Ilana was eyeing a silk-print wrap-around skirt as a present for a friend when a retirement-age Jewish mom with an eastern accent started up a conversation with me. When you wear a kipah, everyone assumes you are Israeli.
We spent this morning at the summer arts fair in Crested Butte, Colorado, a town of 1,600 or so permanent residents that forms a half-moon of built-up area in the midst of a plain between high mountain ridges that still boast patches of snow at the beginning of August. Four hours from Denver, it’s not the kind of place you expect to find a Jewish community, but the woman told us that the local synagogue, the cleverly-named Bnai Butte, counts 60 families among its members. If you add to that the Jews for whom Bnai Butte is the shul they refuse to enter, we must be one of the town’s leading denominations and ethnic groups.
Like other minorities, Jews in outlying places either form insular groups or try to beat the locals at their own native culture. The latter was most evident over our weekend in Crested Butte. A dark-complexioned, kinky-haired young mountain biker wearing devil-blue Duke duds (that’s my alma mater) eyed my tzitziot and smiled a greeting as he passed by me on the street on Shabbat, and a heavily tatooed, long-haired country banjo man called out “Shalom” from his street-musician perch.