(RNS) — With two new congregations led by and for African American and Caribbean Jews, Washington, D.C. is emerging as a center of Black Jewish life in the United States.
Ohel Eidot Chemdat’a (“Tent of the Precious Congregations”), or OEC for short, will hold its first Shabbat evening service in a rented building in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., on March 20. The group’s founder, Rabbi Shais Rishon, will lead the service.
“Every other Jewish ethnicity or culture gets to have its own space,” Rishon, a prolific writer and speaker who is best known in the Jewish world by his pen name, MaNishtana, said in an interview. “You have Ashkenazi shuls (synagogues), Sephardi, Persian, Syrian, Russian, Bukharian, Egyptian, Moroccan. It’s about time we stopped being guests in other people’s houses.”
OEC is the second Black-led Jewish congregation to launch in D.C. in the past six months. Kehillat Sankofa held High Holiday services last fall at a private D.C. home. Rabbi Koach Baruch Frazier formed the community in part because he had trouble finding a pulpit position after graduating from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2024.
“There didn’t seem to be a place that could accept me as a leader,” said Frazier, who is trans and the founder of the Black Trans Torah Club.
At the same time, Frazier was hearing from other Black Jews in the Washington area that they longed for a congregation “that puts them at the center, as opposed to one that just says, ‘You’re welcome to come here.’”
The two new start-ups are part of an ongoing American Jewish tradition of prayer circles and fellowship groups formed to meet the needs of particular affinity groups, be they LGBTQ+ groups or anti-Zionists.
A 2020 Pew Research Center survey suggested 1% of U.S. Jewish adults are Black. Other sources, including the Berkeley-based Jews of Color Initiative, suggest at least 12-15% — or over 1,000,000 US residents — are Jews of color.
Jews of color continue to face barriers to full inclusion in the Jewish community. Fifty-four percent of them have experienced racial discrimination in congregational settings, according to a 2021 survey by the Jews of Color Initiative. Black Jews in particular have reported feeling more marginalized since Oct. 7, 2023, when the Israel-Hamas war started.
While Kehillat Sankofa and OEC cater to Black Jews, the congregations are distinct in ways that reflect the backgrounds of their founders.
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Rishon, 44, grew up in Brooklyn and was ordained by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. OEC will be Modern Orthodox in style, with separate seating for men and women, and kosher food. Shabbat services will reflect a blend of influences.
“There will also be things that are unique to African American Jews,” Rishon said, such as the singing of a Hebrew version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often referred to as the Black National Anthem.
Frazier, 48, grew up in an African Methodist Episcopal home in Kansas City, Missouri, but said he has Jewish roots in Africa. He described Kehillat Sankofa as interdenominational, with mixed seating and a major musical component. Frazier plays the djembe, a West African drum, and uses original liturgical melodies that he and other Black Jews have written.
“Kehillah” means “community” in Hebrew, and “Sankofa” is an Akan word meaning “go back and get.” Kehillat Sankofa’s logo includes the “sankofa bird” symbol, which represents learning from the past to move forward.
He stressed that OEC and Kehillat Sankofa are not in competition with each other. “We know sometimes people’s practices change over time, so I’m glad there will be multiple places for folks to go,” he said.
There are a number of synagogues with majority Black memberships in the United States, including Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, Congregation Temple Beth’El in Philadelphia and Beth Shalom Hebrew Congregation in Brooklyn. Many of these communities have roots in the Hebrew Israelite spiritual movement, which arose in the 19th-century American South.
Rishon and Frazier differ in their attitudes toward Hebrew Israelites, Black Americans and other people of color who claim descent from the 12 tribes of Israel. Rishon does not consider them to be part of mainstream Judaism because, as he writes on the OEC website, they “do not meet the established criteria — such as matrilineal or patrilineal descent or formal conversion — that are used to identify someone as Jewish.”
Frazier, on the other hand, welcomes all people who identify as Jews, Israelites or Hebrews to participate in Kehillat Sankofa events. “We’re not making distinctions because we believe that we are all family,” he said. “We don’t all have to agree about Jewish law or how we say the prayers, but what we can agree about is our belief in Yah (God).”
Both rabbis said their communities would be open to non-Black Jews, too.
Kehillat Sankofa and OEC represent “new sorts of Jewish beginnings” at a time when long-established synagogues are closing across the country, said Alanna Cooper, a religious studies professor at Case Western Reserve University.
The number of synagogues in the U.S. has declined by about 20 percent since 1990, Cooper’s research reveals. “Institutional arrangements have simply run their course, with younger generations looking to fulfill their religious and spiritual needs in new ways,” explained Cooper, the author of the forthcoming book “Disposing of the Sacred: American Jewish Congregations in the 21st Century.”
Since announcing the launch of OEC earlier this month, Rishon has raised more than $3,000 through a GoFundMe campaign. He is looking to acquire prayer books and ritual objects, rent a Torah scroll and pay for two security guards, among other expenses. Over the past few years, some Black Jews have raised concerns about racial profiling by guards at majority-white synagogues. Rishon said the dynamic at OEC will be fundamentally different because Black Jews will be the norm, not the exception.
At first the congregation will host once-a-month Shabbat services, along with holiday gatherings. Rishon, who earlier this month was featured on the PBS series “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History,” also plans to offer online Jewish literacy classes.
Kehillat Sankofa is being built slowly as Frazier juggles other freelance jobs. The next event will be a Passover cookout in the spring. Frazier expects Black Jews from around the country to travel to D.C. for the celebration, which will include the roasting of a lamb in commemoration of the Passover sacrifice.
Deitra Reiser attended Kehillat Sankofa’s Rosh Hashanah services with her ex-husband and their two teenage daughters. Frazier co-led the services with Shoshana Akua Brown, an educator and “kohenet,” or Hebrew priestess.
“It was really good to be in a multiracial, Black-affirming space,” said Reiser, who lives in D.C. and sits on the JOCI board. She added that the service was “very different” from what her mixed-race daughters were accustomed to.
“They grew up in a very traditional, predominantly white Ashkenazi Reform synagogue,” she said. “I’m excited for my kids to have this space and look forward to seeing what we can build.”
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