Jackson Hole News, August 23, 2000

Jackson Hole Jews get their first rabbi
By Richard Anderson

Jackson Hole's Jewish community has waited a long time for a rabbi of its own.

In Michael Comins, it has finally found one. And not just any rabbi, but a spiritual leader who seems an ideal match for the varied, eclectic Jewish congregation of the valley.

Teton County's Jewish community has been growing as steadily as the rest of the county over the past 10 or 20 years. In the past, holidays and holy days have been observed with potlucks and parties at various folk's homes or with outside assistance from people like Carl Levenson, a professor and lay rabbi from Pocatello for certain rites and rituals. While the arrangement has forged good strong relations with other Jews in the region, according to Bev Halm-Levin, administrator of the valley congregation or Chaverim, the community has reached the point where it wants and needs one leader here in Jackson instead of occasional guests.

"We want the continuity of one person who will help us spiritually really grow as a community," Halm-Levin said.

Since January, the Chaverim has been spreading the word to seminaries and synagogues across the country. But, because the group is not affiliated with any particular sect, finding the right rabbi has been difficult. Plus, Halm-Levin said, "We're a picky community, diverse. We enjoy our kind of lifestyle. You know, at 2:30 on a nice sunny day, you're not going to get many people inside for Torah study group."

Rabbi Comins is likely to prefer the outdoors to the classroom on any given day, too. Even though the 43-year-old grew up in Los Angeles, he has spent a lot of time outside, backpacking in the Sierras, exploring the desert of Israel, losing himself and finding himself in the wilderness.

"I'm an eclectic guy," he said over breakfast at Nora's. "I spent four years in an orthodox yeshiva (Hebrew college) and six weeks in a silent retreat at a Buddhist meditation center. I'm hoping both sides of me will come out here."

Comins almost dismissed the part-time job here. His introduction to the community was serendipitous. Mitch Dann, who led the rabbinical search committee for the Jackson Hole Chaverim, has a brother-in-law, Bill Berkowitz, who went with Comins to Israel when they were both 17. Twenty-five years later, Comins ran into Berkowitz again at a rabbinical convention in Palm Springs and Berkowitz told him about the Jackson community and it needs.

"I had no interest in it," Comins said, but Berkowitz sent him a packet of information anyway. "I read it, and I liked what I read."

Jackson Hole, he quickly discovered, was full of people who loved and respected the natural world the way he did, people who felt a sense spirituality in nature, people who might benefit from a rabbi who could direct that love and spirit for higher purposes.

He visited in May, met with the Chaverim, and was hired in June. The decision was unanimous, a rarity in the group of highly opinionated Jacksonites, Halm-Levin said.

Comins will spend about a week each month in Jackson, leading a Shabbat service, running a Jewish kids day camp during the summer, getting education programs up and going for children and adult, and helping the Chaverim observe holidays. He'll spend a good deal of time here in September to lead services and celebrations to the High Holy Days. He also hopes to lead retreats, pulling from his experiences of seeking spiritual truth in nature.

"Running spiritual trips is a fringe business," Comins said. "The way I'm trying to do it is new. Lots of people take a hike and stop somewhere to have a service. I'm going much deeper," combining Judaism with both his and Jackson's interest in Eastern and American Indian religions. He calls himself something of a mystic. "I found on the first weekend that I don't need to explain it" to the people of Jackson, he said.

Comins' eclecticism seems the result of a naturally active intellect. After graduating from UCLA, he moved to Israel where he lived for a total of 16 years, chairing the International Reform Zionist Youth Movement, studying classical Jewish texts for four years in Jerusalem, and then going on to the rabbinical program at Hebrew Union College. He was ordained in 1996.

Afterward, he decided he needed to know more about western philosophy, so he took three years to delve in the classics and even wrote his rabbinical thesis on some of the intersections and interstices of Jewish and Western thought. He earned a master's in Jewish education and worked five years as the director of education at a congregation he helped to establish.

"I got so mental," he said, "I felt I was drying up on some level. So I decided to go back to my first spiritual home, nature."

In Israel, that's the desert.

Comins admits that after all that education, he was "not in great spiritual shape." His intense retreats to the wilderness were hard. But eventually he became a licensed Israeli desert guide and began to lead desert trips and retreats.

"Suddenly, God became very real to me," he said, describing how, after years of learning to focus, he can feel the spirit of God in all of his surroundings. "I tell people that I don't believe in God. ‘Belief' in English implies a faith in something you don't see or know. Now I tell people that I recognize God."

His explorations have also led him to the Spirit Rock meditation center in California and to the teachings of Jack Kornfield and Sylvia Boorstein, a Jew who has written several popular books on Buddhism.

"Much of the spiritual experience is universal," he said, "but the path there can never be universal."

While Comins plans to lead willing takers in such meditative journeys, his first priorities are practical. He feels Jackson will be a challenge for him because the Chaverim is as eclectic as he is, with advanced students of Judaism, as well as "beginners," like non-Jewish spouses.

"The beginners challenge the assumptions," he said. "They ask different questions you never even thought to ask. They bring an enthusiasm that has to do with spiritual truth rather than sentimental family ties."

In other words, Jackson Hole should provide Comins with yet another step in his lifelong exploration of spirit and his mind.