“Elana’s been teaching Katie about Judaism,” they chuckled to my parents one morning. “Katie says she wants to convert”
During its glory years, North Adams, Massachusetts, hosted a small Jewish enclave huddled within the vast, wooded expanse of the Berkshire Mountains. It boasted a community large enough to support a shul, a rabbi, an after-hours Hebrew school, and its own chapter of a national Jewish youth organization.
But without a Jewish day school or yeshivah to anchor their commitment, by the 1980s, most of the community had shorn their Jewish praxis like a snakeskin. Bubby and Zeide’s home was the only kosher address for miles.
But that didn’t deter my family from heading up to North Adams for our annual visits. I’d bask in the delights of the small town, whose backyard forest, streams, and waterfall rendered our quiet New York suburb comparatively crass and citified. And that’s where I met Katie, one of a handful of local kids eager for a friend from the “big city.”
Together we explored the sloping forest just beyond the backyard, chased fireflies winking coyly at dusk, and walked across the street to splash in the swirling brook that emerged, like a mirage, from behind the last house on the block. Katie taught me how to salt slugs and play Spud, and together we planned an afternoon talent show, then traipsed around the block selling tickets to indulgent neighbors.
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