TIMES OF ISRAEL
by Uriel Heilman
March 6, 2015

It’s not always easy being a religious emissary in a town with almost no observant Jews, but Dovid Mintz embraces the challenge. When Dovid Mintz was growing up around the corner from the Lubavitcher rebbe in Brooklyn, he never imagined he’d find inspiration for Jewish outreach work on a black-diamond ski slope. But after one of his nine siblings took up the post of Chabad emissary in Aspen, Colorado, Mintz began making the trek to the Rockies to help out on holidays. He soon found himself drawn to the mountains of western Colorado – not, like so many others, for the skiing, but for the potential for Jewish outreach. Located midway between Denver and Aspen, and home to the second-largest ski resort in the United States, Vail was chock-full of vacationers, retirees and ski bums — many of them Jews ripe for outreach. At the time, the only synagogue in town, B’nai Vail, did not hold regular Shabbat services. READ MORE