Travel northeast from Beloit on the Wisconsin-Illinois border to Milwaukee, and you will pass through Elkhorn at about one-third of the way. It’s really not far from the larger Jewish communities in southeastern Wisconsin.
Yet it has only two or three Jewish families, one of whom is Ken Ulfeng, 67. And to a Jew who is trying to become more Torah observant, it may seem as isolated a place as Borneo.
However, that was before the advent of the Internet. Ulfeng is a fan of OU Radio, the Orthodox Union’s online radio station.
He has become an avid listener partly to help him learn Hebrew. In a telephone interview, he said that listening to Spanish and Portuguese radio stations helped him learn those languages.
But he also listens because he is “trying to become a Torah Jew” and obtains information that helps with that project. So he also signed up for the OU’s e-mailed Shabbat Shalom newsletter.
And it looks like that will help him fulfill a lifelong dream. He recently answered his home telephone and immediately recognized the voice of OU Radio announcer Rick Magder, who told him that he had won from OU a free trip to Israel.
It will be his first trip to the Jewish state. But for Ulfeng, the trip has added symbolic significance. Ulfeng grew up hearing his grandfather talk about how his grandfather had traveled to then-Palestine in the 19th century.
Connecting with his grandfather’s yearning to visit Israel, Ulfeng’s trip “will make a circle in the family,” he said.
Looking at mortality
A Chicago native, Ulfeng was raised by his maternal grandparents, his parents having died in an accident shortly after he was born. He describes his grandfather as “a very religious man” and his upbringing as Conservative. But after his grandparents died, he went to live with an uncle, who was “a secular Jew.”
Ulfeng majored in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois and worked “for several companies in Chicago.” But as a kid he had worked in a print shop, and when one of the firms he worked for transferred him to Texas, he ended up changing careers to technical writing and printing.
While living in Austin, he and his wife, Dorothy, attended a Reform synagogue, where their four children attended Sunday school and were involved in youth activities. Their two sons and one of their two daughters have stayed in Texas; the other daughter is “married to an Orthodox man” and lives in Mexico City.
The couple, however, decided to return to the Midwest, partly because Ulfeng “never liked Texas. I missed this part of the country.” They ended up in Elkhorn 18 years ago because he was able to buy a small, already established printing business there.
He and his wife had planned to retire when he turned 65. The first winter of their retirement would be in Israel. But about seven years ago, Dorothy developed cancer and died three years later, he said.
This event made him start “looking at mortality,” and he began to feel “very ashamed” of his secular lifestyle, he said.
Then about a year ago, Ulfeng himself developed a malignant melanoma on his arm; and the doctors found that the cancer had spread to a lymph node.
But he has apparently recovered, and has told his doctors about his determination to go to Israel.
Ulfeng plans to leave for Israel on Oct. 8. Though the OU is paying for seven days in Israel, he said he will stay on his own for three additional days.
Moreover, he is planning his own itinerary and will be touring with the help of a guide from Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization that assists Jews in moving to Israel.
In fact, the Israir flight he will take, Ulfeng said, will be “an aliyah flight,” filled with families moving to Israel. He said somebody warned him that there will be a lot of “singing and praying” on the flight.
“That sounds wonderful,” he said. “It would be really neat to be with a group like that.”
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