Rabbi Gilah Langner has led Kol Ami: Northern Virginia Reconstructionist Community through a tumultuous decade. She is set to retire this June.
“This is now my 10th anniversary, 10 years with the [Kol Ami] community, and this felt like a good moment to feel a sense of completion and move on into a new phase of my life,” Langner said. “It all just seemed to come together right around now.”
Located in Arlington, Kol Ami is a relatively small congregation. The community has approximately 100 member households as of 2025.
Langner reflected on the community’s past 10 years, which she said have been anything but ordinary.
“It’s been a challenging time, in terms of politically what’s going on in this country, in terms of the pandemic, in terms of antisemitic violence, [we] spent an enormous amount of time on security issues and dealing with the pandemic,” the rabbi said.
She navigated the need to foster community during COVID-19, then again after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel.
“It does feel like this has been a good time to be a rabbi, and give my services to a community to help walk through these dark times and keep finding the joy in Judaism and keep finding community,” Langner said.
How has she helped the Kol Ami community cope? Langner acknowledges that she doesn’t have all the answers for her congregants, nor will she ever.
“Things are impacting us differently, but we need to share that,” she said. “We want to hear one another’s thoughts and feelings.”
In light of the mass layoffs in 2025, Langner led regular Zoom sessions for federal workers who belong to Kol Ami and others who were impacted by President Donald Trump’s DOGE cuts.
“We listen to each other. We commune,” she said. “The whole purpose of community is to practice kindness.”
Langner has created a number of traditions at Kol Ami, including an annual tashlich picnic for Rosh Hashanah. With the help of a family holiday committee, she added Sukkot programs at members’ homes, Purim carnivals and spiels, Tu B’Shevat seders, Lag b’Omer bonfires, online Shavuot learning sessions and Tisha B’Av gatherings, according to a 17-page history of Kol Ami by member Zachary Schrag.
She has also made the congregation more inclusive, reflecting the welcoming nature of the Reconstructionist movement. In 2017, Kol Ami adopted a formal policy that liturgical participation and honors were “equally open to Jewish and non-Jewish members,” according to Schrag.
“I think I was on the steering committee before I was a Jew,” said Jim North, Kol Ami’s cantorial soloist.
The rabbi encourages a “group aliyot” during services. “Everyone’s invited to come up — whether they’re Jewish or not — to say the blessings,” North added.
“She’s very comfortable with sharing,” he said of Langner. “For example, all our High Holidays are co-led with the rabbi and other members, so she’s very inclusive. She invites people to share the leadership roles, and she’s not the only leader.”
The rabbinate is Langner’s second career. Throughout her professional life, she has always been involved with Jewish education.
In 2000, the proverbial “light bulb” went off in Langner’s head: she could continue doing what she loves to do through a Jewish lens. She studied over the next three years with a committee of rabbis and Jewish professionals in the Washington area and was ordained in 2003.
Langner led services at congregations, served as a chaplain at hospitals, worked in adult education and family services, and taught at local universities before being offered a part-time role at two local congregations: Shirat HaNefesh and Kol Ami. She took both.
In 2005, she decided to focus on one community rather than work two part-time jobs, and she chose Kol Ami.
Her colleagues and community lay leaders spoke highly of Langner’s leadership.
“She’s got so much chesed, or kindness,” North said. “I don’t know anyone who’s more loving and kind and thoughtful and … 100% authentic.”
Langner has no problem sharing her thoughts, even on sometimes contentious topics, according to North. But through it all, she remains kind.
“I think everyone would agree that Gilah is a delight to work with,” North said.
“I was shocked when I heard Rabbi Gilah was retiring, because she never seemed like someone at the end of her career,” Ari Jacobson, who leads Tot Shabbats at Kol Ami, wrote in a statement to Washington Jewish Week. “She was still so active, engaged, ready to jump into details and make programs better.”
One example of improving programs came when Langner replaced the “old, typo-ridden” Passover handouts that the community had used for years with a new, “lovingly crafted” slideshow, Jacobson said.
“She’s open to new ideas and inspiration and she shares things as they come along, and I think that’s a wonderful quality to have in a rabbi,” North said of Langner.
The Kol Amites, Kol Ami’s multigenerational music ensemble, is set to perform at the rabbi’s retirement party on June 7.
“I’m most proud of this community,” Langner said. “I have learned so much from people, and we’ve grown in our ties to one another, in our ability to handle things that come along, challenges. I’m really proud of the community-building parts of being a rabbi that I’ve spent a lot of my time on.”
