Eau Claire — “We like to celebrate [and] we’re good at celebrating,” said Helaine Minkus, president of Temple Sholom (Conservative) here. So it appears from accounts of residents, many of whom seem to have fond memories of various events.
“We have the best Purim and Chanukah,” said Karen Wise, a California native who has lived in the Eau Claire area for about 25 years. “At Purim, everybody dresses up and the Megillah reading is hilarious. We get wild.”
For Chanukah, the community plays “Dreidl of Fortune,” which combines the traditional game with questions about various Jewish knowledge categories. “It’s just a blast,” said Wise.
But this community doesn’t just party on the Jewish holidays. “I remember being floored the first time there was a bar mitzvah” during his time in Eau Claire, said David Gordon, retired professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and a Baltimore native raised in Madison and Philadelphia, who moved to the area with his wife, Suzon, about seven years ago. “Everybody turned out.”
“We are small enough to value every member of our extended synagogue family,” said Dr. Maury Pasternack, a pulmonary critical care physician who grew up in Memphis and has lived in Eau Claire for eight years. “We cheer and celebrate every addition (by birth, conversion or move to the area) and keenly feel every loss.”
This community doesn’t just party with itself, either. “One of the best events I was ever involved with,” said Minkus, “was the joint celebration of Ramadan and Chanukah” with the area’s small Muslim community last December, held at the university. Minkus estimated that about 250 people attended, of whom about 60 were Jews and Muslims; the rest were from “the general community.”
Apparently the most memorable fete of all in recent years, mentioned by nearly everyone interviewed for this story, was the synagogue’s dedication of an imported and refurbished Torah scroll from Russia last year.
The Eau Claire Leader-Telegram (June 22, 2002) described how “Dancing spilled from the red-carpeted aisle of Temple Sholom Synagogue into the street” — and how guests included Christian and Muslim neighbors.
“We invited the whole community, and Jews, Christians and Muslims were dancing with the Torah to klezmer music in front of the building,” said Rabbi Yossi Gordon, the synagogue’s part-time spiritual leader. “It was a magnificent celebration.”
Gravity from the west
Of course, a love of parties is not the only distinguishing trait of this tiny Jewish community, variously estimated at 30 to 50 households active in the synagogue (totaling perhaps 100 people at most), plus an unknown number of unaffiliated Jews who appear occasionally.
Like perhaps no other small Wisconsin Jewish community save Waukesha, which is so close to Milwaukee, Eau Claire Jews live under an almost gravitational influence from another, larger community.
Eau Claire (population about 62,000) is about 80 miles from St. Paul and 90 from Minneapolis. That puts the Jewish community close enough to be able to take advantage of some Twin Cities resources.
Rabbi Gordon (no relation to David Gordon), who has served the congregation for about 14 years, is himself one such resource. This Green Bay native teaches at the Talmud Torah of St. Paul and at the Twin Cities Jewish Middle School.
He is also a member of Congregation Beth Jacob in Mendota Heights, a St. Paul suburb, with which Temple Sholom has established practically a sister synagogue relationship.
Nevertheless, the Twin Cities are far enough away to make using their resources regularly a significant chore. David Gordon said that the one thing he would change about the community would be to “move it about 50 miles west” closer to the Twin Cities.
Some Eau Claire Jews feel isolated and dissatisfied with their ability to live a Jewish life in this largest city in the Chippewa River valley. Rabbi Gordon said that “a couple of families that have gotten so involved [in Judaism] that they had to leave Eau Claire and come to St. Paul.”
Joey Wise, Karen Wise’s 17-year-old son, joined the United Synagogue Youth chapter at Beth Jacob, but could only attend the major conventions. “It was too far to go” to attend any more meetings than that, he said.
He has enjoyed life in the small Eau Claire suburb of Fall Creek; and has become so interested in obtaining more Jewish education that he wants to attend the Young Judea Year Course in Israel after he graduates from high school this spring.
Still, he and his older brother Ray “are the only two Jews who ever went through the Fall Creek school system” and “it would have been better to grow up where there were more Jews,” he said.
‘Almost an advantage’
Nevertheless, as with all the other smaller Wisconsin Jewish communities, these conditions foster self-reliance and community spirit among those who want to be active.
In fact, Rabbi Gordon said that “it is almost an advantage not to have a rabbi 24 hours a day,” because that forces members of the congregation “to step in and conduct services and religious school without me. They have even done funerals without me.”
And many in the community find this powerfully appealing. “We know that we are it,” said Suzon Gordon, a Duluth native. “We know that if we don’t show up, there may not be a minyan or any project might not get done.”
And this means “we have to get along with each other,” said Minkus, a cultural anthropologist who came to Eau Claire from Chicago in 1972 to take a position at the UW campus there. “We have to adjust to each other and we do. I see that as a positive.”
Moreover, said Pasternack, “I know I am more committed to the congregation than I would be in a larger community because I know that in Eau Claire I play a role in keeping Judaism alive.”
Rebecca Pierce, 39, a California native and daughter of Iranian Jewish immigrants, perceived the spirit almost immediately on moving in this past summer from the Seattle area with her non-Jewish husband (a professor at the university) and their child — one of a recent influx of five new families joining the community.
She said the community welcomed her family “with open arms” and “right away.” There is “a sense of community here that we definitely didn’t have in the Seattle area,” she said.
Pierce also has had direct experience of the overall good relations Eau Claire Jewry has with the non-Jewish community. She is one of the few kashrut-keeping Eau Claire Jews.
Festival Foods, a Wisconsin grocery store chain, recently opened a store in Eau Claire; and Pierce asked the store’s managers if they would be willing to bring in kosher meat. Pierce reported that not only were they glad to do it, but when she said that few area Jews would want it, they replied that they would do it even if only one wanted it.
Which is not to say there have been no disturbing incidents. Karen Wise remembered two attempts to lure her children to evangelical Christianity. The Gordons recalled that a few years ago on the occasion of a folk fair at the university, in which the Jewish community participated, somebody dropped an anti-Semitic note off at the synagogue.
But such occurrences are very few. By and large, the Eau Claire Jews interviewed report receiving respect and curious inquiries from the general community. Suzon Gordon once offered a Passover cooking class and found that the majority of her students were not Jews.
Sometimes it goes even further than that. David Gordon said, “One thing that has really surprised me here is the steady stream of converts. There are always a couple in the pipeline.”
And while the intermarriage rate in the congregation is fairly high, the converts “by and large are not doing it for reasons of marriage into the Jewish community. They come to it because they want to,” Gordon said.
Still, this community is not growing fast. Though a few new families have moved in, Minkus acknowledged that Jewish kids who go elsewhere for college generally move away permanently.
Moreover, most of the Jewish population has come to Eau Claire from elsewhere for employment, including a contingent at the university, and likely will move somewhere else at retirement, said Minkus. “They have less of a stake in Eau Claire.”
Nevertheless, the community has remained stable and active; and Minkus and others give Rabbi Gordon a major share of the credit for that. “It would be hard to sustain the community if he were not here to infuse it with his knowledge and passion,” Minkus wrote in an e-mail.
And Rabbi Gordon in turn is obviously proud of his association with the community. “It’s a remarkably harmonious, supportive, kind congregation,” he said. “I often joke with fellow rabbis about how many of them can claim everybody in their congregation really likes them. I can. They are just wonderful to me.”
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