New rabbi in Middletown

Marshall Weiss

The Dayton Jewish Observer

Rabbi Kari Hofmaister’s path toward Judaism started in church.

At 14, she got into a theological argument with her pastor.

“He didn’t take it seriously,” she says. “In the process of confirmation it was a process of de-affirmation because I felt I wasn’t being heard, that there wasn’t a place for me. So it tells you how much pastors and ministers and rabbis have power.”

The new rabbi at Temple Beth Sholom, a Reform congregation in Middletown, Hofmaister says she didn’t really believe in God at that point.

“I believed there was good in the world and positive energy, and there’s orderliness to the universe, but not in the guy on the throne.”

When the Orange County, Calif. native went to Pomona College to study international relations, her boyfriend — who was Jewish — asked her if she had ever considered Judaism.

“When I met him, we started talking about religion and if we got married, what our kids would be.”

They agreed any children would be Jewish, she says, while her 4-year-old son, Benjamin, runs around the couch in her temple office.

“What attracted me to Judaism,” she adds, “particularly Reform Judaism, was it wasn’t dogmatic and there’s a scholarly tradition in it so, if you have an academic bent, you can be taken seriously. You can ask questions and that’s actually considered a positive thing.”

She ultimately entered Judaism by marriage.

“It was a very slow process,” she says. “I’ve talked to other converts and it’s common: you have about a five-year window of, ‘maybe I’ll convert.’”

A year into her marriage, she converted.

“I went in to talk to a rabbi and he said, ‘Well don’t convert on my account. If all you’re trying to do is make me happy, don’t do it. The last thing I need is another disaffected Jew. I need the real thing. And if that’s what you’re here for, by all means.’”

Hofmaister says she and her husband considered Conservative Judaism, but since her mother-in-law was a convert to Reform Judaism, her husband “would have to go through a Halachic conversion to be able to become a full (Conservative) participant and that made him mad.”

She says her family was supportive of her conversion.

“My Dad summed it up best: ‘I’d rather you were a wholehearted Jew than a halfhearted Methodist.’

Hofmaister says that kind of response comes as a surprise to Jews.

“But that is one of the differences I learned when I moved from the dominant culture to a minority culture. As Jews, we swim against a cultural undercurrent, and it takes a lot of effort on our part individually and communally just to stay in one place.”

The light of Judaism truly went on for her the summer after she converted, when she began reading the works of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

“I was thunderstruck. I was seeing in the text a believing, thinking person: someone who was deeply devout and also received scholarly training, had a doctorate. He was able to speak in philosophical terms about the religious experience.”

Hofmaister read almost everything Heschel had written in English within a six-month period.

“This was what I was looking for. This was the answer I needed back when I was a 14-year-old who didn’t get a good answer.

“And it was like: look, it can be done. I’ve encountered a lot of people who say, ‘I’d love to be a believer, but the problem is how?’ It says, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ And it wasn’t seven days, and the dinosaurs happened. And if I had to choose between biblical literalism and scientific rationalism — well this seems naive to me.

“Heschel was somebody who came in who had received the training and could say, ‘This is still a very relevant book. It’s not how it’s written, but what it says.’”

By the summer of 1995, a year after her conversion, she was a senior manager of marketing/communications for a division of Blue Cross in California. This is when she felt the pull.

“I remember hating going to work but being so thrilled I could go to temple, And I do remember one day it just dawned on me: I could be a rabbi.”

Within a year, she applied to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and was accepted.

“So I sold the condo, the BMW, quit the big job.”

Her husband didn’t think it was such a great idea, she recalls, laughing.

“In fact, it’s part of the reason why we’re divorced now. That’s the hard part with life. This is what happens if one person grows in any way and the other person doesn’t want to go there. He was quite comfortable with going on Rosh Hashanah.”

Hofmaister says her ex-husband went on the journey with her for a long way — first for a year in Israel and then to Cincinnati. At one point, she said, he even considered going into the rabbinate himself.

“He made the effort. He really tried to do it, but that’s not where he was.”

Hofmaister received her rabbinic ordination from HUC in 2004; her rabbinic thesis focused on Heschel.

She continues on as a student there, in the Ph.D. Program for Jewish Life.

“I’m getting my Ph.D. because I’d like to get serious about Jewish theology, because I’d like to write books for people like my 14-year-old self. I’d like to make it accessible.”

Making Judaism accessible to her Middletown congregants is also her aim.

“I love this congregation here,” she says. “They’re a great group of people.”

The temple, established in 1903, has approximately 50 membership units.

Hofmaister and Benjamin live in Reading and commute regularly between the HUC campus and Temple Beth Sholom.

The first ordained rabbi at the Middletown congregation in more than a decade, she also supervises the religious school.

She says her biggest challenge at Temple Beth Sholom is “making Jewish life real here.”

“You really do have to make an effort to be Jewish here. But having gone through my own kind of struggle to get here, I can respect that.”

For those who want to get a taste of her passion, Hofmaister is teaching a course about Heschel this fall in Dayton for adults, as part of the Garlikov Institute for Graduate Studies.

The class is held on Mondays from 6:30-7:30 p.m. through Dec. 19 at the Jewish Federation’s downtown offices.

© 2005 The Dayton Jewish Observer