tool name

Saturday, Sep. 26, 2009

Journey Leads to Lexington

Moshe Smolkin used to dress only in black and white, and that's how he saw the world.

During a spiritual journey in his late teens and early 20s, the 31-year-old subscribed to a strictly orthodox Jewish view of the world that said all Jews should do things in one prescribed way.

Eventually, he found that view difficult to reconcile with the world he saw around him. He didn't quite know how to approach Judaism.

Then, he started teaching math in the Boston public school system.

"I saw multiple approaches by other teachers that reached the same goal," Smolkin says. "That kind of made me rethink my approach to Judaism."

This day, Smolkin is wearing a blue-striped oxford shirt, a blue sweater vest and a yarmulke of navy and powder blue with red, green and white in the design.

And he is no longer teaching math.

Smolkin is the new rabbi at Lexington's Ohavay Zion Synagogue, and he's in the midst of celebrating the High Holy Days for the first time with his new congregation.

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, was sundown Sept. 18 to sundown Sept. 20. Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, is sundown Sunday to sundown Monday.

"Every synagogue and place has their own way of doing things, and I am getting to know how Ohavay Zion celebrates the High Holy Days," Smolkin says in the synagogue's library and conference room. "I'm seeing what they do, and I will probably add a few of my own things here and there."

Being in the South is a bit of a homecoming for Smolkin, who was born in Atlanta and grew up in Houston.

He was raised Jewish, had a bar mitzvah and engaged in other Jewish traditions.

"I had always been asking questions about theology and things like that," Smolkin recalls.

His true loves in school were science and math, so that is where his initial career goals took him.

And Smolkin also went on a spiritual exploration, looking at other religions such as Hinduism and Christianity.

Eventually, he concluded that while looking at everything else, he should take a look at Judaism, which led to that black-and-white period.

"It was a pleasure getting dressed every morning," Smolkin says of that time, laughing. "It was a very binary way of thinking, that everything was the same as it was when it was handed down from Mount Sinai."

Then, he found a new approach.

"A lot of the things in the Bible are poetry, and you cannot interpret poetry literally," Smolkin says. "I learned that in Judaism, the question was not necessarily what does the Bible mean, but what can the Bible mean?

"I started seeing that things were not just black and white."

And he started seeing that his journey was leading him to rabbinical school: the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at American Jewish University in Los Angeles. During his studies, he spent a year in Jerusalem and trained at Mishkon Tephilo a synagogue in Venice, Calif., with a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean.

When it was time to find a pulpit, everything seemed to be pointing south. While he interviewed at one congregation outside London, England, and the rest were in Georgia, Tennessee and Lexington.

Arthur Shechet was president of Ohavay Zion during the search for a replacement for Rabbi Sharon Cohen, who left after nine years, and he says Smolkin's personal journey was appealing to the congregation.

"Everybody's a seeker, and we all have questions we need to keep asking," Shechet says. "Judaism is a religion of asking questions."

He says the congregation has enjoyed Smolkin asking questions in services as he reads from the Torah, a document he shows to a visitor with youthful glee.

"That opens the door for other people to ask questions," Shechet says.

He also says that Smolkin's youth was never a deterrent to hiring him.

"His maturity and wisdom and deep soul go well beyond his chronological years," Shechet says.

For his part, Smolkin and his wife, Talia, found Lexington appealing as a community and a place to raise children.

"There was a certain openness here," he says. "Ohavay Zion is a wonderful and warm community, and Lexington has a great feel as a university town and a community."

Smolkin, who moved to Lexington in June, hopes to grow the Ohavay Zion congregation and reach out to the Lexington community as a whole.

The High Holy Days are a good time to prepare for that, Smolkin says, as they, particularly Yom Kippur, are a time for Jews to atone with one another and God.

"The high holidays remind us we need to work on our families, our relationships, our community and the world," Smolkin says. "It's a time to stop and say, 'What's going on here?' It's a chance to recollect on things and say, 'What have I been doing? What have we been doing? What has the world been doing, and how can we get back on the right path?'"

And for many who will visit Ohavay Zion for the first time in a while during the High Holy Days, it will be a good time to get to know the new rabbi.