Before two Black rabbis founded congregations in Washington, D.C., a small, tight-knit group of Jews felt they had no place to call home.
“Ashkenazim have their own space, Sephardim have their own space, you can find a Russian space, Syrian, Persian. The only people that don’t really have their own space are African American or Caribbean American Jews,” said Rabbi Shais Rishon, an African American Orthodox rabbi and activist.
Rishon was raised in the Brooklyn, New York, Chabad community in what he described as one of the “hubs of Jews of color.” But upon leaving that hub, he was met with questions whenever he entered a synagogue due to his race.
“There’s sort of a reluctance to engage with mainstream Jewish institutions, just from the interrogations that often happen, where we can’t enter a Jewish space [or] just be Jewish in a Jewish space just to want to learn without being seen as an indictment or a suspicion,” Rishon said.
Rishon took matters into his own hands. In February, he founded Ohel Eidot Chemdata, a traditionalist Modern Orthodox synagogue for African American and Caribbean Jews.
“We’re kind of doing a mashup of what people love about the other denominations of Judaism and also putting that within the Orthodox space,” said Tifarah Rut, Rishon’s wife and administrative assistant.
Based in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of the District, the synagogue aims to be a safe, loving haven for African Diaspora Jews.
“The reason why we have the shul: so we can walk into a prayer space and just talk to God, not having to have these little microaggressions that are interfering with our intention and our mood,” Rishon said.
In mainstream synagogues, he has been asked if he needs to find the bathroom, if he knows which page the group is on in the prayer book, or even if he knows how to do the prayer, all of which suggest that Rishon doesn’t belong there. “I’m just showing up to talk to God; that’s all I want to do,” he said.
Though OEC isn’t fully established at the time of publication, Rishon and Rut are fundraising for its development. They hope to offer weekly services, a YouTube series on Jewish literacy and other programming.
“Education is part of the general mission of Ohel,” Rishon said, adding that a recent OEC luncheon event walked through the Passover Seder for those unfamiliar with the ritual.
Rabbi Dr. koach frazier (who prefers to write his name in all lowercase), the founding rabbi of Kehillat Sankofa, also felt the need to create a community specifically for Black Jews.
“There’s been a yearning for spaces that center Black folks from the beginning, the beginning of my experience in Jewish spaces,” the Reconstructionist rabbi said.
frazier, who was raised in an African Methodist Episcopal family, has “always” been connected to his Jewish and Israelite heritage: “Outside of forced conversion, it might have been that way without any need for the revert.”
But he didn’t feel quite at home when he started frequenting Jewish spaces during college.
“People, I think, didn’t understand who I was, why I was there,” frazier said. “It’s kind of the same story you get, particularly in white-dominant spaces.”
He originally planned on finding work at a synagogue. “That didn’t happen,” he said. “No one will ever come out and say, ‘We’re not ready for a Black rabbi,’ but I haven’t been hired.”
Instead, frazier moved to the District at his wife’s suggestion and launched Kehillat Sankofa, a community that centers Black Jews in the DMV region and online, during the High Holidays in fall 2025.
While Kehillat Sankofa doesn’t currently occupy a physical space — “Right now, we’re wandering Jews,” frazier said — the community’s 20 regulars meet at a local library or people’s homes.
The two congregations combine cultural aspects of both African and Jewish traditions. At Kehillat Sankofa, community members pray using a djembe, a West African hand drum.
“It’s a beautiful community that is focusing on what we believe and who we are,” frazier said.
frazier also plans to use Zora Neale Hurston’s “Moses, Man of the Mountain” as the Midrash on Moses in the days between Passover and Shavuot.
“We’re doing this thing where we’re seeing traditions intertwine: the Black and Jewish, and learning together,” he said.
OEC recently hosted a pre-Pesach Seder featuring culinary historian Michael Twitty’s “African American Seder Plate for Passover.”
“There are African American symbolisms on the plate while also paralleling the Jewish or halachic meaning or purpose behind the food on the Seder plate,” Rishon explained.
The charoset — usually fruit, nuts and wine — is molasses and pecans to represent sugarcane. Hot peppers are substituted for horseradish, as the spice is central to West and Central Africa.
The two congregations have already garnered community support and some regulars, largely because many Black Jewish residents of the DMV already knew each other.
frazier has spoken with some community members who plan to attend programming at Kehillat Sankofa.
“There were people who were very excited,” he said. “They were like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s going to be great to come to a place where nobody questions who I am. It’s going to be great to come to a place where I can bring my kids and they can see another Black person that is the head of the congregation.’ They see themselves in the leadership; they see themselves in other people in the community.”
Without representation, Jews of color may feel alienated from Jewish spaces and end up leaving the synagogue, a phenomenon frazier has seen.
“There’s places where folks just don’t have the experience of seeing themselves in others in these communities, and it’s very important that we’re here,” he said.
