My Home on the Range
When I told my mother I was moving, from New York City to Boise, she said, “You can’t move to Idaho, you’re Jewish!” While I didn’t share her trepidation, I must admit I made sure there was a synagogue in Boise before committing to my move to the small city at the edge of the Pacific Northwest wilderness.
The first time I came by CABI, for Friday evening Shabbat service, I was greeted not by one but by two Harriets, and I knew I was onto something good, as my Grandma Harriet had been my lifelong best friend. I liked the feel of the lovely little building, which in those days was located downtown, sandwiched between the YMCA and a Subway outpost. Small children roamed the aisles, playing, and exchanging pleasantries with those they passed by, and receiving occasional redirection from people I presumed to be their parents. At the back of the synagogue sat a small clatch of elderly women, who whispered and gestured throughout the service. Over time I would learn that they were the real movers and shakers of the community, connecting people in all kinds of matches, from mercantile to matrimonial.
I knew I’d found my place when we began singing Shalom Aleichem, a favorite shabbat song of mine since my childhood summers at camp. And who could have predicted that CABI’s rabbi would be not much older than myself, and would share a love of the wilderness, and joy in music, and whose passion for social justice I could completely relate to? This was an unexpected difference from the rabbis I had known before, who seemed remote, elderly, unapproachable authorities in whose presence I had felt vaguely guilty and inauthentic. I felt welcomed into a frontier outpost of Jewish people, from widely varying backgrounds but held together by a love for our faith and our traditions, the leadership of our rabbi, and the filaments that grow between members of a group who live, play, and worship side by side.
Twenty years later, CABI lives up on a hill, and I am still here, and more observant and connected with my Jewish community than ever. Those roaming children are grown and soon their own children will take their place in the synagogue aisles. On any given Shabbat, you can find me sitting in the back, whispering and gesturing with my fellow gray-hairs, helping weave my community members together even as we pray and sing.
