Return of the Wild West Rabbi
by Mordechai Lightstone – chabad.org
In what has become a family tradition, Chabad Rabbi Meyer Orenstein is visiting North Dakota this summer as a Roving Rabbi. He and Rabbi Levi Shusterman are crisscrossing the state to meet and inspire Jewish residents, visiting the towns of Fargo, Grand Forks, Minot, Bismarck, Williston, Valley City, Cavalier, Hettinger and wherever else they can find someone Jewish.
Orenstein is following in the footsteps of his older brothers, Rabbi Menachem Orenstein, who first came to North Dakota as a Roving Rabbi in 2012, and Rabbi Sholom Ber Orenstein in 2018 to help Rabbi Yonah Grossman, co-director of the Chabad Jewish Center of North Dakota in Fargo, the sole Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in the state.
The three brothers, in turn, are following a much older family tradition: In 1890, their great-great-grandfather, Rabbi Benjamin Papermaster, arrived in North Dakota, some 7,000 miles from his home and family, with only a Torah scroll and a few sparse belongings in his possession. He became the first rabbi in the Dakotas.
There, Papermaster found a group of 15 Jewish settlers and their families who were tenaciously trying to settle the windswept prairie. The local Jews, however, were uninterested in the Eastern European rabbi and more concerned with farming the often harsh environment and assimilating into their newfound American culture.
Despite the pleas of family in New York to abandon North Dakota, the rabbi felt he was tasked with the holy mission of serving the community. He would remain there for the rest of his life. Until his passing on Sept. 24, 1934, Papermaster traveled to outlying Jewish communities in the state’s various small settlements.
“My grandfather was an original Roving Rabbi,” Orenstein tells Chabad.org, referring to his ancestor’s role as the sole rabbi in the region for many years. “He traveled around the states attending to the spiritual needs of Jews in North Dakota, and I feel so privileged to continue along that path.”
Read a full account of Rabbi Papermaster’s life in A ‘Wild West’ North Dakota Rabbi’s Legacy
