Rabbi Devorah Lynn started at Beth Sholom Temple in Stafford last month. She has organized informal, commuter-friendly meet-and-greet times with refreshments before Shabbat services every Friday night to gives people a chance to meet her. Visit the Photo Place

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Varied career path leads rabbi to Stafford temple

New rabbi starts at Beth Sholom Temple

By NATASHA ALTAMIRANO

Date published: 8/19/2006

By NATASHA ALTAMIRANO

By NATASHA ALTAMIRANO

Rabbi Devorah Lynn has been a snorkeling instructor, a stay-at-home mom, an artist and an anthropologist.

All of her work experience, Lynn says, helps her relate to members of Beth Sholom Temple, where she started working last month as the second full-time rabbi in the past decade.

The congregation at the southern Stafford County temple--the only synagogue in the Fredericksburg area--is as occupationally diverse as Lynn's resume.

Its membership includes a farmer, a reporter, a Marine and a marine biologist, among other professions, said Lynn, 55.

"Because I've done so many things for a living, I feel I can open different gateways in Judaism," the Washington native said in an interview earlier this week.

Before entering a five-year seminary program in 2001, Lynn ran the Elderhostel, a nonprofit organization specializing in educational travel for people 55 and older, at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, where her husband worked.

Lynn and her husband, Fred Lipschultz, joined a small Jewish community of about 50 families in Bermuda.

"When I came, they were anxious to have more leadership," Lynn said of their 1989 move.

There was a visiting rabbi, but Lynn quickly emerged as a strong lay leader by regularizing services and holiday observances, starting a newsletter and establishing Torah study.

"I'm really lucky I had Bermuda," she said. "It gave me an idea of the demands of a congregation."

Lynn went to Israel for the first time in 1991 to attend Camp Kutz, a seven-week training program to become a para-rabbi, who can lead smaller congregations or assist larger ones.

On this trip, Lynn's mission in life became clear.

"Being in an environment where Judaism consumes your every waking moment lit some kind of spark," she said. "This is what I was called to do."

Lynn said she'd felt called to be a religious leader since she was a little girl.

"I took a lot of detours," she said. "You know how some kids say, 'I want to be a fireman or a lion tamer,' but then they put it on the shelf."

For Lynn, the problem was a lack of female role models within the Jewish faith.

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Date published: 8/19/2006