STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Bellevue resident Naomi Fine-Sloan began opening up her home for Friday evening Jewish Shabbat services in the mid-1970s.

As she became aware of more Jewish families in the Wood River Valley, she and Helen Goldberg began staging “Temple Beth Baldy” Passover celebrations in such restaurants as Sun Valley’s Lodge Dining Room, Trail Creek Cabin and The Tram, with Fine-Sloan overseeing the special food preparation and Goldberg providing the Haggadah—the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.

Sunday morning Fine-Sloan and her daughters gathered alongside more than a hundred other members of the Wood River Jewish Community as Rabbi Robbi Sherwin asked for a blessing on what will be the first synagogue in the Wood River Valley.

“Bless this space, which is about to become a holy space,” Sherwin implored, before leading the small crowd in singing, “We’re gonna build God's house in the mountains. We're going to build God's house in the valley.”

The new synagogue, which will also serve as a community center for other organizations, is based in a former community market and post office near the Elkhorn Golf Course clubhouse.

The remodel is scheduled to start in September with the building scheduled to open in March 2022—just as the lease on the Wood River Jewish Community’s office across from Atkinsons’ Market in downtown Ketchum is up.

“I always felt like a Bedouin as we placed our tent at the Presbyterian Church of the Big Wood, then Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church, then at St. Thomas Episcopal Church,” said Marty Lyon, co-chair of the building campaign. “Today we plant our tent here for many, many generations to come.”

“Soon, we’ll be socializing and worshipping in a building that will look different from today,” added Jeff Rose, who co-chairs the campaign with Lyon. “By the time Moses reached the Promised Land, Israel’s   people were as numerous as the stars in the sky. They found their home and we have found our home.”

The Jewish presence in Idaho and the Wood River Valley is deeply rooted. Idaho boasted the nation’s first Jewish governor when Moses Alexander was elected in 1915. Alexander, also a mayor of Boise, was among the founders of Boise’s Ahavath Beth Israel, the longest continuously operating synagogue west of the Mississippi River.

The Bannock Indian War of 1879 was scarcely over when the first Jewish settlers began arriving in the Wood River Valley. Simon Moses Friedman brought sheep into the valley in 1881, settling in the new town of Hailey. He was here only a matter of months before he purchased a grocery store, which he renamed the Hailey Mercantile Company. And he plunged into civic activities, joining Hailey’s first Board of Trustees.

His second cousin Simon J. Friedman, whose children donated the land for Friedman Memorial Airport, opened a general store on Main Street in a 20-by-40-tent where he began selling dry goods, clothing, books and shoes.

He became the first Jewish mayor in America when he became Hailey’s first mayor just weeks after Hailey was platted in the late 1800s.

The new synagogue will offer an open space that can hold a few hundred people for weekly Shabbat services, Sunday school, Hanukkah and Passover celebrations, Bar/Mitzvah services and High Holy days. It will also offer offices, classrooms for Hebrew training and adult education a meeting room and library.

It will host the Torah, which contains the first five books of the Hebrew Bible and was saved from the Nazis during World War II. And community groups will be invited to use the facility for various functions.

The community’s 200-plus members paid for the building with donations ranging between $18 and $200,000, said Rose. “It all adds up.”

Fine-Sloan’s daughters Betsi Steinberg, Ivy Fine and Nevada Smith came from Las Vegas, San Francisco and Columbus, Ohio, to take part in the dedication. They recalled how exciting it was to have Shabbat services in their living room as children and to have the visiting rabbi from San Francisco stay with them when he came to officiate over High Holy Days and other celebrations.

Smith also recalled how her birthday parties, held at Trail Creek Cabin, became the basis for the annual summer Jewish picnic.

“All this made us feel inclusive, knowing there were others Jewish families in the valley,” said Steinberg.

Fine-Sloan said she was tickled pink to have a synagogue in Sun Valley:

“I’ve always been fascinated with these places. I’ve been to the old synagogue in Boise and, when I travel, I try to visit them. There’s something about the juxtaposition of people of such a small nation that have had such an impact on the world.”

Ken Lewis, who along with Fine-Sloan is one of the major donors, said he is excited about the education that the new synagogue will provide: “It’s not just a religious center but a community center.”

Judith Teller-Kaye who along with her husband David is another major donor, said she was ecstatic to have a permanent presence of the Jewish community in Sun Valley.

“It fills my heart with joy,” she said. “It means we have a home, a presence and a permanence.”