Well, let me go back in time a bit. Um, for many, many years, throughout my childhood and high school years, the size of the Jewish community remained very stable, even stagnant. Um, my mother was very. And father, both were very active in the community, and they used to always talk about the fact that there were 35 households, some years, 36, some years, 34. There probably were some other Jewish families who were not affiliated or involved. But with the growth of the city and the growth of the university. Now the community, as I understand it, is about 240 or 250 households. Um, the rabbi there is a fellow named Josh Samuels, and he and my son in law were in school together. They are close friends, by coincidence. Uh, and so I've known Josh for many years, and I knew his predecessor, whose name was Rabbi Cindy Enger, for quite a few years. Uh, we'll get to the contemporary part later. But when I was growing up, um, there was no rabbi. There had been well, before I was born, the community viewed itself as Orthodox, and that meant separate seating for men and women, and it meant the Orthodox prayer books. And there apparently had been a series of Orthodox rabbis, mostly short term. This is back, you know, in 1910 to 20 and then on to World War two. Uh, I have a very dim memory from when I was a small child of a young Orthodox rabbi who then left, and there was no rabbi for a number of years. Then what happened was something kind of interesting. There had been something of a missing generation of children. And, uh, I was one of four kids approaching bar bat mitzvah age when I was about age ten. There was another fellow, uh, the two other kids who were also ten and 111. Emil Hecht, who still lives in Bellingham, and my father took an active interest in finding somebody who would tutor us and prepare us for our bar and bat mitzvah. It happened that there was a cantor no longer employed in Vancouver, an hour north. And my dad and mom arranged for him to come down once or twice a week to teach us and then, so to speak, he stayed for dinner. And he then became the spiritual leader of the congregation and was in that capacity. For quite a few years until he retired and subsequently died in the 60s. Well, he retired in the 60s. I can't remember when he died. I was already out. Of Bellingham. But throughout those years, the congregation increasingly saw itself as conservative, not orthodox. And that meant that except for a handful of older families, there was mixed seating. During the services. The compromise was that, um, for those who still saw themselves as orthodox, the first few rows, there were men on one side and women on the other. They were no longer required to sit upstairs. Um, and, uh, but the community saw itself as conservative, even though it never formally affiliated with the conservative movement in North America. Just to jump ahead for a moment in the 1970s, when I was the associate dean of Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, I collaborated with the regional director in San Francisco, who worked for the what was then called the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. We flew up to Bellingham. We had a meeting with the board of the congregation because increasingly by then the congregation was growing, and there were many, many mixed married couples in the congregation and many people who saw themselves as reform and not conservative. And so I remember that meeting very clearly. Um, we at one point I think I said something like, you know, if you look like a duck and sound like a duck and walk like a duck, maybe it's time to acknowledge you're a duck. And that led to a decision to formally affiliate with the reform movement. And they immediately thereafter, one of their leaders became active on a regional and the national organization. And they by then they also had had a couple of different reform rabbis in town. When Gartner, Cantor, Gartner retired, there was a rabbi named Harold Rubens. Rubens, who had been in Vancouver, and he came to be the rabbi for a while. And then after that, I think that's when Rabbi Yossi Leibowitz became the rabbi. For a short time there was a fellow named Yosef Zilberberg. All of these were reform rabbis. Then uh, Michael Oblast became the rabbi. OB you may have already heard his name. And when he left, that's when Cindy Enger became the rabbi. And now it's Josh Samuels. So they've had, I guess, a half a dozen reform rabbis since the mid 60s. Toward the end of the tenure of Cantor Fred Gartner, he began to identify himself as a rabbi, even though he never was ordained as a rabbi. And the community accepted that. They particularly appreciated his ability to relate to the non-Jewish community. And in the 1950s and early 60s, when the Jewish community still was very small, that was important for somebody to be able to go into the schools and speak about different Jewish holidays or to meet with different church groups to, you know, to be representative of the Jewish community. So over the years, what I'm saying is that the community has changed from Orthodox to conservative to reform. There still are folks in the community, as I understand it, who identify primarily as conservative. And I think that Josh Samuels, from what I understand, has done a good job creating, you know, the so-called wide tent and making people feel. And now, of course, they have a beautiful new synagogue building. And one other interesting note historically was that the previous building, which had been on Broadway there, um, that was officially, officially became the synagogue, I think about, uh, in the 1920s. My grandfather, who died before my parents were married, therefore I never met him, was among those people who walked with the Torah scrolls from a very small facility in what they call Old town, the old town, part of Bellingham, to what was then the new synagogue. Um, Uh, and, uh, he and others were responsible, apparently for the, you know, creating this new Jewish home, so to speak. So that's kind of a long answer to your question, but I and my own connection these days is, I mean, I get the newsletter occasionally. I'm in touch with the rabbi. I've maintained some contact with some of some of the members of the Jewish community. Um, there were a few folks there who, when we were building the campus in Orange County, took an active interest. One couple gave a major contribution in honor of my deceased parents. They were very close to my parents. And, um, so the connection remains. But, you know, 3000 miles and not having lived there since 1960, only visiting from time to time, you know, it's not nearly the same as it was when I was still a youngster.
