Even though decades have passed since they had heard Yiddish, two brothers who farm near Estevan, Sask., were able to recall familiar phrases when spoken by recent guests.
The brothers were visited by two rabbinical students from New York City who spent three weeks in the province in June and July re-establishing ties with Jewish people.
As part of a worldwide program called Chabad Lubavitch, Shmuli Raitman and Ysrael Kugel are one of 300 teams of rabbinical students sent out each summer to keep contact with isolated Jewish communities.
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“We meet up with Jews who have been cut off,” Kugel said.
“When parents die, they don’t have much of a connection with their roots.”
While meeting with a woman who called herself the only Jew in Estevan, the pair heard of the two bachelor brothers, now in their 80s. In a meeting the farmers shared their memories of the prayers, the ritual slaughter and a local deli where they could get kosher food in their youth. The farmers mow the grass in the local Jewish cemetery but have few other regular touches with the religion their parents taught them.
“We believe every single Jew is a Jew whether he is practising or not,” Raitman said.
“Every Jew has a Jewish soul.”
Midway through their Saskatchewan trip the team had met about 100 people and sat down for in-depth chats with 30.
The two young men, dressed in black pants and white shirts and wearing hats, do not intend to convert all people into believers in their ultra orthodox Judaism.
“We’re not trying to convert them to our type,” Kugel said.
“We try to encourage the rituals. We ask if they remember them.”
Kugel said he and Raitman had never heard of Saskatchewan before they were assigned the trip, but they are learning about the history of Jewish communities set up in the province in the 1890s when people fled the Russian pogroms.
Few of those communities exist now and Raitman said they think the only synagogues in the province are in Regina and Saskatoon. Kugel joked that to most Saskatchewan residents he and Raitman are like visiting Martians. Their impressions of Canada are how big the land is with so few people and the number of dead zones for cell phones.
However, turning serious, he said even the Jewish cemeteries in Saskatchewan are a sign of Jewish life. He quoted a Jewish proverb that compares a man to a tree. Like a small seed, the experiences of children make an impression and when the man and tree mature, their early beginnings stay with them.
Kugel said their religion imposes restrictions on farming. The rules don’t allow farmers to cross breed, which means they can have only purebred livestock. The religion does not approve of genetically modified crops.
However, farming reinforces faith in God, he added, when people see life sprout from the ground.
The two men will have new assignments after visiting the Prairies. Kugel is to run a day camp in California and Raitman will do prison visits in Pennsylvania. Eventually as rabbis they will marry and settle in a congregation.
For more information, visit www.lubavitch.com or phone 718-774-4000.
