Traveling Rabbis find fellowship in Mat-Su

WASILLA — What observant Jewish presence there is in Alaska owes much of its legacy to Rabbi Yosef Greenberg, who founded the Alaska Jewish Campus in Anchorage.

Today, Anchorage is home to two temples and an active community center, and following in his father’s footsteps, Rabbi Mendy Greenberg and his wife relocated to Wasilla about a year ago, looking to start a Jewish community from scratch amongst a growing Mat-Su population.

Running the Jewish center out of their home, they made inroads, and when their Hanukkah celebration at the Palmer Train Station last December drew 250 guests, they knew they were having an impact.

Greenberg also knew he needed help, and so he reached out to the Jewish outreach program, known as Chabad. Started 65 years ago, Chabad was designed to help Jews relocating to America from Europe after the war connect with their heritage. Two signed up to visit the Mat-Su Valley for three weeks — Levi Levertov, originally from Austin, Texas and now a student in Brooklyn, and Yisroel Treitel, from Montreal, both student Rabbis.

As it turns out, both are Greenberg’s cousins, though on opposite sides of his family.

“We always heard about Alaska,” Levertov said. “(Greenberg’s) father was a very famous rabbi in the Chabad community, and Rabbi Greenberg is very influential as well. We wanted to come here, besides reaching out to different people, he’s mentoring us. Eventually we’ll open our own places, so it’s good training for us out on the frontier.”

They spent the better part of three weeks hanging out in public shopping areas, and knocking on random doors, looking mainly for Jews who might want to reconnect with the traditions of their ancestry. Before catching a plane back home today, the duo said they reached as many as 50 Jews in the Mat-Su area, and never once had a negative experience.

“We had people who told us they were waiting for this,” Treitel said. “It’s been really amazing; everyone is so helpful.”

Their most memorable experience came while knocking on random doors around Big Lake. They could hear from the inside, “There’s a couple of guys with yarmulkes on out there.” A woman answered the door and told them her brother was Jewish, but was suffering from terminal cancer and wasn’t feeling well. They got to talking to the ailing man, and eventually asked him whether he’d ever had his bar mitzvah. He said he hadn’t and they asked if the man they estimated to be in his mid-sixties, connected to a feeding tube would like to. They pulled out a teffillin, a small black box connected to black leather straps that signify a Jewish man’s connection to God.

“It was very emotional,” Levertov said. “His sister videotaped it for us and she made the comment, ‘I know you wanted something for trip, now you’ve got something.’”

“He said it was the happiest day in his life,” said Treitel, amazed.

In their journey to Talkeetna, they ran into a group of nine Jews from all over the world traveling as part of a cruise tour, who asked them, “Did you rabbis take a wrong turn somewhere?”

The dozen of them then shared in the teffillin.

“In Brookyln, everybody knows about Judaism, and yet here, you can say ‘shalom’ and some have no idea,” Levertov said. “And yet, people here are so friendly, so accommodating, so interested. You tell them a little bit and they want to hear more. These are the encounters you don’t necessarily expect. It’s the value of each little encounter you have.”

Somewhat the opposite of missionaries out to convert, the rabbis are looking only for Jews who may want to reconnect. But Levertov said it’s not awkward coming across gentiles who may want to become adherents themselves.

“We have a universal message for everybody, but the only thing that gets awkward is when you have a really wild dog running at you,” Levertov joked. “In general, we tell them to look up your local Jewish organization — (conversion) is not our thing.”

Greenberg sought to have the student rabbis come out ahead of the high holy days of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, in the hopes of building on the turnout of last year’s Hanukkah celebration, which more than doubled the crowd he’d anticipated and included mayors of Wasilla and Palmer and a number of local Christian leaders.

“Everyone we’ve come in contact with has been very welcoming and encouraging,” Greenberg said. “We’ll have Rosh Hashanah family services with the blowing of the Jewish shofar.”

Levertov elaborated on the shofar, which is the hollowed horn of a ram.

“It looks like a very weird, ancient custom, maybe, but the message is very simple,” he said. “It’s the simple cry out to God, meaning you have, at other times, different ways with fancy instruments, but this way in innate… That’s the essence of our connection and that’s what every person has.”

The Rosh Hashanah Family Service will be Oct. 3 at 6 p.m., with the traditional service and shofar blowing the following day.

Yom Kippur festivities are Oct. 11-12.

For more information about the Mat-Su Jewish Center, call (907) 350-1787.