Join us each week as we journey across the United States and gather words of Torah from rabbanim representing each of the fifty states. This week we are pleased to feature divrei Torah from Rabbi Yosef Y. Greenberg of Anchorage, Alaska.
It was our second Chanukah in Anchorage, and after the great success of our first year’s public Chanukah menorah lighting, we decided to do an even bigger one. It was December 1993, and although it was a very dark and cold night, we knew Alaskans were not afraid of the cold, so we put a large menorah in a central location. There was a Carr-Gottstein shopping center nearby, which was partly owned by a prominent member of our community, Mr. Barney Gottstein. We asked him if we could use an empty store and convert it into a “Chanukah house.” Once he agreed, we invited all of Alaska’s U.S. Senators, Congressmen, its Governor, and the Mayor of Anchorage to attend. A few hundred people stood bundled in heavy coats as the public menorah kindling took place outside under the stars, and afterward everyone came into the Chanukah house for a big party. We built a dreidel house for the children to play in, and served latkes, sufganiyot and other Chanukah treats.
From the beginning, the public menorah lighting was our very best outreach tool. Right when we arrived in Anchorage, we saw how the public menorah lighting, the Rebbe’s idea, acted like a magnet, bringing in the furthest and most assimilated Jews. Among the people who had gathered that first year was a couple with two children, a boy and a girl. They seemed very shy and kept to themselves, almost not wanting to make eye contact. Being a Chabad rabbi in his first years of creating a Chabad center, I made my way over. We exchanged greetings and I asked for their names, telling them that they were always welcome at our center.
To my surprise, I soon got a call from the mother who said that her son was already over 12 and that her mother-in-law from California was insisting he have a bar mitzvah. I asked whether he had ever learned any Hebrew, and her response was no. She said that her mother-in-law was reaching her 80s and she would like to have the bar mitzvah that summer, when the elderly woman would be able to travel from Los Angeles to Anchorage.
I told her that I could teach him the brachos to make on the Torah, he could get an aliyah, and in addition, I would help him write a short dvar Torah from the parsha. She agreed and the young boy began studying with me.
The bar mitzvah took place in the summer of 1994, when our Chabad House was still in my home. The shul was in our basement and the kiddush and reception took place upstairs in our dining room.
Their whole family came – from Los Angeles, Portland and other cities around the country. The bar mitzvah boy did a great job and then we all sat down to partake of the kiddush. In the middle, the grandmother asked me if she could say a few words. She stood up and related that she had been born in the famous chassidic town of Berdichev, Ukraine. Until she was 12, she and her siblings received a full-blown Torah education. A teacher used to come to their home to teach the boys and the girls Chumash, Tanach, siddur, etc. Then World War I broke out. Schools and synagogues were closed and life came to a halt. Years later, she married and her husband was drafted during World War II and was killed.