Only in Alaska: Chabad Pavilion at Alaska’s State Fair

As a quarter-million people enjoyed the Alaska State Fair in Palmer, Alaska, for the last three weeks, Chabad was on hand, providing Yiddishkeit for the fairgoers for 14 hours every day.

Held every year in Palmer, Alaska, the Alaska State Fair draws visitors from across the state and many tourists as well. The fair features giant vegetable exhibits and thousands of exhibits in categories including art, baked goods, canning, clay arts, crops, fiber and fleece, flowers, handwork and needlework, home brew, honey and bee products, livestock, photography, poultry, quilts, sewing, and woodworking. And now, they feature Chabad as well.

Shluchim to Alaska’s Mat-Su Valley, Rabbi Mendy and Chaya Greenberg, together with a group of bochurim, were manning a Chabad pavilion at the fair from 10:00 AM to 12:00 AM every day, offering the tens of thousands of visitors a chance to put on tefillin, receive an ARK tzedaka box, or just speak about Yiddishkeit.

Each visitor, and especially children, was invited to drop a coin in a “Kindness generator”, where they watch how the coin spins its way down and “generates kindness”. They then each received a tzedaka box called ‘ARK’, an acronym for Acts of Routine Kindness. Thus, thousands of adults and children are introduced to the mitzvah of tzedaka, and encouraged to continue it on a regular basis.

The pavilion was open for the entire three weeks of the fair, and thousands of visitors passed through.

“It is worthwhile to note that the Chabad pavilion at the state fair is the only one of its type in all 50 states of America,” Rabbi Mendy Greenberg told Anash.org.