Jewish congregation welcomes new rabbi

Rabbi Elizabeth Dunsker, left, leads the congregation in song along with Cantor Jaime Shpall. (Photos for The Columbian by Vivian Johnson)

Rabbi Elizabeth Dunsker accepts gifts of books for the temple library from the youth in the congregation during her installation at Congregation Kol Ami on Friday evening.

Congregation Kol Ami might just have been the warmest place in Clark County on Friday night.

Snow was falling and the temperature with it. But more than 100 people braved the chill, slippery night to sing, pray and celebrate the installation of a new rabbi for Southwest Washington’s reform Jewish organization.

“The hardy are here,” Elizabeth Dunsker welcomed them.

Rabbi Dunsker beamed her way through the two-hour ceremony, swaying as she sang in confident tones alongside her college buddy, Jaime Shpall, who is now cantor at a temple in Scottsdale, Ariz., and who came to play guitar, sing and emcee the proceedings.

Shpall described Dunsker as “a real mensch,” which, she said, is the highest possible praise in the Hebrew language. According to Webster’s, a mensch is a “decent, upright, mature, and responsible person.”

The installation took place below the swooshing ceiling of the First Congregational United Church of Christ on Northeast 68th Street in Hazel Dell. That’s where Congregation Kol Ami meets for its biggest events — Hanukkah festivities, bar and bat mitzvahs and New Year celebrations. (A Christmas tree on stage was screened from view.) Other than that, the group meets in a remodeled warehouse/office behind the Fred Meyer store in Salmon Creek.

Congregation Kol Ami is just that: a group, not a place — yet. But that’s part of what the group was celebrating Friday: plans to build the congregation its own permanent home.

“Having a physical presence is a huge statement,” Dunsker said. “It’ll bring people out.”

Doug Green, congregation president, said the group has voted to proceed with a building and is busy fundraising and looking at real estate. Within three years, he said, Congregation Kol Ami hopes to be in its own environmentally friendly synagogue that reflects the group’s values: community and learning.

“This is a lot of people’s extended family,” he said. “A lot came from the East Coast or the South or California. So the social aspect is huge.”

Once the synagogue is built, he said, many Clark County Jews who head over the Columbian River to synagogues in Portland will find a new spiritual home here.

Right now there are 113 families totaling just under 300 members of Kol Ami, Green said.

“We expect the congregation to grow,” he said.

There were prayers and blessings for the living and the dead, candles lit and chants repeated. Much of the ceremony was conducted in song, with Shpall’s clear high vibrato blending nicely with Dunsker’s lower, earthier voice.

The installation ritual was both deeply serious and disarmingly informal — with jokes cracked, hugs exchanged, and a noisy toddler or two wandering the aisles, raising only smiles.

“Oy! Those dimples!” Shpall said of her old friend.

She noted the awkward term “installation” and got busy thumbing through what she said was a rabbi-installation manual.

And the vivacious Dunsker herself interrupted the proceedings to ask her new friends: “What wonderful things are happening this week?”

Somebody who’d been ill was welcomed back; a family member who was traveling through the tough weather was remembered; and somebody said: “We have an installation!”

“Whoo-hoo!” Dunsker responded with typical enthusiasm. Then she added to the growing list of good things: “Snow! It’s fun. It’s good. It’s different to have snow here.”

During an interview before the ceremony, Dunsker, 40, said our area’s typical gray skies and lots of drizzle are no problem for her — nor is the snow.

“I learned to drive in the snow,” said the Rochester, N.Y., native.

She was 16, she said, and attending a Jewish summer camp when a rabbi named Elyse Goldstein met with the kids there.

“She was the most impressive person I ever met. She was brilliant,” Dunsker said.

The best part, she said, was that Goldstein met the kids eyeball to eyeball.

“Nobody takes 16-year-olds seriously,” Dunsker said. “She took us completely seriously. I thought, I want to be just like her and I want to know what she knows.”

Dunsker went to Simmons College in Boston, where she double-majored in sociology and women’s studies and minored in English. Then it was rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion — one year in Jerusalem and four years in New York City.

Then she took a job as an assistant rabbi in Austin, Texas, where she spent seven years and met husband Jeff, a computer consultant. (They have two children, Zachary, 4, and Sadie, 2.) After that it was a brief stint in Suffern, N.Y., until her faltering congregation merged with another one.

She visited several congregations with her family, she said, and none clicked the way Congregation Kol Ami did.

“I wanted a congregation that was small enough to know everyone and stable enough to succeed in the long term,” she said. “People here are looking for connections.”

Plus, she said, there’s the unbeatable cultural life, environmental sensitivity and relaxed way of life in the Vancouver-Portland metropolitan area.

And what will Dunsker bring to Congregation Kol Ami? She returns to the life-changing gift she got from Rabbi Goldstein.

“I think I take people seriously and they know it,” she said. “I love them for what’s special about them. I think I’m great at spreading a lot of energy and enthusiasm. I think I spread love.”

Also, she added, she loves to sing.

“I wish I played guitar, like Jaime,” she said. “It’s one of my life’s goals to learn. But I do sing enough to lead people. If people are singing with me, we’ll get there.”

Scott Hewitt: 360-735-4529 or scott.hewitt@columbian.com.