A museum dedicated to the history of the Jews of Alaska will be built, according to a JTA report. The announcement was made this month at a reception in Anchorage. The museum will chronicle the story of Jews in Alaska from the Gold Rush days of the mid-19th century, to their role in the purchase of Alaska from Russia, to the little-known story of Alaskan Jewry’s connection to Operation “Magic Carpet,” which airlifted 40,000 Yemenite Jews to the new state of Israel in 1948.
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This will be of major halachic import, if jews prior to the purchase in 1867 established a day of Shabbos that changed when the US modified the calendar silmultaneously going to a Gregorian calendar and, for halachic purposes more importantly, aligning to NA timezones and dates. Sunday became Shabbos and Shabbos became friday.
Alaska is a very beautiful place, full of nora’os haBoreh. I’ve been there half a dozen times on business, and going back next week.
OTOH, not too many Jews there. Chabad has an outpost in Anchorage, which includes a mikveh.
dr yidd,
perhaps you can ask the rav harashi of alaska, presumably the chabad shaliach in anchorage, thjough i assume there were no jews there. by the way, there was at one time a mikva in an air force base there, till the air force said they needed the room (and presumably it was used infrequently, and probably more used by non air force personnell, not a prioritry for the air force.)
sholom al yisroel
MeMedinat HaYam
The lubavitch shalliach will, as he should follow the psak of the late rebbe ztl. There are two shittot, beyond the 3 famous ones: the rebbe and r. tuchitzinsky and the chazon ish zt’l, that historical facts would impact – those of R. issur zalman meltzer and R. tzvi pesach frank ztl as well that of that of the late viener rov. my quesion is were there sabbath observing jews in alaska prior to 1867. it may not be relevant halachically if the community actaully ceased to exist for a while.
For the record, the Commander of the Air Force base apologized profusely when the chapel was rebuilt forcing the destruction of the mikva.
I’ll make sure to visit the museum on my next trip to Anchorage.
sounds cold