Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Small Hawaiian Island Gets First Reform Rabbi

A Hawaiian island’s small Reform Jewish community gained a permanent rabbi for the first time, Honolulu Civil Beat reported.

The Jewish Community of Kauai community was founded 30 years ago, and it’s taken that long to employ a permanent rabbi. Rob Kvidt, a community member for 16 years who was ordained in June, will be the first to take on this role.

The congregation, which attracts around 100 people to its services in the building of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, has relied on out-of-town guest rabbis during the High Holidays and lay leaders during the rest of the year.

Kvidt converted to Judaism as an adult under the auspices of Rabbinical Seminary International, which later oversaw his ordination. He told Civil Beat that he is eager to begin but is unsure what kind of rabbi he’ll be.

“I’m really open to all these possibilities, because Judaism is not to be practiced alone,” he said. “So, I like that scholarly part, but I want to share what I know and to be part of a community because, there’s so much joy in that.”

Kauai also has a rabbi affiliated with the Orthodox group Chabad.

Alyssa Fisher is a writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.