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Spiritual markers on the journey of Avrohom and Sorah Larimer

Larimer FamilyMove over, Cotopaxi. Your tenure in Denver Jewish history began oh so recently, in the 1880s.

Once you were king of the hill. The founders. The legends.

The people whose descendants can look back more than 130 years later and say: That’s when traditional Judaism in Denver began.

Technically, that’s still true.

But did we mention Denver?

How did the city get its name?

For that matter, Larimer Square — where did that name come from?

And Larimer County?

Enter Avrohom and Sorah Larimer.

With a side dish of . . . Abraham Lincoln.

Avrohom’s great-great-great grandfather founded the city of Denver.

Gave the city its name, after his friend James Denver; and bought the first property in the city at, you guessed it, 14th and Larimer Sts.

Remember that ill-fated colony in Cotopaxi, Colorado, that unfortunate collection of settlers from Ratno, Poland, in the 1880s? After barely surviving a couple of harsh Colorado winters in the mountains — actually, some did not survive — the East European Jews moved down to Denver to begin the traditional Jewish community here, along West Colfax Ave.

But 130 years later, six members of Denver’s traditional Jewish community, Avrohom and Sorah Larimer, and their four children, Shalom, 12, Moshe, 11, Yitzy, 6, and Chavah Malkah, 2, are living reminders that in the traditional Jewish life of Denver, 130 years ago is not so far back.

The Larimers are proud of their Denver roots, and of their great-great-great-grandfather’s acquaintanceship with Abraham Lincoln.

But the Larimers are infinitely prouder of something else: their Jewish roots. Their connection to the founding of Denver, and even to Lincoln, pale before their roots that go all the way back to Mount Sinai, over 3,000 years ago.

Two more articulate advocates of the meaning of Sinai and its mitzvot can hardly be found.

In an interview, the Larimers traced the unusual markers on their journey. The number and depth of these markers required no special focus on the part of the interviewer. Comfortable in their own skin, comfortable with the choices they made, indeed, not just comfortable but buoyant and sailing, the Larimers’ sincerity and straightforwardness are arresting.

Nothing special is required to catch the attention of the listener (me) and now, of you, the readers.

I. A journey to find purpose

The Larimers came to Denver in 2009 from southern California.

Avrohom, a former professional baseball player, is a national sales manager for Kimberly Clark Corp., the manufacturer of Kleenex brand products. He’s been with the company for 27 years, before which he earned a BS in political science from UCLA.

Sorah, a former television actress — “I don’t get paid, but I do work” as a volunteer at DAT and Hillel, where her children attend (Moshe and Shalom at DAT, Yitzy at Hillel, Chavah at BMH-BJ preschool); at Yeshiva Toras Chaim (“I love working with Mrs. Wasserman”); at Kehilas Bais Yisrael (program director) and Aish Denver.

Not to mention, she works raising her own family. She has a BS in economics and finance from Fayetteville State University in North Carolina.

They did not come to Orthodox Judaism via descendants of the Cotopaxi crowd — they made the decision on their own.

Avrohom:

We’ve been on a journey to find our purpose in life.

And in that journey we also were very cognizant of making a new beginning, so that’s why we left southern California and came to Denver.

We were embraced in this community and really got to know people from all walks of life very quickly and enjoyed our growing relationships and growth in spirituality.

Our search for the truth began before Denver.

I started to get involved significantly in another religion, Christianity. And as you get more in depth and start asking questions, you become concerned that answers are either not truthful or in some ways manipulative.

We just started learning more on our own, my wife and I. We decided together how we would become Orthodox Jews.

My wife was my role model. She is a very significant learner. Very proactive, going on lots of websites, having discussions with leaders in different religions. Then I got more involved with the discussions.

We felt we weren’t where we needed to be for the long term, and needed a fresh start. We needed to move to a new community.

In addition to doing some research on the three Orthodox communities in Denver, my great-great-great grandfather founded Denver.

Mr. William Larimer, Jr., was born in 1809 in Pennsylvania and died in 1875. His gravesite is in Pittsburgh.

He was a very significant businessman and owned a large coal company in Pittsburgh, Westmoreland Coal Co. (There’s a Larimer Avenue in Pittsburgh).

He made the decision to journey west, went through Kansas territory on the way to Denver, met a governor of Kansas territory, James Denver; so they went to Denver together because of James Denver’s political aspirations, and essentially had the city named after James Denver.

And my great-great-great grandfather had a claim on 14th St. and the Platte River, pretty much where Larimer Square is today.

He bought this property and they named it after him.

Sorah:

We came to Denver because of my husband’s history.

That’s what we thought why we came to Denver. But when we got here, we discovered that Hashem had other plans for us.

Our first teachers of Torah were Rabbi (Yaacov) Meyer, Rabbi (Refoel) Levitt and Ted Gelt.

Rabbi Meyer’s passion and energy and his outreach skills are unprecedented, and with his photographic memory he knows my children’s names; he may not have seen us in three to four months and he’ll wish me a Happy Birthday. He asks how the kids are by name. Chavah Malkah is the first Jewish-born Larimer. We were members at Aish Denver at that time. Now we’re dual members of Aish and Kehilas Bais Yisrael.

We had started learning Judaism on the Internet. Chabad.org. We were trying to do things based on the Internet after we left the church.

We met Rabbi (Selwyn) Franklin of BMH-BJ, I don’t remember how we met him, but we told him our story and what we were looking for, and he connected us with Rabbi Levitt.

We toured the three Orthodox communities in Denver and had a real connection with the friendliness and warmth of Rabbi Meyer’s.

We lived on Larimer St.

Then we discovered we couldn’t live there and still be Orthodox Jews, so we moved to the Aish community, bought a little townhouse during our conversion process.

We left the Aish community not because we wanted to leave, but due to a set of circumstances — Hashem has His hand and guides us where to go.

We needed a larger house, but before we could find one in the Aish community our townhouse sold, and we needed to rent something larger.

That’s how we got to the East Side. Our plan was to go back to Aish, but it didn’t happen that way.

Rabbi Levitt was our teacher. He taught us the basics of Judaism, how to live as a Jew, Halachah, how to become a Jew. The rest — more in depth ideas — we got from Rabbi Meyer and Rabbi (Eliyahu) Stern.

II. The Larimers’ families, and the Larimers’ children

Sorah: I’ve always done things that were not typical. It was not a surprise to my family that I converted out of my old religion.

I’m independent minded. After being on television, not of the same political background, marrying into a different race — after all that, changing religions was just one more thing.

I have one brother and two parents back in South Carolina. We get along fine.

Avrohom: My family was surprised that I became an Orthodox Jew. That’s one of the reasons we needed to move away from southern California because when you’ve started something new — like in Biblical times, you have to leave your family.

We needed to move to grow in Judaism.

My parents are married over 50 years; Sorah’s parents, 43 years. We come from stable homes. They love us dearly.

Avrohom and Sorah:

Our kids have definitely assimilated into the Jewish world. Our older boys started in DAT in the second grade and the DAT school community was very welcoming and has a real environment to help a child grow and become assimilated into the Jewish world.

Yitzy was very young — he was Jewish when we had his upsherin [at age 3]. Judaism is basically all he’s known and he’s done really well at Hillel. He started in pre-K.

Shalom and Moshe are doing fine socially. The have a lot of friends and don’t complain much about what they have to do.

Shalom will be Bar Mitzvah in six months. He is studying with Rabbi Menachem Zussman.

III. Finding acceptance

Sorah:

For me it was more of a positive search for something greater. Even before I became Jewish I was very much into self-help, looking into different ways to make myself a better person.

What I have now is a relationship with G-d, and I wanted to know Who G-d really was. I didn’t feel I really knew that, even though I was a deeply religious person. It was unsettling. I looked at Buddhism and at different denominations of Christianity. A lot of different religions. I went through it all, except Islam.

What I now have is a relationship with G-d, I know what He expects from me by having these mitzvos. I don’t have to guess. I know exactly what’s expected. I know the beginnings and the history of creation and life, and it’s just a beautiful thing. I definitely feel at home.

I don’t really see Orthodoxy as restrictions, as a lot of people see it. It is a gift. Mitzvos are my relationship with G-d.

Community is very important. Having a support system. I would say it was scary coming into a new life, having a new name, a new identity, new schools for our kids, and also the thought of, “Are we going to be accepted?”

Even if we weren’t accepted, it wasn’t going to change what we were going to do. It’s nice to have people accept you, but in my mind it’s nice to have that relationship with Hashem.

I think we’re a pretty unique family. I had no preconceived notions of the Orthodox community when I was doing my search, but when I got into the community I noticed that people realized we were different. We are different. We’re both Jews, so we’re not intermarried, but we’re surely interracial, so when people see us they’re taken aback visually. And they have questions. And that’s fine.

But once I discovered that what we were doing — we’re not so normal in what we were doing, that’s when I thought: Will people accept our differences?

People have accepted our differences. Rabbi Levitt said — his words — “be yourself. Once they see how great you are, they’ll accept you.”

That’s what we’ve done.

Avrohom:

I would say that in a prior religion they always talked about “born again,” and I wasn’t able to grasp that concept or actually experience it in reality; but with that said, in Judaism it really is for me a born again experience. Very fulfilling.

In some respects my avodas Hashem [service of G-d] is a gradual process. I think a lot about the fear of Hashem. If I do not do what I’m supposed to be doing, it sort of eats at me from the inside. So I want to rectify that.

I’m pretty disciplined. I played baseball at UCLA. I played professional baseball with the California Angels in the minor leagues. I was a catcher, an outfielder, a little first base. The competition is greater the higher you go. You’re trying to sustain your parnassah. Minor League ball is not an easy life. It takes a lot of discipline.

It’s your whole life at the time. So that’s it how it translates to Judaism, because it is our whole life. If someone asks me, “How are you doing,” the response has something to do with Judaism.

Mitzvos are required. Required for growth, to improve your middos [character traits]. It’s a character building experience. We’ve got to look at ourselves from inside out. How can we help other people if we don’t have it together? Judaism provides the opportunity to better myself first, and then hopefully have a positive influence on others.

IV. Everything new

Sorah:

The born again issue — it really is a born again experience going through the mikveh. Getting a new name. Learning a new language. Changing the way I dress. The way I speak. I truly feel like I’ve been born again.

We hang out with BTs and some converts. In the Aish community a lot of people had a similar experience even if they didn’t convert.

In Denver we made new friends and all of them were very similar to us. It would have been harder to stay in a community with friends from our past life. We’re not in touch with them — just our families.

Some of the women I learned with are at the Denver Community Kollel. Yehudis Heyman. Zippi Sommers. Chaya Meyer is one of my mentors.

Avrohom:

I would just say that I’m a slow learner, a methodical learner. I always had said to myself that one of the things I wanted to do was to learn a a new language — I thought Spanish, Chinese, etc. Isn’t it wonderful that Hashem gave us Hebrew, the original language? As I’m methodically learning it, it’s very, very gratifying.

I reached out to Ted Gelt to get his perspective on the daily life of a Jew. We ended up learning Mishnah Berurah once a week, starting with the chapter on the morning blessings.

He was very instrumental in the discipline, and also a phenomenal teacher in terms of providing background and different opinions.

V. Learning about being a woman

Sorah:

There is a definite misconception about the women’s role in Orthodox Judaism.

In no way at all do I feel like a second class citizen. I’ve learned a lot about being a woman in general just from being an Orthodox Jewish woman. I didn’t grasp what it meant to be a woman from my previous life in television.

I was a television actress and a TV commentator.

They focused a lot on the physical. I now find that it’s a relief that people don’t just look at my physicality. I am more than a body. I’m a soul. I’m a mind. I am respected. I love the way we have to dress modestly.

I love that there is modesty in speech, dress and action.

I absolutely like the fact that we keep kosher and there is a separation between what I do and what the other nations do. That’s a privilege — to be different. I don’t want to blend in, assimilate into a non-Jewish culture.

So when I dress modestly, it says something about me. When I can only eat in a kosher restaurant, it separates me, and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

When my kids are not in public schools, that’s a good thing. I don’t care how different the education is in the public schools; they can’t teach my children how to be Jewish.

VI. Generations

Generations.

Looking backward,
people see how they differed from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

Growing up and living as we have, it seems so natural that we are as we are, and they, our forbears, are as they were.

Now, imagine yourself as the forbear.

You are the person who founded Denver, who knew Abraham Lincoln, who lived through the Civil War. This is how you grew up and lived. Then imagine yourself looking forward, down through the generations to come.

Leaving aside the general impossibility of predicting the future, could you have predicted this?

From you came a couple and a family, yes, in Denver, the city you founded, but living as observant Jews and having their children grow up as observant Jews.

Unusual markers.

Inspired choices.

The privilege of difference.

A journey from Sinai.

Indeed.

Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News



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IJN Executive Editor | [email protected]


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