{"id":31181,"date":"2018-12-14T03:43:03","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T11:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=31181"},"modified":"2018-12-12T12:44:32","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T20:44:32","slug":"bellinghams-new-shul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/12\/14\/bellinghams-new-shul\/","title":{"rendered":"Bellingham\u2019s new shul"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rabbi Joshua Samuels holds thecongregation\u2019s Torah from Lithuania. (photo by David J. Litvak)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congregation Beth Israel in Bellingham, Wash.,started out its life as a Lithuanian Orthodox shul in 1908. Today, thecongregation is housed in a stunning building in the woods, on 20 acres ofland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The newly constructed synagogue opened its\ndoors in March of this year to serve the spiritual and cultural needs of Reform\nand Conservative Jews of Bellingham and Whatcom County, Mount Vernon and the\nSkagit Valley, the San Juan Islands and even Jews from Metro Vancouver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several weeks ago, for instance, the\ncongregation hosted a screening of a film about Israel, The Original Promise<\/em>,\nwhich was produced by Fraser Valley resident Bill Iny (who is a member of\nVancouver\u2019s Congregation Beth Hamidrash) in conjunction with the Northwest\nchapter of StandWithUs, an advocacy group for Israel that has chapters in the\nUnited States, Canada and Israel. The screening, which attracted more than 100\nJewish and non-Jewish attendees, featured a panel discussion moderated by Beth\nIsrael\u2019s spiritual leader, Rabbi Joshua Samuels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This event is one of many that the Pacific\nNorthwest synagogue has hosted since relocating. However, while the synagogue\nbuilding may be new, it houses a nearly 300-year-old miniature Torah from\nLithuania that was commissioned in the mid-1700s by a czar of Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samuels said the czar gave the Torah to his\ndoctor, one of Samuels\u2019 Lithuanian ancestors, and the Torah has remained in his\nfamily ever since. His great-grandmother \u2013 hiding the Torah in a big coat \u2013\nfled Lithuania with her children to the United States, joining her husband in\nFargo, N.D., where he had found work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tiny Torah, said Samuels, has \u201clived in\nFargo, Long Beach, California, San Francisco (I read from it for my bar\nmitzvah) and then it followed me after my ordination to Los Angeles and now is\nwith me here in Bellingham.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Torah is meant to be chanted and studied, he\nnoted. And, in Bellingham, he has used it on special occasions, such as on the\nsecond day of Rosh Hashanah and for the Shabbat of Bereishit (his Torah\nportion), as well as for b\u2019nai mitvzah studies, and he has taken it to\nBellingham high schools and to Western Washington University. He wants students\n\u201cto see the beauty of a Torah scroll and to hear it chanted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the highlight of any visit,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samuels also took the Torah to a cousin\u2019s bar\nmitzvah in California and will take it to Jerusalem next month for his niece\u2019s\nbat mitzvah, he said, \u201cso that she can read from as it as her mother did 33\nyears ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he travels with the Torah, said Samuels,\n\u201cI feel like I am a concert musician traveling with a Stradivarius \u2013 I think\nabout it all the time, even if it is in a cushy case right above my seat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Bellingham\u2019s Congregation Beth Israel.\u00a0(photo by\u00a0David J. Litvak)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Samuels, who is a fifth-generation San\nFranciscan \u2013 his family arrived in San Francisco during the gold rush \u2013 worked\nin the stock brokerage business in Los Angeles and San Francisco before\ndeciding to make a major life change. \u201cI felt a gentle nudging to take another\npath in life and, after some soul-searching for about three years, I applied to\nrabbinical school at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion,\u201d he\nsaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After studying in Jerusalem and Los Angeles for\nfive years, Samuels was ordained in 2010. He began his new career at Temple\nBeth Hillel in Valley Village, Calif., before coming to Bellingham to become\nBeth Israel\u2019s spiritual leader in July 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congregation Beth Israel was established in\n1908 with 30 families, including Jews from Germany and Lithuania. The synagogue\nwas Orthodox until 1986, when it became a Reform shul and joined the Union for\nReform Judaism, which, at that time, was called the Union of American Hebrew\nCongregations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The congregation has grown to include 275\nfamilies and moved to its new building from a synagogue on Broadway that was\nbuilt in 1925 (and was recently sold). The new building was built to\naccommodate the congregation\u2019s growing community, drawing worshippers\nthroughout the region and from as far away as Surrey, White Rock and\nChilliwack, to attend services and the Sunday school. (For the Canadian\ncongregants, there is the added bonus of being able to shop at Trader Joe\u2019s\nafter Sunday school.) The synagogue also hosts a Conservative minyan on the\nfourth Saturday of every month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the new synagogue opened its doors in\nMarch, Samuels said the construction began after he arrived in Bellingham in\n2012. \u201cThe reason it took so long to build was to avoid incurring any debt,\u201d he\nsaid. \u201cJust as the early Bellingham Jews bought the Broadway building outright,\nwe wanted to do the same with the new space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe state-of-the-art facility that we built\ncan accommodate our needs for at least the next 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Bellingham\u2019s Congregation Beth Israel is set on 20 acres.\u00a0(photo by\u00a0David J. Litvak)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The sanctuary can seat more than 500 congregants,\nand there is an outdoor patio overlooking the woods that can accommodate almost\nas many. The building has 10 classrooms, two kitchens, a preschool, library,\nstudy space and tons of storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since March, the congregation has hosted a\nvariety of activities, including several StandWithUs events, a concert\nfeaturing Seattle musician Chava Mirel and one with Bellingham klezmer band\nWhat the Chelm (who performed at the synagogue\u2019s grand opening in August), a\nPurim party and a second-night Passover seder. In addition to being able to\nhost holiday parties, Samuels said, \u201cWe were finally able to host the High Holy\nDays in our own shul after years of renting space around the city.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the congregation continues \u201cto look for\nopportunities to host events, speaker series, movies, classes, etc.,\u201d he added.\nAs well, they would like to participate in more cross-border collaborations, he\nsaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samuels believes that his Lithuanian ancestors\nwould be happy to see their tiny Torah in its new Bellingham home, at the shul\nin the woods. He said the Torah reminds him of his grandfather Jack (Yaacov), a\nreal mensch who died when Samuels was 7. His grandfather \u2013 whose mother had\nbrought the Torah to the United States \u2013 helped build a synagogue in Fargo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe is present every time I see the Torah,\u201d\nsaid Samuels. \u201cI wish I could travel back and meet my family and tell them that\neverything is going to turn out just fine. Their legacy is alive and well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David J. Litvak<\/strong> is a prairie\nrefugee from the North End of Winnipeg who is a freelance writer, former Voice\nof Peace and Co-op Radio broadcaster and an \u201caccidental publicist.\u201d His\narticles have been published in the <\/em>Forward, <\/em>Globe and Mail and <\/em>Seattle\nPost-Intelligencer. His website is cascadiapublicity.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Joshua Samuels holds thecongregation\u2019s Torah from Lithuania. (photo by David J. Litvak) Congregation Beth Israel in Bellingham, Wash.,started out its life as a Lithuanian Orthodox shul in 1908. Today, thecongregation is housed in a stunning building in the woods, on 20 acres ofland. The newly constructed synagogue opened its doors in March of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[8590,8591,218,4764],"class_list":["post-31181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-bellingham","tag-joshua-samuels","tag-judaism","tag-synagogues"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}