■ 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.
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