Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 48, No. 52, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 29, 1994 Page: 2 of 24
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Feature
2
TEXAS JEWISH POST, THURSDA Y, DECEMBER 29 1994 -IN OUR 48TH YEARI
Jewish Geography in the Largest and C
Low Population, High Intermarriage
A nchorage
based on in-depth questionnaires
By
Tom Tugend
Their numbers
are low and
intermarriage is
high, but
Alaskan Jews
are retaining
their heritage.
LX «
jLA-“a
of Alaska, dubbed The In smaller towns, such as Sit- sent to 1,050 Alaskan Jews and
ka, Kenai and Haines, all but one augmented by personal and
creating a communal or two couples are intermarried, phone interviews, yields an even
says Bernard Reisman, professor more surprising finding.
By every measure of Jewish
religioi
r well P
_________^vint to the of contemporary Jewish studies . ITOXT^.
future pattern for all of American at Brandeis University, who is m identity used into US. Nataon-
Jewry
That, says Rabbi Harry Rosen-
feld, means congregations like his
high proportion have not con-
verted, and in practically all fam-
ilies, both parents work full time.
To explain the seeming para-
dox. Professor Reisman speculates
the midst of an intensive demo-
graphic census of Alaskan Jewry. synagogue attendance, home rit-
Factor in that by migrating ual, visits to Israel, etc. — Alaskan
Beth Sholom in Anchorage Half here from the Lower 48, most Jews score higher than Jews in
the members are intermarried, a Alaskan Jews have severed their
ties to large urban Jewish com-
munities and extended families,
and conventional wisdom dictates that when Jews migrate to the
. liroc ^ v..v _____, _ that the state’s Jewry will be to- Last Frontier, they experience an
choral where muni 70 percent tally assimilated and all but dis- often unack no wledged sense of
of Alaska’s 3,000 Jews live. In the appear in a couple of generations, loneliness. They seek surrogate
state capital of Juneau, with Not so, according to the Bran- ties for extended families left be-
about 200 Jews, a community deis scholar. For one, in more cas- hind and ultimately discover that
leader says she knows only five or es than not, “the non-Jewish their Jewishness is more imjwr-
six couples in which both partners partner acquiesces to being Jew- tant to them than they had
_._ ish, so actually we’re gaining thought
there" he savs.
Tom Tugend ls a free-lance writer
based in Los Angeles.
A R C 7*/
c/fic oce
4 /V
The Brandeis academic also
Professor Re is man’s analysis, found that the largest group of
Alaskan Jews originated
from the northeastern states,
especially New York and
New Jersey. The second
largest contingent came from
the Ins Angeles area, in a
two-step process.
“The Angelenos first
moved to northwestern
cities, like Seattle and
Olympia," says Professor
Reisman “When they felt
that these cities were be-
coming too crowded and life
too intense, they moved on
to Alaska.”
To pull together the state’s
scattered Jews, Professor
Reisman and resident Jew-
ish leaders are trying to form
an umbrella Alaskan Jewish
council and resource center.
Professor Reisman’s sta-
tistics are fleshed out by Har-
ry Rosenfeld, Alaska’s “chief
rabbi," in practice if not in
name.
The 39-year-old native of
Cleveland received a guest
in his study wearing a lum-
berjack flannel shirt, re-
flecting the informal frontier
dress code of the state he
adopted 10 years ago. "On
Shabbat services during the
summer, I may be the only
one wearing a coat and tie,"
hesays.
By contrast, the shul
/oV
* ov ^
o
o
tends toward more traditional rit-
ual observance than found in most
Reform synagogues. The likely
reason lies in Beth Sholom’s dis-
tinction for most of its 36 years as
the only congregation in town,
and indeed the state.
“We have tried to be inclusive
and accommodating to all kinds
of Jews, because they had no place
else to go," says Dr. Rosenfeld.
“We have bucked the trend in the
rest of the country, where con-
gregations split into smaller and
smaller groups. Here, if some peo-
ple want to be more Conservative,
we try to bring them in."
Along the same line, Beth
Sholom has no sisterhood, broth-
erhood or other affiliate groups.
“Our people here want to do the
same thing and do it together,”
says the rabbi.
Some 50 to 60 people show up
on a typical Friday evening, often
including an eclectic group of vis-
itors. These may include young
back-packing Israelis, stateside
Jewish tourists, and a drop-in like
White Cloud, a full-blooded In-
dian who looks as if he stepped
out of an old Western movie.
With a total membership of 175
households, numbering perhaps
6orae 450 souls, Beth Sholom
proves that it takes only a small
critical mass of Jews to trigger a
chain-reaction of Jewish activi-
ties.
Relying on a total full-time staff
of two employees, one pre-school
teacher and lots of volunteers,
Beth Sholom runs a Sunday
school for about 100 youngsters
and a daytime pre-school and
kindergarten with 30 kids.
There are Hadassah and Anti-
Defamation League chapters in
town and, given Alaska’s prox-
imity and historical ties to Rus-
sia, an active outreach program
to Jewish communities in Siberia.
Mr. Rosenfeld takes special pride
in the Anne Frank exhibit orga-
nized by his congregation at the
Anchorage Museum of History
last March.
The exhibit ran for a month
and attracted more than 20,000
visitors, including 8,000 high
school students.
Economically, the congregation
is upscale, with an estimated 60
percent involved in the legal pro-
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 48, No. 52, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 29, 1994, newspaper, December 29, 1994; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth834631/m1/2/: accessed July 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .