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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. |
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."
'A lot of detours'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.
Reform Judaism, the largest branch of American Judaism according to The Associated Press, did not ordain women in 1972. Conservative Judaism, the next-largest branch, began ordaining women in the early 1980s.
Lynn was raised in Tifereth Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Northwest Washington.
During her college years and early 20s, Lynn became a self-described "secular Jew." She didn't attend services or belong to a temple.
She studied anthropology and zoology at the University of Maryland and married Lipschultz, her high school sweetheart, three years later.
The couple's careers and graduate studies took them from Washington to the Boston suburbs, where their two children, Eli and Erica, were born.
What Lynn calls "pediatric Judaism" brought her, Lipschultz and their children to a Reform temple.
"When your kids get to be 4 or 5 years old, you say, 'Oh my God--I've got this heritage and I've got to teach them about it,'" she said.
At the Reform temple, Lynn met the first female rabbi she'd ever seen, Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, who remains an important mentor today.
Goldstein, who now leads a congregation in Toronto, rekindled Lynn's long-buried spiritual spark--a flame that would continue to grow in Bermuda, Israel and, eventually, Fredericksburg.
Lynn led the congregation in Bermuda until 2001, when she enrolled at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
She spent the mandatory first year in Jerusalem before completing her studies at the seminary's New York campus last May.
While in seminary, Lynn interned at congregations of all sizes in Alpharetta, Ga., Wilmington, Del., Worcester, Mass., and Falls Church.
'It's a marriage'With 120 families, Beth Sholom Temple is "the biggest little congregation I've ever been in," Lynn said.
It's small enough for different members to host Havdalah ceremonies at their homes to end Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, on Saturday evenings.
But it's large enough to keep Lynn constantly on the go.
"There's a lot of pent-up desire in the congregation--holding the dam has been a challenge," she said.
The biggest challenge so far has been unpacking and settling into her new home in Fredericksburg's College Heights area, Lynn joked.
She and Lipschultz, an oceanographer at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, have hosted informal social events at their home, including a barbecue for college-age members.
Lynn has organized informal meet-and-greet times with light refreshments before Shabbat services every Friday night. It gives people a chance to meet her, and also provides a snack to tide people--especially commuters--over until the oneg, or social hour, after the service.
She's presided over three funerals, and there's a baby-naming ceremony around the corner.
She plans to participate in local interfaith groups and community-outreach programs.
Living out of boxes aside, Lynn doesn't mind staying busy.
Her primary goal is to be accessible to her congregation.
"I want to make sure people feel cared for across the spectrum of life," she said.
Response from the congregation has been positive, Temple President Vivian Wolf said.
"We're very hopeful that this will be a long-term relationship," Wolf said.
It's important for Jewish congregations, which are autonomous in leadership, to find a good match in a rabbi, said Robert Miller, a third-generation temple member and former temple president.
"She's an excellent fit for this temple," Miller said. "Whether you're a rabbi, a priest or a minister, it's a marriage between the congregation and the leadership."
The temple plans to host an open house Sunday, Sept. 11, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
To reach NATASHA ALTAMIRANO:
Email: naltamirano@freelancestar.com
