Rabbis Hope to Inspire South Dakota Jews

Two young rabbis will visit South Dakota next week. Their goal is to visit the smaller Jewish communities around the state, increasing awareness of and passion for that faith.

Rabbi Yosef Rivkin and Rabbi Shlomo Bogart plan to arrive in Sioux Falls on Wednesday. They will spend about a week in South Dakota, visiting Rapid City, Brookings, Aberdeen and other communities.

“We have a lot of Jewish contacts, but we want to visit even more, find even more Jewish people who live in South Dakota so they can either benefit from any of our services or just connect with a rabbi or the Jewish community.”

Rivkin teaches in a Jewish yeshiva, or a school that focuses on religious texts.

He and Bogart are among hundreds of rabbinical students and young rabbis who spend their summers on the road.

Rivkin recently answered five questions about his upcoming visit.

Have you had this experience before?

“I went last summer to Burbank, Calif., and we did the same thing up in the hills. This past Passover we went to Humboldt County in California, about four or five hours north of San Francisco, to a city called Eureka. It had no Passover public Seder taking place, so we made it happen in the local hotel, and had 50 people the first night and the second night.”

What is the purpose of your visits?

“To encourage people to not just hold their Judaism and practice it on a personal level but to connect with another Jew because we’re really all one. This is what another Jew would want, a bit more knowledge about his own heritage.”

How do you let the Jewish community know you are coming?

“Each year the rabbis who visit a place come back with a lot of contact information. We spent the last few weeks calling those people, saying let’s have a night of Jewish learning or a prayer service on this-and-this morning.

What branch of Judaism do you belong to?

I’m Orthodox and affiliated with Chabad. Chabad is a sect in Judaism that focuses very, very much on internalizing Judaism in a very real way, in a way that the mind can understand it, can grasp it, can understand it, know it and feel it. A lot of the teachings are designed to give the person the wisdom of the Torah, the understanding of the Torah and its commandments, and to know it. The commandments really come alive with the learning of the Chabad philosophy.”

How do you gauge the success of your visit?

“The success of our visit and the thing that will satisfy me when I return is knowing that there was one Jew out there who learned a little bit more about his Judaism or connected a little bit more with his Judaism, learned to do one more mitzvah (a moral deed performed as a religious duty), put a mezzuzah on his door or understands what it means to hold sacred the Shabbat day or what it means to keep kosher, then I’m satisfied.”