Writings from Rabbi Glickman

My arctic adventure began on a rainy Sunday afternoon in here in Tacoma, Washington.  By journey's-end, it would take me to the Arctic Circle, to a group of Eskimo Jews, and to the tale of a magnificent Jewish snow angel named Clara.

I was driving around town that November day, when my cell phone rang. "Rabbi," said Temple's religious school principle, "a guy named Rick Erlich just called from Kotzebue, Alaska... something about a funeral they want you to do."  Yeah, right, I thought.  Jews in Alaska!  And I'm supposed to bury someone there at this time of year?  The whole state is frozen solid! 

Of course, the state does have a rich Jewish history, and today there are active congregations in Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks.   So why was Mr. Erlich calling me, I wondered, when Alaska's rabbis are already acclimatized?

When I called, Rick was out.  His wife, Suzy, told me that Kotzebue (rhymes with "matzah-view") is a town in Northwestern Alaska, 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle.  She said that a woman named Clara Rotman had died, and they couldn't find another rabbi to do the service. She suggested I call Bish Gallahorn, one of Mrs. Rotman's grandsons. 

"Oh, thank you for calling," said Bish in a quiet, gentle voice, sounding relieved to be talking to a real-live rabbi. "My grandmother always wanted a Jewish funeral, and none of Alaska's rabbis can make it.   We were wondering if you were available."

My head began spinning with questions.  But when I opened my mouth, the only great rabbinic eloquence I could utter was, "And she was...Jewish?"  Bish explained that Clara's mother was from up there, but her father was Jewish.  Clara was raised as a Jew, and Judaism was always very important to her."

So, I agreed to do the service. Over the course of the next two days, Bish and Rick phoned several times to discuss details.  When Bish asked whether there was anything in particular he should know about the casket at a Jewish funeral, I suggested that he just order a Jewish casket from the local funeral home.

Silence. "Rabbi..." Bish finally said, "we don't really have a funeral home here in Kotzebue."

There were other questions, too.  Could they do the ceremony in the Friends Church? (No, I don't usually do funerals in churches....)  They weren't Quakers, of course, but it was the only room in town big enough for the event. (Well... in that case...OK.)  Could the casket be open during the funeral? (No, I'm afraid not.)  Did I have warm boots?  

It was an unprecedented encounter between Jewish culture and Kotzebue culture.  Bish and Rick were respectful and deferent; I tried to be flexible; and we worked out the details in a friendly, constructive manner.

I departed the Seattle-Tacoma Airport 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, and arrived in Anchorage at about 2 a.m.   Five-and-a-half hours - and several unsuccessful attempts at sleep - later, I boarded a 737 for Kotzebue.  I felt some measure of comfort.  After all, a town that has an airport big enough to land a 737 couldn't be that tiny of a place, could it?

What I hadn't realized was that most of this 737 was for cargo bound for ice-locked Kotzebue.  All 23 seats on the airplane were filled. The man sitting next to me had been to Kotzebue many times.  As we spoke, I began to realize that my encounter with Bish was not so much between Judaism and Kotzebue culture, as it was between Judaism and Eskimo culture.

Kotzebue, he explained, is an Eskimo town.  Populated mainly by Inupiaq (pronounced, IN-you-pack) Eskimos, Kotzebue serves as the social and economic hub for a region that includes several small Eskimo villages on the tundra - some of which have electricity and running water; some of which do not.  He suggested that I speak softly and slowly with the Inupiaq, without looking them right in the eyes, and that I not be surprised if they wait a long time - maybe 10 to 15 seconds - before responding to something I say. To them, waiting to respond is a sign of respect.

Uh-oh, I thought, I'm in trouble.  You see, I'm a fast talking yakker par excellence - my friends call me a "manic expressive."  I usually do OK, but in Kotzebue, if I'm supposed to speak slowly and quietly, relishing the long silences...I'M DOOMED!

I looked out the window toward the Alaskan terrain below.  Everything I could see was white. Very white.  White as far as the eye could see. 

The plane landed at 9 a.m.  It was still dark, but on three sides, I could make out windswept snowfields.  On the fourth were several run-down buildings, which I soon discovered was the town of Kotzebue.  There was a dim, pre-dawn glow shining pink on the Eastern horizon, and it was bitter cold.

The terminal at Kotzebue's airport consists of a single, square room, about thirty feet on a side.  I expected somebody to greet me as I entered, but nobody did.  Oh my goodness, I thought, I have just fallen prey to the greatest prank ever!  Somebody with an obscure area code called and told me to come to the most godforsaken place on earth and, I was gullible enough to do it!

However, within a couple of minutes, Bish arrived.  He was with his cousin, John, another grandson of the deceased, whom later I learned is a favorite to win the Iditarod dogsled race this year.

We drove down Kotzebue's only paved street and, in a few short minutes arrived at Rotman's General Store.  Their grandmother - Clara Rotman Salinas - owned that store, and lived for many years in an apartment above it. The upstairs looked like a college dormitory.  There was one long hall, with several rooms on either side - some were bedrooms, others were offices.  There were people walking around, phones ringing, fax machines humming.

A short, plump housekeeper, wearing the first of many huge smiles I would see that day, showed me to my room. There I found 1950s furniture that looked to be in factory condition, and a small stack of neatly folded towels on the bed, the uppermost of which bore an embroidered Magen David.

Over breakfast, and later when I spoke with some of the other grandchildren, I learned more about their Grandmother.  Clara Rotman Salinas was born Clara Levy in the nearby village of Kiana.  Her father, a man named William Shakespeare Levy, came to Alaska shortly after 1900 as an accountant during the Klondike Gold Rush.

Clara was born in 1914, the eldest of four sisters.  Her mother died young, so the job of raising Clara and her sisters fell to Mr. Levy himself.  He made sure to raise them as Jews.  Clara was married and widowed twice, and her first husband was also Jewish.   She had six children, 29 grandchildren, 40 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild. 

Clara appreciated the finer things in life - travel, the arts, fine dining.  She loved taking her grandchildren on exciting trips, showing them sights most Eskimo children would never dream of seeing.   Her home was the gathering place for the entire family.  While at Grandma's, Clara's children and grandchildren knew they had to put their napkins on their laps, hold their forks properly, and clean up after themselves.  Proper behavior was a must, and they loved being there.

Clara was passionate about Judaism. She shared it with her offspring at every opportunity, and traveled to Seattle a several times a year to attend services at a Reform synagogue there.

With her fellow Eskimos in Kotzebue, Clara shared the richness of being Jewish.  And with her relatives in the Lower-48, she shared her Inupiaq wisdom- the importance of hospitality, the riches of subsistence living, the importance of strong, quiet perseverance.  Culturally, Clara was an Alaskan pipeline, connecting Jews and Eskimos by allowing their cultures to flow freely through her.

It turns out that there used to be a hotel above the store - that's why it looked like a dorm.  For years, Kotzebue's visiting dignitaries - Roy Rogers, Jimmy Dean, Edna Ferber, and others - all stayed there.  In her 1958 best selling novel, Ice Palace, Edna Ferber based the character of Mrs. Leah Raffsky on Clara Rotman, the delightful Jewish Eskimo innkeeper she met while writing the book.

For the past several years, Clara had been plagued by Alzheimer's disease and other illnesses, and had died a quiet death at home a few days before my visit.

After another failed attempt at sleep, I dressed and met Rick to go to the church for the funeral.  About 200 people, mostly Eskimos, were there.  Rick said that several had snowmobiled in that day from villages in the tundra.  In Northwestern Alaska, Clara Rotman's funeral was a major event. 

I led the funeral liturgy.  Five daughters and granddaughters eulogized Clara, and I added some reflections, too.

While waiting to go to the burial site, Rick introduced me to his wife, Suzy, with whom I'd spoken on the telephone at the beginning of my adventure.  Suzy was Inupiaq, and knew a lot about Judaism. Rick told me that her "Jewish journey" consisted of everything short of conversion.

Suzy's kind smile, the sparkle in her eye, and her quick-wittedness endeared her to me immediately.  Like most other Eskimo women, Suzy wore a magnificent, colorful parka, the hood trimmed with wolf fur.

We had been speaking for several minutes, when Suzy suddenly interrupted herself.  "Oh my goodness," she said, putting her mitten-covered hand to her hood-covered cheek, "I have to get home to take the challah out of the oven!"  My eyes opened wide in surprise - an Eskimo woman had just mentioned the challah she was baking, and she even got the sound of the "ch" right!  A flurry of swirling ice crystals blew across my astonished face, and she was
gone.

Rick drove me to the cemetery.  Until recently, he explained, digging a grave in Kotzebue took three days, with shifts of volunteers pickaxing round the clock through the permafrost.  However, not long ago they got a pneumatic jackhammer, so now digging a grave just takes one day.

Kotzebue's burial site sits on a windswept hilltop overlooking the town.  It is a fenced-in hodgepodge of several dozen graves, many marked by crooked headstones.  A few tufts of tall brown grass cling desperately to the permafrost.  It seemed that, prior to our arrival, little had moved at the site for a long, long time.

It was about 2 degrees below zero, with a wind-chill factor of about -30 or -40 degrees Fahrenheit.

I read some more prayers, and several men lowered the casket into the ground with ropes.  In keeping with Jewish custom, everyone was invited to place some earth in the grave.  In keeping with both Eskimo and Jewish custom, the grave was then filled in completely.    Since the pile of dug-up earth had frozen overnight, the men had to chop it up before setting the marker in place and filling the grave.

Shovels scraped; men grunted; dirt ice cubes exploded everywhere from under the tips of flying pick-axes.

As for me, I stood off to the side, by the fence, slapping my hands, stomping my feet, and contorting my face in a futile effort to keep my unparka-ed parts warm.  Eventually, I began to notice that there was something unusual about this funeral.  Yes, I was standing in the Arctic
Circle a officiating at the funeral of a Jewish Eskimo - that was unusual, of course.  But there was something else going on, it seemed, that was far more profound.

It wasn't until I was at the height of my, "Keepin' Warm in the Tundra" dance that I noticed what it was - nobody was crying.  People often weep during funerals as the casket descends into the grave.  This time, however, they had cried at the church, but not at the cemetery.

Our funerals here in the Lower-48 tend to be carefully scripted affairs, usually somber, that feature glitch-proof hydraulic lowering devices and silent-running hearses.  The quiet lets the mourners turn inward in grief and sadness.  In Kotzebue, however, the interment ceremony is a loud, dirty, physical event.  It's hard to weep when you're dodging projectile stones and worrying about whether that rope wrapped around Joe's ankle is going to pull him into the grave along with the casket.  Burials in Kotzebue force the community to focus almost exclusively on the task at hand, not on feelings or tears.  There will be plenty of time for weeping later.

That strikes me as a Jewish approach, too.  Our tradition exempts mourners from many religious obligations in the days immediately following the death of a loved one - not so that they can focus on their feelings, but rather so that they can make burial arrangements.  When facing feelings that overwhelm us, it can help to do something - anything - to help give a sense of focus in the early stages.  All that most of us in Reform have left is the physical act of placing a shovel-full of earth into the open grave.  I think we can learn much from the action-focused funerals of the Alaskan Eskimos.

At one point, a rather short, plump Eskimo woman, wearing another stunning parka and a "perma-smile" on her face walked over.  Staring up at me, she spoke in slow, measured words, nodding her smiling head with every word. "Rabbi, it's really cold today."

Stifling a laugh, I quietly replied, "Yes, but I thought I was supposed to be the one who said that."

Still smiling, she again nodded earnestly and continued.  "If you spit...it'll freeze before it hits the ground."

Stifling an even bigger laugh, I said, "I couldn't do that at a funeral.  After all, I'm the rabbi."

So, I refrained from spitting. Until I saw that I was near the fence and that nobody was looking. And I discovered that she was right.

When Rick distributed copies of Kaddish at the church, I had thought most of the attendees would "misplace" their Kaddish-sheets rather than choose to struggle with the foreign words. How wrong I was!  When Kaddish time came, everyone reached into their pockets, unfolded their papers, and began - "Yitgadal v'yitkadash shmei rabbah...."

So there we were, a rabbi and several dozen Eskimos, standing on a windy Alaskan hilltop in subzero temperatures, all struggling valiantly with an ancient, Aramaic prayer.  The Eskimos were struggling because they didn't know the language and still wanted to get it right.  I was struggling because it's difficult to say, "v'imru amen" when your face is numb from cold.

Afterward, there was to be a post-funeral potlatch at a family-member's home.  A post-funeral potlatch, in case you don't know, is what they call shiva in the Arctic Circle.

On the way, we stopped at Rick's house for a few minutes. Fortunately, Suzy was home.  She poured some wine and, to my delight, served me a few slices of her challah.  It was delicious!  In fact, Suzy's might have even been the best challah I have ever tasted, and I've tasted a lot of them.  "What's your secret?" I asked.

Suzy smiled her sparkling smile again and, without missing a beat, answered, "Well you just need an Inupiaq-Jewish baker, that's all."  We laughed, and then Suzy walked into the next room and returned with a book, Arctic Home Cooking, as a gift and memento of my day in Kotzebue.

The book could have passed for a Temple Sisterhood cookbook, were it not for its recipes:  "Easy Chunky Moose Spaghetti Sauce." "Caribou Enchilada Casserole," "Whale Stew" (Ingredients: 1 whole whale, 3,000 onions, 4,000 carrots, 2-3 seals to taste...simmer for two days, serve hot, invite the surrounding villages...).

And near the back, Suzy indicated with great pride, was a recipe of her own: "Challah Fit for a Judge."  I commented that her challah was fit for a rabbi, too.

By 4 p.m., it was already dark outside and I was getting really tired.  The potlatch was in a small, crowded house abuzz with talking, laughter, and food.  Welcoming me warmly, family members thanked me for coming and for the beautiful service.  Then, one offered me some muktuk.

I furled my brow, struggling in vain to make sense of the offer.  "Eskimo boots...???"

"Not mukluks, silly. Muktuk! It's whale blubber - dehydrated, ya' know."  I wanted to be polite, of course, and being a gracious guest is more important to me than the minutiae of kashrut, but this was pushing it.  As gently as I could, I told them that I'd been trying to cut down on my whale intake lately.

Suzy chimed in.  "Oh, don't worry, Rabbi, it's not treif."  I gave her a quizzical look, but I wasn't sure why.  Perhaps I looked at her that way because, unless the exhaustion had really fogged up my brain, I was pretty sure that whale is treif.  Or maybe it was just because I found it amazing to hear the word "treif" flow so effortlessly from the lips of an Eskimo.

And so, speaking eloquently once again, I raised a rabbinical objection. "Huh?"

"It's not a fish - it's a mammal," Suzy said, "so it doesn't need fins and scales.  Plus, a whale doesn't have an uncloven hoof or refrain from chewing its cud.  It must be kosher."

My brain must have really been mucked-up by then because, in a strange way, Suzy's Talmudic reasoning made a kind of sense to me.  So, throwing up my hands in defeat, I said, "OK...if you say so, 'Rabbi,' bring on the muktuk!"

They handed me what looked like a leathery piece of candy corn - white on the small end of the triangle, and reddish-brown on the other.  "Feel free to chew the dickens out of it, Rabbi.  It'll stay in your mouth without dissolving for as long as you want."

I put the muktuk in my mouth, chewed twice, swallowed it whole, and forced myself to smile really big.  "Mmmmm....That's good muktuk," I said. Frankly, I was so tired by then that I don't remember the taste at all.

When I politely rejected an offer for more, and asked for the fried chicken instead, someone said, "Here, rabbi.  You'll definitely like this stuff, too.  It's like Eskimo ice cream."

Again I swallowed fast, again I pseudo-smiled.  "Mmmmm, that's good Eskimo ice cream!"  Later, somebody told me that what I'd just eaten was a combination of blueberries, sugar, and Crisco.

Mmmmmmm!

Finally, it was time to leave.  On the way to the airport, I thanked Bish for the honor of participating in his grandmother's funeral.  "By the way," I said, "'Bish' is an unusual name.  Is it short for anything?"   Maybe it was short for Bishop, I thought, or perhaps for an Eskimo name I'd never heard before.

"'Bish?'  Oh, sure it's short for something, Rabbi.  It's short for Leibisch."

"Leibisch?!?!"  I gasped.  "That's about as Yiddish as a name gets!  I'll bet you're the only Leibisch in all Kotzebue!"

"Well not quite, Rabbi," said Bish, smiling a slightly mischievous smile. "There's Bish Jr., too." 

At the airport, every gate agent and security staffer who checked my ID said that they'd heard the service that day was lovely.  It felt flattering and a little weird, since I had never seen these people before.

It was 6:30 p.m. when I walked out beneath the long-darkened Kotzebue skies toward another 23-seat 737 to return home.  I wanted to sleep, but an uncommonly warm blizzard of memories and thoughts swirled inside me.  I thought of William Shakespeare Levy, a single father, raising his daughters Jewish on the early 20th century Alaskan tundra.  I thought of a group of Eskimos struggling to say Kaddish correctly.  I thought of a kind Inupiaq man named Leibisch.

But most of all, I thought of Clara Rotman Salinas - innkeeper and merchant, traveler and teacher, Jewish mother in a fur-trimmed parka.

Children often make angels in freshly fallen snow.  Similarly, Clara Rotman has left her sublime mark on the Alaskan tundra.  But Clara's angel is unlike most, for her angel is Jewish, and it won't fade with the passing winds.  Instead, it will continue to bring warmth to cold places for a long, long time, and allow her memory continue as a blessing.

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