RABBI DAVID KOMINSKYNew shul grows in Southeast Portland holds a decommissioned “synagogue in a box” kit that the U.S. military used to give chaplains to take into war zones to conduct services. It includes a tiny Torah, which is not handwritten and hence not kosher, but in other respects it is like a Torah scroll. The scroll is on loan from Temple Beth Sholom in Salem. Kominsky is seated on the labryinth painted on the floor of the worship room where Kehillah Hadashah meets at Sunnyside United Methodist Church, 3520 SE Yamhill St.

New shul grows in Southeast Portland

By ELIZABETH SCHWARTZ, Special to Jewish Review

article created on: 2011-12-01T00:00:00

“I’m trying to develop a model of Jewish congregations for the new millennium,” said Rabbi David Kominsky, when asked why Jewish Portland needs yet another congregation (before Kominsky founded Kehillah Hadashah this fall, there were 18 in the Portland metro area).

Kominsky, a long-time Portland eastsider himself, moved to Portland over 20 years ago from Boston to attend Reed College. When he left Portland in the late 1990s for rabbinical school at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, neither Kominsky nor his wife, Eva Schweber, expected they’d be returning to Portland.

“Normally, in the rabbinic job market, one follows the job, rather than moving to a place and then finding work,” Kominsky explains. “The year I graduated was a tough placement year.” Translation: too many newly ordained rabbis, not enough jobs. “Portland was home to both of us by then,” says Kominsky, so he and Schweber returned to the Rose City, bought a house in the Hawthorne/Sunnyside area, and Kominsky hung out a shingle as a freelance rabbi.

For the past seven years, Kominsky has conducted weddings, funerals and baby namings for an increasing number of unaffiliated Jewish families in Portland. He also served as interim rabbi for a year at Temple Beth Sholom in Salem.

“I was doing intentional transitional work, helping them move from one rabbinic relationship to another,” says Kominsky. “It allowed them to do the internal organizational work necessary, before they were ready to form another relationship with a new rabbi.”

Kominsky did similar work with a congregation in Bend as they sought a permanent rabbi.

Portland’s Jewish community is growing fastest on the east side of the Willamette, especially in inner Southeast Portland (Buckman, Hosford-Abernethy, Sunnyside, Belmont and Hawthorne neighborhoods in particular). For Kominsky and Schweber, the east side of Portland is a unique part of the city, and the Jews who live there are noticeably distinct from Jews living in other parts of town.

“Southeast Portland is different from the west side,” Kominsky explains. “I think there is a reason why inner east side Jews have not necessarily gravitated towards west side congregations, and it’s more than just having the river as a barrier. There’s a communitarian and egalitarian ethos, a sense that we want to do Judaism, but we don’t want to do it in a money-centric way. Also, most of the Jews I know are intermarried,” says Kominsky. “We’re pluralistic, multi-cultural, and Jewish is a part of who we are, but not the defining element.”

Kominsky also recognizes that the growing number of Jews on Portland’s east side don’t have a community that met their particular needs for Jewish life. Kehillah Hadashah, the new community shul in southeast Portland Kominsky founded just before High Holidays this year, is designed to do just that.

“People who live here are eco-conscious, liberal leaning politically, concerned with cooperative style living, and less materialistic than in Southwest Portland,” says Reyni Skoke, one of Kehillah Hadashah’s board members. “For us, the hope is to have an extended community of other Jewish families in our neighborhood.”

Skoke, who converted to Judaism (her husband is Jewish), is typical of Kehillah Hadashah’s target demographic. She’s an educator and yoga instructor with three children under the age of 5. Her family is a member of the Sunnyside Swap Shop, housed in Sunnyside United Methodist Church, on the corner of Southeast 35th and Yamhill.

“My husband saw an announcement about David starting the shul, and that it would be in the church where the swap shop meets. The fact that we could walk six blocks to participate was very motivating,” said Skoke, adding she also appreciated Kominsky’s approach to Jewish community. “He seems like a really honest person with a lot of integrity. We contacted him and had lunch, and appreciated his vision and passion for creating Jewish community in Southeast Portland.”

“We believe that the barriers to Jewish life need to be lowered,” proclaims Kehillah Hadashah’s website. Kominsky elaborates: “Two big barriers are money and Hebrew literacy. I’m committed to making sure our services are accessible to folks without Hebrew knowledge. Everything we do in Hebrew is transliterated, and we’re cognizant that folks aren’t necessarily coming in with a lot of knowledge. We also want non-Jews married to Jews to feel comfortable in the community. In terms of making it financially accessible, we made our services free for High Holidays.”

Additionally, membership dues at Kehillah Hadashah (loosely translated as “A New Community”) are on a sliding scale.

“We ask people to give what they feel is appropriate, between $250 and $1,250,” says Kominsky. “In general, on the east side, people tend to be good about contributing what they can and what feels appropriate. Membership should feel like a commitment, not an obstacle.”

For Kominsky, Kehillah Hadashah is about creating a sustainable community where the congregation’s members decide what kind of community they want to have, rather than a rabbi-centric model in which Kominsky would dictate how the congregation evolves.

“I’d love to see us become a community of adequate size to support davening, education for children and adults, social justice work, Jewish environmental and outdoorsy work and Jewish arts and culture,” he explains. “Kehillah Hadashah welcomes people coming from a whole bunch of different concepts, with or without a God construct, in a community to ‘get their Jew on.’ People can ‘do Jewish’ in a Southeast Portland-comfortable way here.”

For more information about Kehillah Hadashah, go to kehillahpdx.wordpress.com.