared to regard her Temple involvement, her Jewish education, her status as a bat mitzvah, as sufficient to establish her Jewishness...
...The rate of intermarriage here is very high...
...By the mid-1970s, members of the congregation decided it was time for Beth Sholom to have its own rabbi...
...And so I suppose it was predictible that, after spending a year at the Chaim Greenberg Institute in Jerusalem, I should choose a course of study that led eventually to the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion...
...The congregation became formally affiliated with the Reform movement in May 1960, while it continued to meet in borrowed facilities—radio stations, recreation halls, local churches, the Tom Thumb Nursery...
...This made us very happy...
...And our members, who for so long were used to doing for themselves, are learning how to use a rabbi, in the best possible sense...
...But there are no igloos here (only in northern Canada) and dog-sledding is mostly a sport...
...Some day, we'll have a full panoply of agencies and institutions...
...And the mother-to-be was torn between her desire to keep the child and her parents' wishes that she abort the pregnancy...
...My response to her reflected the feelings of the group: "Dear H. Shalom and mazel tov...
...To everything, there is a blessing and a curse...
...A few adventure-seeking Jews came to Anchorage as early as 1899, but Congregation Beth Sholom marks September 5, 1958 as its Lester Polonsky is Rabbi of Congregation Beth Sholom in Anchorage, Alaska...
...We have every intention of repaying the obligation and I feel you have gone too far in reminding us of our responsibilities...
...Penney, Wards, supermarkets, shopping malls, pizza, Chinese food, Mexican food, and the Downtown Deli which serves a few things that are vaguely reminiscent of Jewish gourmet...
...We have, however, a conversion havurah program—with about five couples participating (one or both spouses interested in conversion) this past year—which meets twice a month and follows a study curriculum...
...My Ritual Advisory Committee has asked, for example, that I offer two sermons on Friday evenings, one an explanation of the Torah portion, the other a discussion of some Jewish subject, any Jewish subject...
...Native" in Alaska means a member of one of the five indigenous groups— Athabascan, Tlingit, Eskimo, Chimchints and Haida...
...The red label, "Air Fresh," found on many items means that the product has been flown in from Seattle, thus boosting the price...
...This they did...
...Still, the lack of any Jewish amenities— no Jewish bookstore, no kosher butcher, none of the things that Jews to the south (and that means all other Jews) take for granted—does affect us deeply...
...Local merchants, without solicitation, gave building materials, lighting fixtures, school desks...
...And, in keeping with the extraordinary pioneering spirit which so characterizes this place, the new building was ready for its first Shabbat service—conducted by the temple youth—just three months later, on December 25...
...The couple had decided not to marry...
...to the west, the Alaskan Mountain Range and Cook Inlet...
...The landscape is magnificent...
...What I could not have predicted was that today, five years later, I'd be sitting behind the desk in my study at Congregation Beth Sholom, Anchorage, Alaska...
...In other words, although people may come here for grandeur, they certainly don't come for luxury...
...This is a basically Fundamentalist city, and there was some pressure on the Jewish community to participate in communal Christmas activities...
...Remember, you are making Jewish history...
...Accordingly, a delegation was dispatched to the UAHC biennial in San Francisco in 1977...
...But I insisted that they meet with me three times a month over a period of time in order to prepare the prospective groom for conversion...
...All the electrical and plumbing work had been completed by volunteers...
...The high rate of intermarriage, for example, is coupled with a high birth rate, and so the issue of the bril milah is important to us...
...The seder never happened...
...I have read your letter to the Ritual Advisory Committee and we have agreed that when your baby is born, we'd be delighted to have a baby naming any Shabbat at the synagogue...
...He had agreed to support the child...
...Recently, I received a letter from a Jewish girl living in a Native village above the Artie Circle...
...It was clear, however, that the time had come for a permanent home...
...Whether that reflects the basic rootlessness of people who have chosen to come to this distant place or, instead, the simple problem of numbers and opportunity, I cannot say...
...Not long after, the UAHC approved the request for a $10,000 loan, to be repaid in five years...
...And what distinction shall be drawn, if any, between members of the congregation and non-members...
...Ah, Alaska...
...The isolation of our community is its curse, but our response to that isolation is a great blessing, for the high cost of living and our distance from other centers of Jewish population have forced the Jewish community of Anchorage to become an extended family...
...According to our tradition, the illegitimate child is one born of an incestuous or adulterous relationship...
...She had become pregnant and was due to give birth in the early summer...
...In November 1963, Chaplain Seymour Gitin from the local Elmendorf Air Force Base suggested that, in order to stimulate interest in the building fund, publicity be distributed in the "lower 48...
...A little slower...
...Her parents were less than thrilled—until the child was born, at which point they opened their arms wide with love...
...Sholom...
...She had been educated in our religious school, had become a bat mitzvah, and had been active in our youth group—and had been crowned Miss Cook Inlet of 1971...
...The Ritual Advisory Committee was most sympathetic to her plea...
...My Thursday evening adult education classes, "Hebrew Language from Scratch" and "Blueprint of the Prayerbook," are attended by about 40 people...
...The mikvah had been built by the Air Force—at its Protestant chapel—some five years earlier to accommodate the wife of the then chaplain, who was Orthodox...
...starting point...
...Four days later, Burt Goldberg wrote the following letter to Dr...
...Originally from Illinois, she was working with a construction company...
...In any case, I do not officiate at intermarriages...
...To the east is the Chugach Mountain Range...
...Beth Sholom's cornerstone was laid on September 13, 1964...
...The Miss Cook Inlet Pageant is restricted to women with at least one Native parent...
...Not long ago, a couple approached me to officiate at their wedding...
...It's not always that simple...
...Burt Goldberg's home to welcome the Shabbat...
...Because that post rotated every three years, it became increasingly difficult to maintain any sense of continuity...
...We had just gotten to the last paragraph concerning repayment of this loan when a great quaking and shaking occurred...
...Finally, having formulated a battery of questions and a sense of the needs of the Anchorage community, three congregants confronted the 1978 graduating class at Hebrew Union College: "We're from Alaska, and we need a rabbi...
...The community is like a dry sponge thirsting for a sip of Torah in virtually any form...
...It was on that day that twenty people gathered in the basement of Mr...
...Our congregation's membership has doubled in the last 12 months...
...With the cooperation of an excellent publicity chairman from the congregation, we responded by preparing 35mm slides of Chanukah greeting cards which we distributed to local television stations with the request that they be used as a backdrop for station identification during the eight days of the holiday...
...Still, people continue to come here, because the best that Alaska has to offer is very good— and it's free...
...The curse of the Alaskan rabbinate is, obviously, its challenge...
...In addition to establishing life cycle policies, we've begun to set educational standards as well, in order to give direction to our curriculum and develop criteria for bar and bat mitzvah...
...We'll pay it back...
...Other, life cycle events, too, present interesting problems here...
...The building is beginning to bulge at the seams on Friday evenings and at special events...
...What policies shall govern circumcision if the mother is not Jewish...
...The success of the group is evidenced by the desire of the participants to continue meeting after the conversions are complete...
...The resulting pamphlet, depicting nine Jews and one penguin huddled around a pot-bellied stove inside an igloo, was a great success, and gave the fund a substantial boost...
...The prospective groom was not Jewish, and the bride was the product of a mixed marriage between a Jew and a Native woman...
...And they produce, as well, such boundless energy that, as the first full time civilian rabbi in the only synagogue in the state of Alaska, I sometimes have to stand back and say, "Wait...
...the sunsets rival the colors of Chagall and the wonders of Dali...
Vol. 5 • June 1980 • No. 6
