They’ve been wandering for 20 years, but Congregation Kol Shalom has found a home.

The Reform Jewish congregation, comprising 60 island families, has leased a house on Winslow Way.

The two-story building next to Bistro Pleasant Beach was last used to showcase bronze artworks.

“I do look at it as ‘the wandering tribe has found a home,’” Kol Shalom board member Janet Hanrahan said, “because we wandered from house to house and from church to church.”

While walls are getting a fresh coat of paint, no structural changes are being made to the space, which will accommodate a sanctuary, a library, a meeting room, a kitchen and a guest room for a new rabbi, due this fall.

Rabbi Laura Rapaport will debut leading the important fall High Holidays – Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement).

Ordained in 1988 and hired by a board of local congregants, she will commute from her home in Boise, Ida., to run Shabbat services one weekend each month.

Other services will be offered by guest rabbis and by Cindy Enger, a student rabbi in Los Angeles who has worked for the congregation before.

Like other small congregations, Kol Shalom – a name meaning “voice of peace” – can’t afford to hire a full-time rabbi. Over the years, a number of part-timers have come and gone, most recently Seattle’s Doug Slotnick, who worked one year.

Kol Shalom’s religious school will continue to be housed at Island School on Bainbridge’s north end. It offers weekly school on Sundays for grades K-7, as well as classes for pre-schoolers. 

Mid-week Hebrew classes begin in third grade to start to prepare students for b’nai mitzvah (children of the commandment), the ceremony that marks a 13-year-old Jew’s official assumption of the moral and spiritual obligations of Jewish adulthood.    

Kol Shalom committees focus on the religious school, while the “mitzvah corps” takes care of people within the congregation, and the rituals committee sets guidelines for liturgy.

“We also schlepp,” Goodman said. “We take care of the mechanics of setting up before services.”

Kol Shalom is a member of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Reform branch of Judaism.

“When the group started 20 years ago, we did it ourselves,” said Janet Hanrahan, Kol Shalom board member. “There were about 20 families. We met in people’s living rooms.”

The group was very diverse, and from families with a background

in Orthodox Judaism to Reform to the left-leaning Jewish Renewal members.

Most were “mixed marriages” between a Jewish and a non-Jewish spouse – a picture of shifting Jewish demographics reflected elsewhere in contemporary America.

While some non-Jewish spouses converted, many did not. The community foundered on differences of opinion about the role non-Jews could play in teaching the religious school and participating in services.

In the early 1990s, the group divided. Those who who favored remaining unaffiliated and lay-led services, and supported equal participation of Jewish and non-Jewish members, formed the island’s other Jewish group, Chavurat Shir Hayam, while the nucleus of Kol Shalom elected to affiliate with Reform.

A progressive branch of Judaism, the Reform movement officially recognizes that Jewish sacred heritage will change and adapt over time – evolution, or reform, that defines the movement.

Reform Judaism emerged against the backdrop of the 18th century French Revolution. The Revolution rallying cry “liberte, equalite, fraternite” was also applied to European Jews, who, for the first time, were deemed citizens of the countries which they inhabited.

Kol Shalom is still is a diverse group, board president Stephanie Warren said, from more observant members who might attend a Conservative synagogue if there were one nearby, to “twice-a-year” Jews who attend High Holiday services.

“And we’re open,” Warren said. “You don’t have to be a member to attend services.”

Like other Jewish congregations, Kol Shalom depends on a yearly fee rather than collections during services. Fees are based on a sliding scale, with individual families determining their own contribution.

“Of course now that we have a building, our financial needs are increasing, so we’re doing more soliciting of donations,” Goodman said.

The unpretentious new digs realize a long-term dream formalized in Kol Shalom’s mission statement: A synagogue provides a public home to gather, study, and worship. It is a beacon to Jews looking to join with others or simply for a place of worship.

“It’s always been in the back of everybody’s mind,” Warren said. “We’ve ben talking about space for the last four or five years. We know we can’t afford to buy or build something.

“If we can afford to keep it, if that income stream works out, then we might start looking for a place of our own.”