Kol Ami is special. Thank you for making my rabbi dreams a congregational reality!

Dear Kol Ami Community,

This new fiscal year marks my 13th year serving as rabbi of Kol Ami.

It is also the final year of my current contract with the congregation, and as we prepare for our Annual Meeting and begin thinking together about the future of our community, I have found myself reflecting deeply on the kind of Jewish life we are trying to build together and the values that continue to guide my rabbinate.

This year I am entering my 23rd year as a rabbi.

In two years, my rabbinical school will award me an honorary doctorate in recognition of 25 years of service to the Jewish people. That milestone hacaused me to think back to the hopes and commitments I carried with me leaving rabbinical school and how they continue to shape my work today.

When I became a rabbi, I had two central goals.

The first was to help make Jewish institutions less institutional and more Jewish.

Not less organized or less responsible, but more rooted in Jewish values:

hesed, compassion

kehillah, community

tzedek, justice

human dignity

care for the vulnerable

shared responsibility

learning

rest

repair

and covenant.

I wanted Jewish organizations to feel less transactional and more relational. Less performative and more humane. Less about maintaining structures for their own sake and more about creating sacred communities where people could genuinely encounter Torah, meaning, care, and one another.

My second goal was to help shift the center of Jewish communal life toward those who have historically stood at the margins.

Toward:

people with disabilities

interfaith families

Jews by choice

LGBTQ Jews

divorced people

poor people

widows and orphans

people struggling with mental illness

those carrying grief or shame

and, in the language of Torah, our sibling who has encountered a stumbling block.

Not because these people matter more than anyone else.

But because Jewish communities, like all human communities, naturally drift toward centering those already comfortable. Torah repeatedly interrupts that drift. Again and again, our tradition calls us back toward the vulnerable, the overlooked, the lonely, the outsider, and the stranger.

Recently, someone shared feedback with me that Kol Ami has become “too inclusive.”

I have sat with those words seriously.

And my answer is this:

if by “too inclusive” people mean that we have worked hard to widen the circle of belonging in Jewish life, then yes, that has absolutely been part of my rabbinate and part of my vision for Kol Ami.

Not perfectly.

Not without mistakes.

Not without tension.

Not without grief or growing pains.

But intentionally.

I know this vision will not necessarily make Kol Ami the biggest congregation in the region. It may not make us the wealthiest either.

Building a community centered on human dignity, accessibility, relationship, vulnerability, and shared responsibility is slower and harder work than building institutions centered primarily around prestige, certainty, or scale.

But I believe deeply that this work matters.

I believe Jewish life is strongest when more people can enter it fully without hiding who they are.

I believe communities rooted in compassion and courage change lives.

And I believe that those of us who dedicate ourselves to this sacred work should be able, at the end of our lives, to lay our heads down knowing:

we tried to do good

we helped people carry unbearable moments

we celebrated joy

we comforted grief

we upheld Jewish values

we widened the circle

and we served the Jewish people with integrity.

I still have a good bat mitzvah lifetime, 12-13 years,  left in me as a congregational rabbi.

I still want to teach Torah.

To build Jewish life.

To mourn and celebrate with people.

To walk with families through birth, illness, weddings, divorce, death, and everything in between.

To create communities where people feel less alone.

To continue helping shape Jewish institutions worthy of the values they teach.

That remains my calling.

And now I want to ask something of you.

If this vision of Jewish life speaks to you, I ask you not simply to admire it from a distance, but to help build it.

We need:

your presence

your financial support

your volunteer energy

your leadership

your ideas

your patience

your relationships

your courage

and your commitment to one another.

Communities like Kol Ami do not survive because of one rabbi, one donor, one board, or one family.

They survive because ordinary people continue choosing each other again and again.

As we prepare for our Annual Meeting and for the next chapter of Kol Ami’s life, I ask you to help us continue building a Jewish community rooted in Torah, compassion, dignity, belonging, and hope.

There is still sacred work to do.

And I believe deeply that our best years can still be ahead of us.

With gratitude and hope,

Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg