Desert Flowers 

Text and Photos: Jonah James

While the mountains and deserts of northern New Mexico aren’t exactly the top ten places of interest for Jewish travelers, we took a few pairs of tefillin and discovered a world we never knew existed: Jews who’ve never been to synagogue but can rattle off concepts in Kabbalah, an artist whose hundreds of paintings reflect Jewish tradition on the backdrop of the desert, and testimonies from crypto-Jews whose families have been hiding in these hills for centuries

The sprawling mountains of northern New Mexico aren’t on anyone’s list as a Jewish area of interest. But for two bochurim in a Hyundai Tuscon with a cracked windshield and a couple pairs of tefillin, it not only meant a month of outreach, but some unimagined discoveries deep within New Mexico’s remote villages.

Upon arriving in the historic tourist town of Taos, New Mexico (population 6,000), we soon realized that the Jews the local Chabad shaliach, Rabbi Eli Kaminetzky, meant for us to visit could not be found by maps, but rather through satellite coordinates, as they lived in private homesteads miles from civilization and often without another house in sight. This meant that many of the local Jews we’d come to visit were quite taken by surprise, seeing us standing outside their door with Shabbos candles and tefillin.

While some of these homesteaders haven’t been to synagogue in years, living on the cliffs has made them surprisingly spiritual. Yochai (right) and I make a new friend