Peter Kleinbard had known Ellen Lippmann well before Kolot.  They worked together at a national organization devoted to helping young people assume more active roles in their communities. Years later, as Ellen began pulling people together to plan what was to become Kolot, Peter, a near neighbor in Brooklyn, was delighted to join the conversations. His family was growing at the time with two young children, Kai and Leily, now 38 and 34 respectively. He had learned to know several congregations in Brooklyn, but hadn’t found a comfortable fit. Kolot was a good fit because of its responsiveness to people like him who have limited Jewish education and limited knowledge of practice, while at the same time, delving deeply into Jewish beliefs, texts and practice. Kolot’s education program opened in Peter’s basement, and his two children were among the first students; Kai its first Bar Mitzvah. Today, many years later, Peter’s primary involvement is with the Torah Study Group. It’s a happy match for his academic background and enjoyment of literature. Peter is impressed with how well Kolot, has maintained its founding vision, especially its welcoming culture, and flexibility about participants’ financial contributions while adding members and programs. Often, maintaining core beliefs is a challenge for small institutions as they grow. Three words he would use to describe himself are “early proud participant.”

In this conversation, Peter Kleinbard recounts his participation in Kolot’s founding. His involvement grew out of his long prior relationship with Ellen Lippmann. He was seeking a congregation to provide a Jewish education for his children, and a community in which he could participate. He had explored other congregations in Brooklyn, and found the openness, freshness and broad participation in Ellen’s approach far more to his liking. While Peter did not consider himself a very religious person, he had a strong identity as a Jew. Both his parents had taken pleasure in celebrating religious holidays and in weekly Shabbat prayer and candle-lighting. Connecting his faith to his childhood education at Germantown Friends, the interview offers an insight into how different faiths can collaborate to deepen spiritual understanding. He finishes by detailing his extended family’s connection to many disparate Jewish identities, giving the listener a sense that Peter’s personal journey of working to discover his complex connections to Jewish identity is reflected in the lives of those around him.

“A caring community:” Peter Kleinbard describes Rabbi Ellen Lippmann’s influence on creating a community at Kolot that attempts to welcome and celebrate folks in the wholeness of their being.

A “Sense of being connected as a human being:” Peter Kleinbard entwines his own Jewish upbringing and his Quaker school’s influences to express his own relationship to his relationship to the sacred. Implicitly, Peter may also be speaking to Kolot’s ability to create community amongst people with many different relationships to divinity.

Establishing Kolot Chayeinu: Peter Kleinbard, after sharing his recollections of the famed ‘kitchen table’ origin story, dives deeper into the joy and struggles experienced by a young Kolot community that was seeking to change things up and co-create a Jewish community with novel ideas and practices.