Events

For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown.

Rabbi Goldsmith is Professor of Yiddish and Jewish Studies at Queens College and Rabbi of M'vakshe Derech, the Reconstructionist shul in Scarsdale. He was a long time student of both Mordechai Kaplan and Joshua Heschel, and wrote an introduction to Dynamic Judaism, a collection of writings by Kaplan. His views on liturgy, services, prayer, and Reconstructionism are eye-opening and refreshing. You can meet Manny electronically at: You Tube. All interested congregants are welcome to attend.