By David Chesanow, JTNews Correspondent
For Temple Beth Hatfiloh in Olympia, the High Holidays will be extra special this fall: after going for a year without one, Washington State’s only Reconstructionist congregation again has a full-time rabbi.
Rabbi Seth Goldstein, 30, who assumed the pulpit on July 1, has been described as warm and outgoing, learned and professional — and with a sense of humor to boot.
A native of Pomona, NY, and the son of an attorney and a teacher in the New York City school system, Goldstein grew up in the Conservative movement. He is married to Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg, the daughter of a former Eugene, Ore., Reform rabbi. Both Goldstein and Kinberg — who is currently working at Temple B’nai Torah in Bellevue — were ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Penn., outside Philadelphia. They have a two-year-old son, Ozi-Shalom.
Goldstein attended Wesleyan University, where he majored in political science. After college, he worked in Austin, Tex., for an agency that supports the Texas state legislature, later interned at Tikkun magazine, then worked for a trade newspaper in the meetings and conventions industry.
Although Goldstein had attended religious school as a child, he did not take any Jewish classes in college. However, he said, “I always thought I’d like to pursue Jewish studies on a more formal basis.”
As a result, he attended the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where received his Master’s degree. Then he evaluated what he truly wanted to be doing.
“I love Jewish studies” he recalled, but “I love Jews, too, and I really wanted to work with Jewish community and not just study Judaism but live in it —be with people during their life cycle events, their births and Bar Mitzvahs and marriages, and be able to be a part of that and to help people create meaningful Jewish lives.”
After Temple Beth Hatfiloh’s longtime rabbi, Marna Sapsowitz, left the congregation at the end of June 2002, the congregation invited students preparing to graduate from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College to visit Olympia and conduct Shabbatons; Goldstein was asked to lead both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services.
“People were just so impressed with Seth,” former temple president Tikva Breuer recalled. “It’s not very easy walking in at High Holidays — that’s a high-pressure situation — but he just did it with such poise, and the High Holidays were so special.”
Breuer noted that although all the student rabbis “were wonderful in their own way, Seth was the one person who had positive reviews from everyone.…So it was amazing that he agreed to be our rabbi, and it does feel like an incredible blessing.”
As for Goldstein, he found himself “impressed by the community, by the involvement of the laity, by the dedication people had to the synagogue.
“I was just tremendously impressed at the level people had [reached] in terms of their knowledge and their desire to learn more…and the fact that they went through this whole year without a rabbi and [yet] maintained the programming and the school and the services. I think it’s a great testament to this community.”
He also expressed his admiration for Beit Sefer principal Amy Loewenthal, who served as interim ritual leader while the synagogue conducted its search for a new rabbi.
Rabbi Goldstein also gave his impressions of Olympia and the congregation.
“I’m from New York and from Philadelphia,” he said. “There’s a synagogue on every corner, and here you don’t have that. So I think that people are really drawn to the people who are Jewish and want to have that connection, because there aren’t as many Jewish institutions.” He added that he’s excited about the diversity of the backgrounds and approaches of the members of the community.
Sam Schrager, ritual committee chairman and a member of the search committee, said that the congregation was ready for a new rabbi, and that Goldstein was the right rabbi for the congregation at this important point in its history.
Schrager described Goldstein as “very learned” and observed that he “has a passionate love of Torah.…Not only does he have this grounding in Jewish tradition and a great concern about religion, but he’s interested in all aspects of community life: He has a strong background in political thought, and he’s very practical in thinking in terms of governance of the Jewish community.
Temple president Bernie Friedman was just as excited about the temple’s new leader.
“We have a weekly meeting and we get to socialize as well as talk about business,” he said. “I just find [Goldstein] mature beyond his years, humorous more than I would expect, and very caring about the congregation as a whole.”
Added Schrager: “He’s a very fine person: He knows how to listen, he reaches out—just a real mensch.”