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Bright blue skies. Pine trees laden with snow. Sunlight reflecting off the lake. Fresh powder.

On Saturday mornings, when the weather is forgiving, this is what Shabbat services look like for members of Lake Tahoe’s twin Reform synagogues, Temple Bat Yam and North Tahoe Hebrew Congregation.

They call it “Shabbat on Snow.”

The congregations’ shared spiritual leader, Rabbi Evon Yakar, opens services near the ski lifts, using a pocket Torah he carries in his backpack. He offers a prayer, and then rabbi and congregants alike take to the slopes. After a few runs down the mountain, they return for another reading. And then they go again.

Though unique, “Shabbat on Snow” is no anomaly. Instead, it is part of a concentrated effort by Temple Bat Yam (TBY) and North Tahoe Hebrew Congregation (NTHC) to make Lake Tahoe the hub of Jewish life in the region.

In 2017, the congregations entered into a cooperative agreement to share rabbis, solving a staffing problem that both had struggled with for decades. Since then, they have begun work expanding what they call the Lake Tahoe Basin Jewish Community. The two synagogues lie on opposite sides of the lake, about a 45-minute drive depending on the weather.

Events are designed to appeal to Lake Tahoe’s “mountain Jews,” as John Kuzmik, longtime member and former president of TBY, calls his community. Along with traditional Shabbat and holiday services, both congregations hold many services outside, on the slopes, in the mountains, at lakeside, even on the lake.

In March, TBY held “Purim in the Powder,” an annual fundraiser in which congregants ski in tutus to celebrate the joyous holiday. The month before, the two congregations came together to celebrate Tu B’Shevat “among the trees” at Diamond Peak Ski Resort in Incline Village, Nevada.

And for last year’s High Holidays, 250 people gathered at Sand Harbor State Park to break the fast on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe.

These kinds of celebrations appeal especially to a growing population of Jews who want something different out of religious life, said Miles Adler, former NTHC president.

“That’s what our goal is,” Adler said. “To incorporate as many people.”

Recently, work has begun on the Lake Tahoe Basin Jewish Community’s larger goals.

Together, TBY and NTHC have begun work on creating a nonprofit that will combine their resources to expand their offerings, both for members and those in surrounding communities. Plans include expanded High Holiday programming, a camp for children, and retreats for clergy and laypeople.

Rabbi Lauren Ben-Shoshan, a former Palo Alto resident who serves both congregations alongside Yakar, characterized the relationship between the two communities.

“It’s not a merger,” she said. “It’s a marriage.”

Both congregations will retain their own buildings, programming and identity, but now work more closely together. The goal is to be able to offer a greater variety of services — and serve a greater number of congregants — than either could alone. They want to become a center for Jewish life in the greater Tahoe region, serving communities large and small.

In this vein, the congregations are making efforts to foster Jewish communities in surrounding towns. Yakar and Shoshan-Ben lead occasional services in Truckee, a city of 17,000 not far from the California-Nevada border where Shoshan-Ben lives with her husband and children. They are also making inroads with the Jewish community, new since the pandemic, in the Nevada capital of Carson City, about 30 miles from South Lake Tahoe.

Collaboration between TBY and NTHC is hardly anything new. As Kuzmik tells the story, he was the first to bring the congregations together.

In 1999, when his eldest son was approaching his bar mitzvah, Kuzmik encountered a problem. TBY had its own building, but no rabbi and no suitable Torah. Across the lake, NTHC had a rabbi and a Torah, but no building. Kuzmik managed to convince the rabbi to travel, and so his son had his bar mitzvah at TBY with NTHC’s rabbi.

TBY and NTHC each serve 60 to 70 families, though those numbers change with the seasons. When the weather hits hard, as it did this this year, residents with other homes in warmer climates clear out. But a recent population increase — the result of people moving to the area during the pandemic — has kept the congregations busy.

NTHC’s religious school hit an all-time high of 50 students last year, board president Jerry Flanzer said. The synagogue has started a group for teens who exit religious school after their b’nai mitzvah.

TBY is active in the community, participating in the local Bread and Broth initiative, an interfaith program that works to end hunger in South Lake Tahoe, and it also has a social action committee “to encourage TBY members to express their Jewish values focused on tikkun olam.”

Rabbi Yakar sits on the board of many local organizations, forging connections between the Jewish community and the broader Lake Tahoe population.

The two communities have been a part of the fabric of Lake Tahoe life since the late 1970s, when they started meeting in private homes on opposite sides of the lake. Formal establishment came later: TBY began leasing the land the congregation now owns in 1990, and NTHC moved into its current home in 2003.

For many years, the two Reform congregations were all the greater Tahoe area had for Jewish life, with the nearest synagogue on the California side, Temple Kol Shalom in Cameron Park, outside of Sacramento. In Reno, Conservative Temple Emanu-El and Reform Temple Sinai are reachable by another 45-minute drive.

In 2013, Chabad of Lake Tahoe opened in South Lake Tahoe and soon began renting space in the Ski Run Marina retail area (just a mile from Bat Yam). Last year, Rabbi Mordey and Shaina Richler purchased a house across the border in Stateline, Nevada, for a permanent location, rebranding their center Chabad at Lake Tahoe.

It seems now as if the Jewish community in the region is ever expanding. A recent meeting in Truckee to gauge local interest in a new congregation drew more than 60 people. And a monthly service led alternately by Yakar and Ben-Shoshan in Carson City regularly draws 20 people.

As the congregations continue to work together, some hold the vision of Lake Tahoe as a destination for Jewish life, Kuzmik said. He wants to see Jews from other communities coming to witness how the “mountain Jews” do things.

There is even talk about turning the 6 acres that TBY occupies into an event space for retreats, conferences and camps. There is no telling what else might happen.

“We’re a small community, but we’re not afraid to think big,” Kuzmik said.