Diana Brement, Jewish Sound Correspondent
“We have been back all of three weeks,” said Rabbi Paul Strasko when we spoke last week. The newly appointed rabbi of north Kitsap’s Congregation Kol Shalom, located on Bainbridge Island, and his wife, Sandra Andrews-Strasko, have returned to the Northwest after living in Europe and Israel for the past eight years.
The Montana native took on rabbinical studies as a third career, after studying music performance and composition, and then working in technology. Moving to Seattle in 2002, he became active as a lay service leader at Temple Beth Am and decided to become a rabbi. He studied at Abraham Geiger Kolleg in Berlin and Potsdam, Germany, as well as in Jerusalem at the Steinsaltz Institute and Hebrew Union College.
Strasko then had three posts in Europe, as student rabbi in Dusseldorf, an assistant rabbi in Geneva (requiring him to learn to speak French in three months) and finally as the community rabbi in Duisberg, Germany for the past two years.
As the sole rabbi for a community of 2,700, Strasko learned a tremendous amount, but was also required to be rabbi, cantor and religious education director, often working 80 hours a week. Despite the number of Jews, participation was low and the community, consisting largely of elderly refugees from the former Soviet Union, was rife with ethnic and nationalistic conflict.
“I once had to break up a fistfight” in synagogue, he said.
“In two years I did 55 funerals,” Strasko added. “The burnout was not sustainable.”
During a Seattle visit last summer, the couple began thinking about new possibilities.
Rabbi David Fine, local director of the Union for Reform Judaism, recommended him to Ira Fielding, president of Kol Shalom, which was actively looking to fill a vacancy created by departing rabbi Mark Glickman. It took a “whirlwind” few weeks to hire Strasko.
“It is a healthy spiritual community,” Strasko said. While the congregation is affiliated with the Reform movement, many congregants come from a Conservative background, which fits what Strasko calls his “post-denominational” style. For a new rabbi, “They’ve given me amazing flexibility,” he said.
His to-do list for Kol Shalom includes “leading high quality services” with the help of their cantorial soloist and student rabbi and developing strong youth and adult education. He calls his approach “inreach,” working to develop programs aimed toward the congregation’s 67 families. Some growth may come that way, he said. “I think we could become a 100-family congregation.”
Attracting membership is a challenge in an area known to have the lowest levels of religious affiliation in the country.
“We are competing with Mt. Rainier and the Olympics,” he says, but “a good synagogue” provides “relief from the relentless intrusion of social media into our lives.”
Strasko is grateful that his position is part-time, as he is writing a book and finishing his dissertation. “The Evolution and Transformation of a Law: Speaking with the Dead in Torah Through the 20th Century” is an examination of the changing views and treatment of magic in Judaism through varying ages and cultural contexts.
Congregation president Fielding calls Strasko an “amazing man with remarkable experience, who is ordained as both a rabbi and cantor.” His arrival has created “a kind of excitement and energy that has galvanized the community.” Fielding cites Strasko’s scholarship and education, his five languages and his musical background, calling him “a perfect complement to our current cantorial soloist.”
Fielding adds that a congregant expressed what they all feel: “Wow. In Kitsap County do we have a rabbi!”