Being Jewish in northeastern Montana in 1960, few Jews and a history of anti-Semitism

April 27, 2012 - PRLog -- We spotted Congregation Beth Aaron in the eleven hundred block of North Broadway in Billings, across the street from St. Vincent Hospital. The building looked like a residence, there were no signs of any kind to identify it as a Synagogue.

The confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers is a region of the USA steeped in the history of the northern upper plains nomadic tribes, fur traders and the mountain men. I joined a veterinary practice there in 1960, directly out of veterinary school. Our clients included townspeople, river valley farmers, high prairie dry land wheat farmers and ranchers, and North Dakota Badlands ranchers, the later doing their best to wrest a living from government grazing leases and their too small homesteads. All were determined, independent-minded folks who expected their veterinarian to be physically tough, knowledgeable about all species of animals, and skilled in the practice of the profession. Our animal patients were the same as they are today prone to the same illnesses and injuries. They were for the most part stoic and never embarrassed by anything they did or that I did to them. The characters in this book are those people, those animals, and that time and place. This is also the story of the personal relationship between my new bride and me as we learn to cope with being away from family and making new friends in a community foreign to us.