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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 19, 2011)
■ faith • OREGON S LGBTO NEWSMAGAZINE AUGUST 19, 2011 Radical Rabbi Spiritual leader from D.C. to head Portland’s P’nai Or synagogue BY AARON SPENCER Rabbi Debra Kolodny, 50, describes her younger self as “a radical social justice tyke.” Just a child in 1968, she walked in one of the first women’s rights marches of the modern era in New York City. “And I was very proud of myself because I wasn’t wearing a bra,” she says. “At 8 years old, I was liberated. It was hilarious.” At 12, Kolodny went to see the dance com pany the Rockettes and remembers telling her mother, exasperated, “What is this? All of these women are white. This is New York City!” From an early age, Kolodny says she was possessed to become a civil rights advocate. That’s why she went to law school and later worked in the labor movement. But along the way, that possession found a more divine provenance. Kolbdny is a converted Renewal Jew and will move from the Washington, D.C. area to start in September as the new rabbi for Portland’s P’nai Or congregation. Jewish Renewal is a relatively new move ment in Judaism. It started in the late 1960s and is described by its leaders as a “worldwide, transdenominational movement grounded in Judaism’s prophetic and mystical traditions.” The P’nai Or congregation in Portland is comprised of approximately 120 households, about the average size among the 45 congre gations in the country. But P’nai Or, due in part to the movement’s progressive leanings, has a sizable LGBTQpopulation. It’s a mem ber of the Community of Welcoming Con gregations, a nonprofit group of religious and spiritual organizations in Oregon that pro motes acceptance of sexual minorities. Kolodny will be P’nai O r’s second official rabbi, after the synagogue’s founding rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield died in 2009. Hirschfield helped found P’nai Or in 1991 and was wide ly respected in Portland’s religious circles, “People often see sexuality books on different spiritual traditions. She explored not only Judaism, but also Shaman ism, Taoism and Dzogchen Buddhism. She even practiced as a Quaker for four years and got heavily into Tai Chi. But ultimately, she felt that all signs pointed to Judaism: She was born to secular Jewish parents, and she had her spiritual awakening in Israel. “God is speaking to me in a Jewish context; so that’s where I belong,” she says. But her experience with other faiths' strongly influences her theology. “One of the hallmarks of my spiritual belief system is that all of the world’s wisdom tradi tions have deep truth that I respect and ap preciate,” she says, “and I delight in all the ways that we really speak the same truth with different stories and different frames and dif ferent metaphors.” Kolodny’s theology of oneness also plays into her sexuality—she is bisexual. “I see an alignment between being bisexual and seeing that we are all connected,” she says. “As someone who can love beyond gen der, I don’t constrain myself by externals. “People often see sexuality in polar ex tremes of male or female. I don’t live in that place of separation.” Religion is often a wedge issue for sexual minorities, but Kolodny says people of faith are not always close minded or judgmental. She intends to keep P’nai Or a place that welcomes everyone. “My cosmology is that I see all humans as in a state of yearning to connect,” she says, “and if we’re religious people, then we understand part of that yearning to connect is with God.” in polar extremes of male or female. I don’t live in that place of separation.” -RABBI DEBRA KOLODNY notably for his efforts to connect people of different faiths. “Aryeh was such an incredible spiritual leader and human being that no one could fill his shoes,” Kolodny says. “My hope is to honor his ex traordinary legacy.” Kolodny first “fell in love” with P’nai Or when she visited in 2008. She was making her regular rounds consulting and training as the execu tive director for ALEPH, the head quarters organization for the Jewish Renewal movement in Philadelphia. “Everything I know so far about Portland blows me away,” she says. “I’m so impressed with its environmental consciousness, its edginess, its hipness ... its organic sustainable foodiness. And in the middle of all that is a queer culture that seems to be thriving. “I so excited to be coming, and P’nai Or seems to be a beautiful manifestation of ev erything Portland has to offer,” she says. As executive director for ALEPH, Kolodny is an influential figúre in the Jewish Renewal movement, a résumé item that wasn’t lost on P’nai Or. But leaders at the synagogue chose Kolodny primarily because they thought she’d be a good fit for its eclectic congregation. “It mattered to us that we could find some one who was caring and compassionate and respectful of all of us,” Says P’nai Or’s presi dent, Diane Cohen-Alpert. Why wait till prices go up? Kolodny only became a rabbi this year, though she’s performed rabbinical duties for more than a decade. She was raised in a secu lar home in Rockaway, N.Y., a resort area in Queens (her friends called her a “sand hip pie”). She adopted her parents’ belief system, that there was no God. But when she was 16, she went on a stu dent exchange trip to Israel, where at the Western Wall, a sacred site for Jewish prayer and pilgrimage, she had an experience she describes as “being in God’s presence.” “So there was little atheist Deb who was absolutely sure there was no God, and she left that experience saying, ‘Wow, that was God,’” she recalls. R abbi D ebra K olodny starts Mon., Sept. 5 at That’s where Kolodny’s trajectory toward P ’nai Or, 9750 SIV Terwilliger Blvd. in Port becoming a rabbi began. She read several land. Visit pnaiorpdx.org for more information. 54 Years o f Experience and... We Won't Be Undersold! 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