Mendel Dalfin and I arrived in Spokane last Sunday. Looking back at our first week, it sure is different from last year's roving in Lake Worth Florida, where we could practically go door to door and meet Jews more often than not.
Spokane is absolutely gorgeous, with great scenery and open country surrounding you from all sides, but the Jewish population is small and thinly spread. It's not so easy to find fellow Jews. It gets real tough/challenging to spend an entire day on the road and not even meet a single Jew! But when we do meet someone, now, that is rewarding!
Today was a great day.
We celebrated two Bar Mitzvahs: One was in Starbucks. We met Morty, who after a long heart-to-heart conversation donned tefillin for his first time. Later in the day, Roger did this special mitzvah for the first time in his life as well! Other highlights of the day included installing two mezuzahs and signing up three children to receive their own letters in the Children's Sefer Torah.
Yesterday, we met Jill in Idaho. She is the only (known) Jew in her area and is surrounded by potatoes and cornfields on all sides. She wants to further her Jewish studies, but lives very far from any sort of Jewish infrastructure. We suggested that she enroll with JNet.org to study Torah over the phone, and she happily accepted.
Looking forward to reporting more exciting happenings as they happen,
Mendy Singer
