Why does a 120-year-old church in Alaska have a prominent Star of David window?

SITKA, Alaska (JTA) — It’s a peculiar thriller that has endured for greater than 120 years within the shadows of Mt. Verstovia on Baranof Island in southeast Alaska.

At 611 Lincoln St. within the coronary heart of downtown Sitka, above the doorway to a Gothic Revival red-brick Episcopal church referred to as St. Peter’s by the Sea, sits an intricately designed stained-glass window with eight flower petals in various shades of blue and gold.

On the middle of the window is one thing you usually don’t see in a spot of prominence at a Protestant church: a Star of David.

How the image obtained there’s the topic of native folklore and an oft-repeated story recited by tour guides who shepherd cruise ship passengers and different vacationers round Sitka, a metropolis of about 8,500 year-round resident some 100 miles south of Juneau.

Because the signal out entrance greeting guests to St. Peter’s by the Sea notes: “Legends have grown up surrounding the origin of the attractive stained-glass window on the entrance of the church, largely as a result of it accommodates a Star of David; nonetheless, the definitive story has but to be informed.”

Desirous to study the “definitive story,” I met with the church’s archivist, Gail Johansen Peterson, and Choose David Avraham Voluck, the unofficial chief of Sitka’s small Jewish group. Voluck, an lawyer and tribal choose for the native Tlingit and Haida indigenous individuals, has lived in Sitka for a quarter-century.

“I’ll provide the city delusion,” Voluck stated when requested in regards to the window at an area hangout referred to as the Backdoor Cafe. “However,” he added with a hearty snort, “I’m speaking out of my tuchus.”

Voluck, 52, who bears a resemblance to Chaim Topol within the film “Fiddler on the Roof” and has a persona to match, informed the identical story I had heard the day earlier than from an area information throughout a bus tour of Sitka’s most distinguished websites. When St. Peter’s was constructed within the late nineteenth century (it was listed within the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations in 1978), its leaders ordered a stained-glass window from a producer someplace within the jap United States. The intent was to have a Rose of Sharon adorn the middle of the window.

“I assume it took a couple of 12 months of ready,” stated Voluck. “First, it’s obtained to be made, then it’s obtained to be packed. After which it’s obtained to be shipped. However some shlemiel within the delivery division will need to have obtained the home windows crossed.”

On a chilly November day in 1899 — a lot to the dismay of the native Episcopalians — the flawed window arrived. With winter quickly arriving and a chilly draft blowing by the hole, church leaders needed to make a fast determination about what to do.

“It wasn’t precisely what had been ordered however the individuals who made the choices at the moment discovered that it was acceptable to maintain that window as a result of it harkened to the Previous Testomony,” stated Johansen Peterson, including that — over the a long time — it proved to be the precise determination.

“Everybody within the congregation is de facto fairly enamored with it as a result of it lends itself to our Judeo-Christian traditions,” stated Johansen Peterson, who has belonged to St. Peter’s for greater than 40 years.

Kathryn Snelling, the church’s present deacon, agreed, saying the window has “remained a beloved a part of St. Peter’s by the Sea through the years.”

“I’ve by no means heard a disparaging remark about it. Guests do ask, and we share the story and the thriller,” she added.

Mt. Verstovia overlooks the harbor in Sitka, Alaska, a group of about 8,500 year-round residents. (Dan Fellner/ JTA)

Was there a miscommunication within the technique of designing the window? Did a synagogue some other place obtain the window that was supposed for the church in Sitka? Johansen Peterson stated the definitive reply will seemingly by no means be recognized.

Voluck, who was born and raised in Philadelphia, graduated from the Lewis & Clark Regulation College in Oregon with a Certificates in Environmental Regulation. After legislation college, he joined an Alaskan legislation agency, specializing in federal Indian legislation. He traveled to rural villages all through the state, offering illustration to Tlingit, Haida and different Indigenous peoples. In 2008 he was appointed Chief Choose of the Sitka Tribal Courtroom. Voluck is taken into account one among Alaska’s pre-eminent specialists on Indian Regulation and Tribal Courts.

As a Jew, Voluck says he’s developed a powerful kinship with the indigenous individuals with whom he works.

“I discuss with them as my ‘cousins’ and it’s simpatico,” he says. “Now we have a tribal background.  We’re survivors of genocide. And we cling tenaciously to our historical past.”

Twenty years in the past, searching for to strengthen his reference to Judaism, Voluck took a two-year hiatus from his work in Alaska to attend the Rabbinical Faculty of America in New Jersey, the place he centered on Talmudic and Jewish Authorized Research.

He guesses that about 50 Jews stay in Sitka, not sufficient to maintain a synagogue or any type of common occasions. “I used to have goals of that,” he stated. “Possibly I’m working out of gasoline. Every year my tank will get just a little decrease.”

Choose David Avraham Voluck, the unofficial chief of Sitka’s small Jewish group, is an lawyer and choose for the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. (Dan Fellner/ JTA)

Voluck calls himself the Jewish group’s “lay chief,” which inserts nicely with Sitka’s informality. It’s a spot the place “Orthodox” is much extra prone to discuss with somebody who worships on the native Russian Orthodox church — reflecting Sitka’s historical past as a Russian settlement — than an observant Jew.

“There is no such thing as a hierarchy in Sitka; all of us come to Judaism and provide no matter we have now,” stated Voluck, who has kosher meat flown in as soon as a month from Brooklyn. “It appears to work.  But when somebody has a Jewish query or concern, they often search me out by hook or by crook.”

For now, Voluck is content material serving Alaska’s indigenous individuals, elevating his three kids in a kosher dwelling, internet hosting Israeli vacationers for Shabbat dinners and sometimes cobbling collectively a prayer quorum for a yahrzeit service.

As for the window at St. Peter’s, Voluck calls it an exquisite dialog starter.

“I believe it’s nice that there’s a Star of David on show within the middle of our city,” he stated.  “I don’t know the way it ended up right here, however I adore it.”