Tradition has it that Beth Israel’s congregation was established in the year 1908. Although the details are still emerging, we now believe that date is off by several years.

Congregation Beth Israel has a rich heritage that dates back to the early 1900's. Fleeing from pogroms and restrictions in the Russian Pale of Settlement, Jews immigrated to the U.S. in vast numbers between 1880 and 1924. Among them were families from the shtetls of Skopishok and Rakishok, in northeastern Lithuania.

The year 2000 marks a century of organized Jewish life in Bellingham, Washington, for it was in 1900 that the first high holiday services took place at the Odd Fellows hall (since torn down) on Cornwall Street.

Most of the Skopishok Jews came to Bellingham around 1904 - 06, but there were a few who were living in this country quite a bit earlier. Circumstantial evidence suggests that they may have been the "gold rush" Jews referred to in Frances Garmo’s story.

One of the strangest episodes in the history of Beth Israel took place in 1916, resulting in a disruption of synagogue life and spilling over onto the front pages of the local newspapers.

Rabbi Benjamin Cohen was a remarkable man in many ways.

The roots of our Jewish community stretch back to the little town of Skopishok, in northeast Lithuania. As Frances Garmo tells the story, it started with four or five men who came west, on their way to the Alaskan gold rush. They met in Eastern Washington; whether by happenstance or prearranged plan is unclear. When they got to Bellingham, they flipped a coin to decide if they would stay or go on. The decision was to stay. Frances is not sure who told her this story or who the four men were. Is there any factual basis for it? Let’s go back in time and see what we can discover.

Stephen Wise, the renowned Reform rabbi and Zionist, was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1874, the grandson of the chief rabbi of Hungary. He grew up in New York City and at the age of nineteen was selected as the rabbi of a synagogue on Madison Avenue. In 1899 he was offered a rabbinical position at Beth Israel Synagogue in Portland, Oregon, and he served there for six years. During this time, Rabbi Wise became well known in the Pacific Northwest as an orator on religion, Zionism, and social reform. After returning to New York to start the Free Synagogue, he continued his speaking engagements on the East Coast and in other parts of the country.

The Bellingham Jewish community has a long history of participation in religious and fraternal organizations. One of the earliest and more interesting was the local chapter of the International Order of B'nai B'rith.

The first contingent of Skopishok Jews arrived in Bellingham, Washington around 1900. Within a few years they were followed by a second wave.

Women's organizations have long been an important force in the Beth Israel community.

Anchel Pastinsky served Beth Israel as rabbi for several years in the mid-1930's. He was a descendent of a long line of rabbis; his father was from a small town in the Ukraine that no one had ever heard of at that time: Chernobyl. Anchel was a student of the renowned rabbi and teacher known as the Haffetz Hayyim, head of the Radun yeshiva.

A slightly historical fiction.

A number of early Bellingham families became strong Zionists, especially after the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Among them was Philip Brenner, one of the original signatories on the synagogue's 1908 incorporation papers.

Frances Garmo's life is almost inseparable from the history of Jewish community here. Born in 1910 to Benjamin and Rose Glazer, Frances grew up in a kind of vast extended family where she was related by blood or marriage to most of the other early Jewish families in Bellingham. Her parents were a key part of the Jewish community here. Frances' father is listed as one of the original trustees on the synagogue's 1908 incorporation papers, while her mother was among only a handful of women who could read Hebrew and follow the prayers at services.

When Frances Poplack passed away in Bellingham, Washington on January 10, 2000, one of the last direct connections to the early Beth Israel families was lost.