Rabbinical Students hit the Road to Visit Jews Across Montana

Missoula, MT — Yankie Shemtov took a deep breath as he stood at the edge of Caras Park earlier this week.

He looked at his traveling partner, Ephraim Zimmerman, psyched himself up a bit and said, “Here goes, we’re going in.”

Dressed in black slacks with white button-down shirts that gleamed under the midday sun and wearing full beards and yarmulkes, the pair were nothing if not conspicuous walking into a packed Out to Lunch crowd.

And they felt it.

“The surprising thing is that people noticed us right away, but I didn’t get any hard feelings toward someone who looked a little different,” Zimmerman said.

The traveling rabbinical students are part of Chabad Lubavitch, the world’s largest Jewish education outreach program, headquartered in New York.

Rabbinical students like Zimmerman and Shemtov have been visiting Montana for 40 years, providing rabbinical services, educational materials and encouragement to rural Jews.

“If you’re Jewish and we have your name and number, we’ll stop by your house and help you be that Jew you are,” Shemtov said. “Because Jew is a state of being.”

The pair of staccato-speaking rabbinical students with a trace of Yiddish in their their clipped Chicago (Zimmerman) and high-pitched Southwest (Shemtov) accents, are very concerned about perceptions.

“We’re not missionaries,” Zimmerman said. “It’s the first thing I want to tell people.”

But Zimmerman is as charismatic as any evangelist, and his passion is for Jews and gentiles alike to become the people God intended them to be.

He and Shemtov do that by encouraging understanding in the form of religious study, hospitality and an undying optimism.

“Anybody can be a good person,” Zimmerman said. “We’re talking gentiles and Jews here.”

Standing out like streakers at a ballgame, the pair of rabbinical students strolled casually across the park in front of hundreds of onlookers.

Quiet murmurs reverberated through the crowd.

“I wonder what those guys are?” came one query.

“Did you see the guys in white shirts with those small hats on?” came another.

Within moments, a man in a green shirt on a bicycle approached and engaged them in conversation.

“In New York we’d get lost; over here we stick out,” Shemtov starts.

“Like a sore thumb,” Zimmerman said, finishing Shemtov’s thought, which is the general give and take of their conversations.

On Wednesday morning, Zimmerman and Shemtov began their search around Missoula looking for the diaspora, the dispersed Jewish community.

Shemtov said he became thirsty and started to search for a gas station with a mini-mart.

“This lady followed me into the gas station,” Shemtov said. “I thought, ‘What did I do wrong?’ ”

But she wasn’t the undercover cop the pair thought they’d attracted because Shemtov drove an extended distance in a turning lane.

“She opens her window and says, ‘I never see you guys with the yamulkes, I had to follow you,’ ” Shemtov said.

The woman moved recently and wished the two rabbinical students would visit her and her husband.

“Not a single door we knocked on turned us away,” Zimmerman said. “That says something about Montana people. Good for them.”

That evening, Shemtov oversaw a barbecue at the house of Ed Brown, a longtime member of Missoula’s Jewish community.

“We have to bring all our food with us,” Zimmerman said, explaining the need to travel with kosher items.

But these Jews didn’t pack in bagels from Brooklyn or latkes from the Lower East Side.

“The Rabbi Chaim Bruk, in Bozeman, has a kosher truck that delivers groceries,” Zimmerman said as Shemtov turned the chicken, potatoes and vegetables on the special grill they travel with.

Zimmerman and Shemtov plan to head back to Bozeman to spend the Sabbath with Bruk before heading up to Flathead Lake to continue their quest to reach out to Montana Jews.

Late Wednesday evening, Brown’s porch became the scene of a meaningful discussion about nature, Judaism and travels taken between the rabbinical students, Brown, University of Montana genetics professor Frank Rosenzweig, and his son, Ben, who wishes to become a rabbi.

Zimmerman wrapped the tefillin for Rosenzweig, a traditional practice where small boxes in which are placed small scrolls of scripture are secured on the arm and forehead as a reminder of one’s commitment to God.

Each visitor and the two rabbinical students washed each hand three times and prayed a blessing before the meal.

“The scenery is very beautiful here,” Zimmerman said, watching the sun set.

“Very nice people,” Shemtov said, finishing the thought.