Glacier Jewish Community/B'nai Shalom is an independent, egalitarian synagogue-without-walls serving the Jewish community in northwest Montana’s Flathead Valley. We strive to create a kehillah kedoshah, or sacred community, that offers the opportunity to connect with other Jewish and Jewish-adjacent people through spiritual, educational and social experiences throughout the year.
Glacier Jewish Community offers a vibrant, supportive, and engaging environment for people to gather, celebrate, learn and grow our Jewish connections. We come from diverse backgrounds and share an appreciation for tradition and creativity. Our tent is open on all sides.
Our community provides opportunities for Jews, our partners, and allies, to celebrate the joys of Judaism. Our activities are designed around the sacred rhythms of Jewish time, and the sacred environment of our Northwest Montana home in the Flathead Valley. All are welcome.
Our gatherings offer both sacred and social connection. We honor Jewish tradition and innovation, in our communal worship and rituals. Diversity is a strength as we create sacred space, inviting curiosity, conversation, and new approaches to Jewish community building.
Here in the Flathead our connection to place guides us. Awe is a natural response to big sky, majestic mountains, clear water, dense forests, and abundant flora and fauna. This is our sanctuary. This place (ha'makom ha'zeh) informs our experience of Jewish time and values.
This week, some of us saw the full moon. Jewishly speaking, this was the full moon of Elul, the last moonth before we enter a new Jewish year. And whether we saw it or not, whether we heard about it or not, whether we thought about it or not, the moon was full and is now waning toward the dark fertility of the new moon of Tishrei, the day on which we will begin our Jewish New Year, 5785.
As we entered last Shabbat, our community welcomed three new Jews into our midst. The two adults are people who have been living Jewishly and as part of Jewish community for quite a while, and the distinction between them and those of us who were born Jewish had become as thin as a fingernail.
Last week, I mentioned the change in the Amidah that speaks of the descent of summer’s dew, and how extraordinary it is to see how the flora of the Flathead Valley manages in the dry heat of summer.
In the rhythms of Jewish time, and our biblically derived holy days and festivals, summer is a hot, dry span between the early harvests and abundance of Pesach/Passover and Shavuot (meaning weeks and arriving seven weeks after the second night of Passover), and the late harvest of Sukkot, preceded by our Yamim Nora’im (Days of Awe – Rosh HaShanah through Yom Kippur). So too, in the Flathead Valley.
I have started this Shabbat message several times already. I have been thinking about the confluence of our 4th of July holiday and Shabbat Korach (this week’s Torah portion is all about a populist leadership rebellion).
When folks around the country ask me about our Glacier Jewish Community, I explain that, just like pluralistic, pan-denominational Jewish communities anywhere, we are an eclectic bunch. What is unique about our Jewish community, from my perspective, is that its members live in Northwestern Montana – surrounded by mountains, extraordinary natural beauty, and vast vistas of land and sky.
…because Judaism sagaciously holds the complexities and coexistence of sorrow and joy, destruction and celebration, persecution and resistance, despair and hope, Yom HaShoah is also Israel’s day of remembering those who bravely resisted, even against devastating odds.
Thank you for joining us for what was a meaningful and fun week of Pesach events. Nearly 60 of you joined us for seder at The Patio, where we ate Ellie and Orion's delicious meal and shared the Passover story across many generations.
This evening we enter Shabbat haGadol, the Big/Enlarged Shabbat that precedes Passover. May we all experience an expansive renewing of spirit in this vast Shabbat as we pause before entering a new week.
This piece is offered in honor and memory of my beloved teacher, mentor, and friend, Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, z”l, whose love of ecology, nature, science, and Judaism gave birth to an ever growing community of Jews connected deeply to our roots in the wisdom of Earth and our partnership with her and the Divine Abundance.
