Page 3 - June 2018

Notes From Rabbi Dunsker
Shavuot and Confirmation were really, really nice this year. I want to thank everyone who came to our Tikkun Leil Shavuot and stayed up late studying with me, I felt like our discussion was a good learning experience for all of us, and this year I have to say that I especially enjoyed studying in preparation for the evening.
And Shavuot morning, I think our services were especially good this year. I am always so proud and impressed with what our kids do for those services, but this year our two boys, Isaac V and Zachary B spoke powerfully well. Their speeches about being Jewish dovetailed with each other beautifully. Isaac spoke about both the joy and difficulty of being an African American Jew and of having his Jewishness questioned because he might not “look Jewish,” even when everything about him and his family is so very immersed in their Jewishness. When I asked him if anyone in our congregation had ever done that to him, he gave me a kind of eye rolling “yes” which I understood as “way too often.” My Congregation Kol Ami, whom I love, let’s stop doing that to Isaac and to anyone who walks in our door expecting to be included as the Jews they are. We are better than that.
Isaac’s words woke us up to what we can be doing better as a community, how we can be more inclusive as a people. Then Zachary B spoke about how
The Prez Says....(continued from page 2)
As I conclude this installment, on behalf of myself and the Board, I want to thank everyone who planned, participated, attended and contributed to our Gala. It was a huge success and we appreciate your support. Because of you, we are the number one Reform Jewish synagogue in Southwest Washington.
Larry H
important it is that we understand our congregation, our community as a tapestry. Each of us is a different colored thread and each of us is woven into the tapestry in a different pattern and how all our colors and our patterns need to come together to create something beautiful. He spoke about how important it is that we honor and respect each other and the different gifts that we each bring to Kol Ami. Both boys spoke so beautifully on their own, but together it made for a very, very special morning.
Last year we did something new, we had a Pride Shabbat weekend which included our participation in the Portland Pride March. While it was the first time our congregation took part as an organization, the other Portland congregations have been doing it for years, and really I’m sorry it took us so long to get involved. Last year the Federation jumped in by signing up the entire Jewish community and giving us the perfect opportunity to join with other Jews in clearly declaring our love and support of the right for everyone to love who they love. Last year our Pride Shabbat pot luck (rainbow food) service was packed with about 70 people, and we had 40 people marching with us that Sunday morning.
So, my friends, we are doing it again. Friday night, June 15th at 6:00 we will once again support each other and celebrate our various sexual orientations and gender identities, remembering that each one of us is created in the image of God and each one of us is worthy of blessing. And then on Sunday morning, June 17th we will once again march as a community. On a sad note for me, my family booked vacation time before we realized the date of the march, so while I will be at Friday evening services, I am very sorry I will not be at the march that Sunday morning. Our wonderful KAST advisor Emily B, however, will definitely be there to help gather our group together and help lead our march that morning. Information on time and place is not yet available, but as soon as it’s known it will be up on jewishportland.org/pride.
We pride ourselves on being a welcoming and inclusive community, and I think on the whole we are living up to that idea of ourselves. But sometimes it’s good to get a little reminder that we can do better, we can love each other more, we can be kinder to each other, and we can be more accepting of the things that make us different. We can be better—we can do more than just accept our differences, we can encourage and celebrate them; let’s aim for more of that.
Congregation Kol Ami
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