Rabbi Stefan Tiwy

Para los que aún no lo sepan: Me gusta viajar para conocer lugares y culturas diferentes. Uno de mis últimos gran viajes fue un roadtrip a través de los Estados Unidos a mi anterior congregación Temple Beth El en Tacoma (Washington).

Mi viaje desde Connecticut hasta el estado de Washington tuvo lugar en junio de 2021 y acabaría siendo de más de 4.200 millas (6.700 kilómetros) de costa a costa y duraría 14 días completos. En general, abordé este viaje de forma bastante espontánea y conduje alrededor de 300-400 millas (~500-600 kilómetros) al oeste por día, reservando todos los hoteles en los que alojarme en el último minuto del día en que llegaba a un lugar determinado.

Varias personas me habían pedido que les mantuviera informadas de mi viaje, así que decidí revivir mi antiguo blog de viajes «Rabbi on the Road», ahora en la flamante edición «Go West!» (en inglés). Así que aquí está, a petición popular, ¡que lo disfruten!

The Journey Begins

Leaving Connecticut, I first drove to upstate New York near the Canadian border to visit Niagara Falls, which I had always wanted to see. Going with the flow has never been this easy!

The Great Lakes

I then made my way to Cleveland, Ohio, in the Midwest, where I took a boat tour on mighty Lake Erie, which left right next door from the famous Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Rock on!

After Cleveland, I stayed in Chesterton, Indiana, right near Indiana Dunes Park. The area is famous for its massive wandering sand dunes that are constantly being reshaped at the shores of beautiful Lake Michigan.

What the Schnitzel?

West of Indiana lies the state of Iowa, where I stayed in Bettendorf, a town over from Davenport.

As the place name indicates, this area is the western point of the German settlement triangle in the US, the two other points being Cincinnati in the east, and Milwaukee in the north. It was mostly German farmers who settled in this area, and even today, 52% of Iowa residents have German ancestry, the largest percentage in the country.

Paying homage to the legacy of those German settlers who came here as of 200 years ago is the German-American Heritage Center in Davenport, located in the historic hostel building for the newly arrived German immigrants.

The Center reminded me pretty much of the Jewish Tenament Museum in New York City, this one being its German incarnation, with lots of interesting historical information and reconstructed rooms.

Its gift shop on the other hand was stuffed with random items from all different regions of Germany, including a set of mugs bravely telling inconvenient truths…

Of Corn and Critters

After making my way through Iowa’s massive farming lands (the state’s self-proclaimed “Fields of Opportunity”), I stayed at Council Bluffs at the western end of Iowa bordering Nebraska.

From there I visited Omaha Zoo and Aquarium, one of the most renowned zoos in the country. It featured several different biospheres, an indoor rain forest, desert, swamp, and nocturnal exhibit, and also a beautiful aquarium.

Enter the Prairies

Next was a turn towards the north to Sioux Falls on the eastern border of South Dakota, and from there I journeyed westwards through this state and its famous “Sea of Grass”, for the first time officially with 80 mph (~130 km/h)!

There were many, many billboards for tourist attractions by the wayside, mostly tourist traps, with only a few less tacky ones among them.

One of those was Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village, an active archeological dig, where they unearthed a Native American village from about 1,000 years ago. They were mostly remnants of buildings, pottery, ancient corn, and animal bones (a lot of bisons aka buffaloes).

Mitchell, Iowa, is also home to the “World’s Only Corn Palace”, a building decorated all over with mosaics made of ears of corn, and smelling like a movie theater lobby all over. While definitely on the tourist trap end of things, I figured I might as well check it out as it was only a few minutes from the dig.

I had originally planned to crack a bunch of corny jokes at this point, but stepping into their basketball field-sized gift shop with everything imaginable corn-related, I realized they had already popped all of those…

By the end of the day, I arrived at the western end of South Dakota, where I drove the scenic loop at Badlands National Park. It was full of bizarre, gorgeous rock formations, which looked very similar to those around the Dead Sea in Israel.

The Prairies Continued

After driving through the Badlands in South Dakota, I stayed at a hotel in the Black Hills on the western end of the state. These lush wooded hills are unusual in a state that is otherwise mostly flat farmland, and they very much reminded me of the Black Forest region in Southern Germany.

Of course there was also Mt. Rushmore, the massive monument of four US presidents hewn into stone on the mountain side. While first and foremost a major tourist attraction, it was still quite interesting to learn about the intricate techniques used to blast and carve it out of the rock, a project that went on for 14 years.

Very close to this famous landmark lies the Crazy Horse Memorial, quasi the Native American response to Mt. Rushmore. While still a work in progress, the goal is to eternalize former local Indian chief Tashunka Witco, or “Crazy Horse,” in warrior pose on a horse on the mountainside, of which so far only the face has been finished.

Connected to the memorial was a very thorough museum on Native American culture across the US, as well as several cultural demonstrations performed by undergrad students of the local Indian University of North America.

Later that same day, I also stopped by the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota, another active archeological dig where heaps of mammoth bones had been discovered. Originally a sinkhole, it trapped several mammoths and preserved their bones well to the present day.

Enter Wyoming

The next big state to the west is Wyoming, part of America’s cowboy country. Vast landscapes and a lot of cattle ranges populate this enormous state, including some impressive rock formations, but for the most part just wide empty scrublands.

I would drive for hours and hardly see anybody on the road, including only very few gas stations, which could get a bit dicey… At the same time, it made for quite some stunning light spectra on the horizon when the sun would set at night.

National Park Junkie

Having made it through this vast state, the western end of Wyoming showed some quite different scenery, including two massive national parks, Grand Teton and Yellowstone. Both parks are right side by side, so I started in Grand Teton in the south and made my way to Yellowstone in the north.

Both parks were quite busy (apparently they had the highest visitor numbers since 2019, and every week, more people are coming), but Grand Teton was still manageable and had gorgeous views of snow-capped mountains and glaciers.

At more crowded Yellowstone, I mainly stopped at the park’s key attractions such as the famous geyser Old Faithful. It was also the only national park where I saw a live wild bison herd grazing at the side of the road, which was also quite a sight.

Potato, Potahto

Exiting Yellowstone to the west, I entered the State of Idaho of national potato fame. This state was interesting as it featured two quite different ecoregions, the Wyoming-like scrubland mostly used for cattle, and a more green and fertile region along the Snake River, where the famous potatoes are grown.

Another odd natural phenomenon could be seen in the burning heart of the state at the Craters of the Moon National Monument. This area in the middle of nowhere was shaped by lava pouring out of the earth and leaving a bizarre landscape after its cooling down. Many subterranean caves were also formed by cooled lava tubes that can be climbed into, so I also got some spelunking done here.

The Book of Stefan

Ever since the hilarious Broadway show “The Book of Mormon” came out, I have been wanting to visit Salt Lake City, the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka the Mormons.

Not unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses, I am sure everyone of you has bumped into some of those fellows in a pedestrian area downtown or even had them ringing on your front door to talk with you about God and the world, and to provide you with a copy of the Book of Mormon, their sequel to the Jewish and Christian Bibles.

While I was in Idaho, I decided to do a little detour down south to Salt Lake City in Utah, where the historic center of the Mormon Church is located. The area itself is called Temple Square in reference to the massive temple building in its center, around which several other administration buildings, museums, and libraries are built.

The temple itself happened to be under construction upon a massive earthquake in 2020, pretty much around the time when Covid hit. The blast was so strong that it even knocked the golden statue of the trumpeting angel Moroni off the tower, and renovation of the building will be going on at least until 2022/23.

The timing of my visit was right though, as the welcome center at Temple Square had just reopened that very same week as Covid restrictions were partially being lifted. And so I bumped into a lot of very eager young Mormons on their domestic missions to talk to visitors, went on a tour around the buildings with them, and had several interesting conversations along the way.

The welcome center was massive and featured a lot of art depicting stories from the Book of Mormon, including Jesus appearing to Native Americans upon his death 2,000 years ago and the like. When asked what they thought about the Broadway show, I got some dirty looks from my guides along with the statement that they would not watch such blasphemous things. And here I was thinking that show could have held quite some PR potential for them to get their message out there…

Before heading back north towards Idaho, I did a quick stop at the actual salt lake right outside of town. While often nicknamed America’s Dead Sea, this massive salt lake has started to shrink dramatically over the last decades. You could even tell with your feet as it took me almost 10 minutes to walk from the dunes to the actual water’s edge… The sand was soft and sticky, and a hot desert breeze was wafting over the whole area, which made for a quite surreal experience.

Idaho Reloaded

Upon my return to Idaho, I stayed over in Boise, the state capital. I had gotten the great recommendation to visit the Boise Fry Company, a restaurant where they offer six different kind of fried potatoes along with a dozen different dips and sauces. I went with a sampler size of several of those, including some fried purple potatoes, which I have never had before and which were delicious.

A little south of Boise, I stopped at the World Center of Birds of Prey, a sanctuary for falcons, hawks, owls, eagles, and vultures. The whole scrubland area in that part of Idaho is known as a high desert and is home to many of these species of birds of prey.

Not only was it fascinating to learn more about these birds and the sport of falconry, I also got to meet some of the center’s “avian ambassadors,” education birds such as beautiful Aplomado Falcon Rosa that visitors could interact with.

On the Oregon Trail

Leaving Idaho to the west, I entered Oregon, the goal and destination of the massive trek west known as the Oregon Trail, also of 1980s computer game fame. I had originally planned to stop by the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in eastern Oregon, but it unfortunately was still closed due to Covid. So instead, I enjoyed some of Oregon’s beautiful landscapes and sunsets, all while of course trying not to develop dysentery…

Washington State

North of Oregon is Washington State, the destination of my trip west. A fascinating thing I learned about Washington was not only how massive this state was, but also how many different climates and ecosystems it featured. It was also the first state of my journey where I actually saw grain in the fields, and not just potatoes or corn.

I saw a lot of natural beauty in Washington. As I entered the state from the southeast, I stopped over at mighty Palouse Falls, the state waterfall, where water would shoot out of the cliffside from a height of 200 feet (60 m).

In the center of the state, the Cascade Mountains serve as a natural divider between the green western part of the state with the influence of the ocean to the dry scrubland part east of them. It was an amazing sight to see lush green woods and rolling rivers return after having traveled through the very dry and desert-like regions further east.

Particularly impressive was Mount Rainier, Washington’s highest mountain and state symbol. Seeing its snowcapped beauty up close while wearing summer clothes at a comfortable 65 °F (~18 °C) was a very strange juxtaposition. Also, even as I continued driving west, its peak would constantly pop up and remind me of its presence, even within the city limits of Tacoma.

Arrival in Tacoma

And with that, I arrived in Tacoma. Even though it was a very long trip, it was a wonderful journey that I am grateful I got to embark on. I am still processing all the things that I have seen and the people I have met along the way, and I am certain that they will stay with me a long time.

Located directly on the Puget Sound, Tacoma itself has a lot of beautiful scenery as well. The place I stayed at right upon my arrival had a direct view of the water front and the harbor, which was a pretty sight.

July was my official start date at Temple Beth El, and apart from getting settled there and meeting a lot of great folks, the Shabbat of July 9 also served as my official installation service, which had a solid crowd in attendance both outside on the temple lawn and virtually.

I am very grateful for the warm welcome I was shown by the community and excited for my year here. Something else I am particularly impressed with and happy about though is the inclusive spirit for LGBTQ folks at TBE, which I have never experienced to such an extent before.

The weekend of my installation Shabbat also happened to coincide with Tacoma Pride, and apart from joining my wonderful clergy partner, Cantor Geoff Fine, in singing Adon Olam to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” at Shabbat services, I also got to attend an interfaith pride event at UPS (the University of Puget Sound, not the package deliverer as I have learned…). Seeing the big turnout and show of support for LGBTQ causes was another touching experience, and I am looking forward to living and working in such an inclusive environment.