(Jewish Group) Gonzaga University gets its first Torah scroll and Jewish space

[Behind the Aegis]

Gonzaga University, a Catholic college near historically neo-Nazi territory, gets its first Torah scroll and Jewish space

Eastern Washington is a region that, for the last half a century, was far better known for its hate groups than its Jewish community.

Spokane and the surrounding area was infamously a hotbed of racism from the 1970s through the 1990s, a period that included multiple acts of vandalism and neo-Nazi intimidation at the local Conservative synagogue, Congregation Beth Shalom. On the outskirts of the community that encompasses Spokane and resort town Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, sat the 20-acre Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho. Until it was shuttered in 2000 following a lawsuit led by legal advocacy organization Southern Poverty Law Center, the compound was a hub for hate groups worldwide, including the Ku Klux Klan.

And yet, it’s in this area where Gonzaga University, a private Jesuit school in Spokane, recently celebrated the arrival of its first-ever Torah scroll and the dedication of an area the university has deemed its “Jewish Sacred Space.”

“The attitude toward Jewish people is very open and kind. It’s amazing,” said Carla Peperzak, a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor from Amsterdam and social justice activist who now lives in Spokane.

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