Poway, CA (special) -- When Rabbi Deborah Prinz graduated in 1978 from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, she was only the fourth woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the Reform movement. Today, the spiritual leader of Temple Adat Shalom in Poway, Prinz and her congregation make certain that doors also are opened wide to others. 

The Reform congregation was founded in 1974. It has nearly doubled to 700 families since Prinz took over as rabbi in 1988.  Under her leadership, Temple Adat Shalom stresses outreach to intermarried couples, social action programs, dialogues with other streams of Judaism, and cooperative programming with neighboring Christian churches of San Diego County.   "The congregation is extremely active and we try to engage as many people as we possibly can, and as

RABBI DEBORAH PRINZ -Opening doors wide at Temple Adat Shalom in Poway

often as we possibly can, in doing some sort of mitzvah or some sort of Jewish activity such as study, social action or services," Prinz said during a recent interview. 

 "We have a great family program and a kinder-Shabbat service (for kindergartners), and I also put a lot of emphasis on pastoral work." 

Prinz's parents, Ray and Helen Prinz--who were refugees from nazi Germany--emphasized yiddishkeit in their Conservative home in the Los Angeles area. As a family, they celebrated the hagim (Jewish holidays), and went regularly to Shabbat services. Prinz attended Camp Ramah as a teenager, and as part of her UCLA program did a year of study abroad at  Tel Aviv University. She had anticipated a career as a Jewish educator. 

After graduating from UCLA in 1972, Prinz enrolled at Hebrew Union College's campus in Los Angeles -- attracted by the school's educational program. During that year, Rabbi Sally Priesand was ordained by the Reform movement, and up to then "I had no clue that I could be a rabbi," Prinz recalled. "I looked around at the rabbinic students--the males--and I said, 'Gee, they are studying text, how exciting!' and 'Gee, they go to Israel, how wonderful!' and I thought if Sally can do it, and if they can do it, maybe I can do it. So I switched from the education program to the rabbinic program." 

She subsequently married a rabbinic classmate, Mark Hurvitz, who today serves as a part-time rabbi at Congregation Etz Chaim and who derives his main source of income from the computer world. The couple has two children: Avigail, 15, and Noam, who is soon to become a bar mitzvah. 

Prinz's first assignment as a member of the clergy was to the Central Synagogue in New York City, where she served as an assistant rabbi under Rabbi Shelly Zimmerman, today the president of Hebrew Union College. Zimmerman was a guest speaker at Temple Adat Shalom earlier this year when the congregation celebrated Prinz's completion of ten years in that pulpit. 

Her second assignment was as the only rabbi at Congregation Beth Am in Teaneck, an "intense Jewish community" on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. There her congregation "was involved in a dialogue with the Orthodox congregations and we also were involved in a dialogue with the Episcopal Church," Prinz recalled. So friendly did the congregations become that "the priest at that church and I co-led a trip to Israel. Our congregants went with us, and we had a lot of back and forth conversations. ...So we had both the Orthodox and Christian dialogues going on at the same time." 

Her third and current congregation, Temple Adat Shalom, began looking for a new rabbi after its first full time spiritual leader, Rabbi Sheldon Moss, decided to devote his energies to Beyond War, an international peace group. After having met in neighboring churches for years, the congregation temporarily was lodged in trailers at its present site at 15905 Pomerado Road. "Within my first five or six months, we moved into this new building," Prinz recalled. 

Prior to Prinz' arrival, Moss and Cantor Lori Wilinsky Frank had begun combining the names of the four matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel) with those of the three patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) into the regular prayers. 

"We went through a process to educate the congregation about why it was important and how the melody would be similar to the melody they already used," Prinz recalled. However, at first the congregation "didn't seem to be responding--not singing along. I suggested to the religious committee and to Cantor Frank that perhaps there were too many changes; they weren't quite ready for it yet. With the presence of a female cantor on the bima and now a new rabbi on the bima, maybe they just needed to be comfortable with the familiar tradition for a while. Later on, we reintroduced Avot v'Imahot (prayer recalling the fathers and the mothers)." 

For the last six years, not only the rabbi and the cantor have been women, but Gail Littman has been the president of Temple Adat Shalom. One male among the leadership is Rabbi Frank Stern, who as a part-time, assistant rabbi, focuses in such areas as outreach, adult education, assisting chavurot (friendship groups), and visitations to house-bound seniors. 

Remembering the times when women in religious life were confined to such roles as sisterhood president or educational director, Prinz reflected: "I think to exclude the talents and the insights and energies of 50 percent of our population, or more, would be kind of a loss for the community." 

With women serving as rabbis and cantors, the Reform movement has responded with "greater sensitivity to language in prayer," she added. "Every publication from the CCAR (Central Conference of American Rabbis) now is a gender-sensitive publication, and there is more awareness about rituals for girls and for women -- from namings to divorce rituals to blessings for menopause and menstruation." 

Rabbi Prinz innovated a change in Temple Adat Shalom's bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies to enable non-Jewish parents and grandparents to play a larger role. Previously, the symbolic passing of the Torah from generation to generation was done strictly through those members of the family who were Jewish. 

However, "I did some research and we did a lot of education of the congregation, suggesting to everybody that there is no impurity that imparts from a non-Jew to a Torah scroll; there is no impurity that imparts to a Torah scroll at all. 

"So we recognize in our congregation that a lot of our children come to their education because a non-Jewish parent along with a Jewish parent (or grandparent) probably brought these children to this occasion. At least they supported them in some measure, by paying tuition, or driving them, or by allowing them to spend time at the temple. In any number of ways, at any number of levels, they support them, and the Torah-passing, if the non-Jewish family member feels comfortable, should be available to them. So we introduced that." 

However, only Jewish members of the family recite the blessings over the Torah or over the preceding evening's lighting of Shabbat candles. 

Prinz declines to perform a mixed marriage "because I don't want to give Jewish community imprimatur to this process that really might remove people or children from Judaism or the Jewish community." 

However, she said "I recognize the reality of mixed marriage and the reality that a lot of people who choose to marry someone who is not Jewish nevertheless feel a connection to Judaism and to the Jewish community and want to be part of it and want to raise their children as Jews in many cases." 

Accordingly, the temple reaches out to mixed marriage families. "We hosted the first Pathways to Judaism program; it was here for two years," Prinz said. Similarly, "Taste of Judaism was here the first time, the first round. We are proud of that commitment we have." 

Social action programming is also important to Prinz, who said "in my first year or so, maybe there was a committee of two people , and that grew. 

"It is a pretty active committee now. We are going to have (San Diego School Superintendent) Alan Bersin here for a social action Shabbat in a few weeks, .... they have done blood drives; they go to St. Vincent de Paul (a center for the homeless) They do things for the Crisis Center."
A brochure encourages Temple members to participate in any of 18- chai-- ongoing mitzvah projects ranging from volunteering at the Temple's bingo games to mentoring unwed mothers through a Jewish Family Service program. Other programs include participating in a winter drive for blankets and sweaters, volunteering for the local AIDS project, and nurturing and protecting animals at the Escondido Humane Society. 

Following the pattern that she established in New Jersey, Prinz engages in dialogue with the leadership of other Jewish congregations. In the Poway and Rancho Bernardo area, these include Ner Tamid Synagogue (Conservative) and Chabad at Poway (Orthodox). 

As a member and past president of the San Diego Rabbinical Association, Prinz has frequent opportunities to interact with Ner Tamid's Rabbi Aaron Gold and other non-Orthodox rabbis who are members. 

Meeting with Orthodox rabbis, who are not SDRA members, is a less frequent occurrence. But Prinz and Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, spiritual leader of Chabad at Poway, have back-to-back lectures planned at each other's synagogues to acquaint their memberships with the tenets of their respective branches. 

Prinz will lecture at Chabad of Poway on Sunday evening, April 11, and Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein will offer a return lecture the following evening at Adat Shalom. 

"I will talk about Reform Judaism and inform them about Reform Judaism and answer any questions they might have and hear what their concerns might be over there; and he'll come here and he will share about Chabad with my congregation," Prinz said. 

Relations with non-Jewish religious groups also are important to Temple Adat Shalom, said Prinz. 
"I participate in the Clergy Council," she said. "We have hosted the Interfaith Thanksgiving service. We've had a dialogue with the local Lutheran church. They used to house us. In fact we were guests of several of the local churches until we bought this facility, so over the years we have cherished that hospitality and cherished those relationships. 

"When our graffiti incident occurred (last Dec. 28, when nazi vandals painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on the outside walls and windows), we received very lovely notes and calls from my Christian colleagues as well as my Jewish colleagues in the area, and donations in fact from several of the churches to our security fund which of course was very gratifying to us," Prinz said. 

During the upcoming Passover holiday, "one of the local churches- St. Gabriel's Catholic Church--is running a seder and they consulted with me," the rabbi said. "I gave them some materials. One of our congregants is going to be helping them to conduct their seder. 
"Of course, it has no Christian or Christological elements to the seder. They apparently have something like 250 people attending the seder and 100 people on the waiting list. That is a nice example of the kind of cooperation and exchange that we have. We had several inquiries for example about other churches about doing something similar for them." 

Although none is planned this year, Prinz said, "several years ago we hosted a model seder which we opened up to the faith community in North County-Inland."Our adult education committee put together all this wonderful food; we had a full social hall and representation from all the local churches, and Cantor Frank and I led the seder," the rabbi related. 

"It served to really educate the community and to bring the community together around something that we share -- obviously they (Christians) go off in a different place (remembering the Passover seder as the "Last Supper" for Jesus) and we stay with Passover, but it does provide that connection."
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Adjacent to Temple Adat Shalom is a vacant piece of land which has been earmarked for the burgeoning congregation's expansion. Currently the Temple's Mossad Shalom (Foundation of Peace) religious school is on a double session because 12 classrooms--also used for pre-school and daycare--no longer can handle the population. 

Recently Rabbi Erwin Herman, who has been the custodian of the remarkable Yanov Torah, decided that it should be put on permanent display at Temple Adat Shalom.It will be housed in one of the classrooms which doubles as the Klotz Peace Chapel, which was named Friday, March 19, for founding member Alex Klotz who had urged a place be created in the Temple complex for meditation. 

The Yanov Torah was assembled after World War II from smuggled Torah fragments that had sustained Jewish religious life inside a nazi work camp near Lvov, Poland.
So, the school complex--like the rest of the Temple--is a place where the older and younger generations have the opportunity to meet. 

"Fifty percent of our congregation approximately is over the age of 50 and 50 percent of the congregation approximately is under the age of 50," Prinz said. 

"We have a really wonderful balance in the congregation and we are able to derive the benefit of having all of these age groups represented and programs for all of these age groups. 

"And we are a very warm, wonderful, welcoming congregation."