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Friday February 1, 2008

Tiny Montana community finds new visibility

by sue fishkoff
jta

billings, mont. | It’s Friday evening and Al Page, a board member of Congregation Beth Aaron, the only Jewish congregation in this town of 100,000, is out shoveling snow from the synagogue’s front door.

“Shabbat shalom,” he says, his yarmulke flapping as he greets visitors arriving not for worship services, but for a screening of the 1979 Gene Wilder film “The Frisco Kid.”

It’s the first time this congregation of 50 to 60 families has tried a movie night. But without a full-time rabbi since the mid-1980s, just a rabbinical student who flies in once a month, the members are trying something new.

“Going to services doesn’t appeal to everyone,” says Dr. Roxanne Fahrenwald, immediate past president of the congregation. “There are other things about Jewish culture that we’re only scratching the surface of.”

The Jewish community of Billings vaulted to world attention in December 1993 when a year of violence directed against the town’s minorities culminated in an anti-Semitic attack against one of the town’s Jewish families. An unknown assailant threw a brick through the bedroom window of 5-year-old Isaac Schnitzer, who had displayed a menorah and Chanukah decorations there.

The incident so horrified this small town that in a strong show of solidarity, thousands of citizens pasted paper menorahs on the windows of their homes and businesses. The community response, documented in the 1995 film “Not in Our Town,” launched an anti-hate campaign in hundreds of North American cities.

Jews were among Montana’s earliest white settlers in the mid-19th century, and founded several of its major towns.

A congregation was formed in 1918 during the nationwide flu pandemic, when the Jews needed to establish their own cemetery, but it was only during the 1930s that the first Friday night services were held in the homes of three local Jewish matrons.

A synagogue building was purchased in 1940, and a rabbi was hired 10 years later. In 1953, the congregation affiliated with the Reform movement.

But as in many small, isolated towns with only one Jewish congregation, services at Beth Aaron reflected the fact that the synagogue served Jews of all stripes.

In the early years, they used the Reform siddur on Friday night and the Conservative siddur for all other services; men wore hats in synagogue but sat together with the women; and services were expected to be quick so the men could adjourn for their weekly poker game and the women could play bridge.

No one knows for sure how many Jews are in Billings today; estimates run from 300 to 1,000. Over the years the congregation has remained fairly steady at about 60 families, but it has aged. In 1952, when Coleman moved to Billings, more than 100 children attended the religious school. Today there are six.

But while most of the children of the older congregants went away to college and never returned, other Jews are moving in, particularly teachers, people in the oil business and health care professionals.

A new synagogue, which opened in time for High Holy Day services in September 2005, marked a major change in the congregation’s life.

The new synagogue is much larger, built with money raised from selling the old building to a nearby hospital that wanted to expand. The hospital gave Beth Aaron the land for the new synagogue, and local donors — some of them non-Jews — added to the pot.

Today, according to congregational president Tricia Williams, the congregation is considering hiring a permanent rabbi again, albeit on a part-time basis.

The new synagogue has given the Jewish community greater visibility, which Williams and Fahrenwald say it is ready for.

“It’s an acknowledgement that we’re here, we’re proud and we feel safe,” Fahrenwald says.

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