STAR-BULLETIN / 2001 Summer Derrickson, left, Cameron Wong, Megan Smith, Mark Klein, Sivan Myers, Clare Broderson, Lauren Phillips and Isabel Yeoh, children from the Gan Yerushalayim Honolulu Community Jewish Preschool at Temple Emanu-El in Nuuanu, look forward to the beginning of Chanukah. Some years, half the children enrolled at the preschool aren't even Jewish, mirroring Hawaii's ethnic diversity.

Embracing diversity

"As a result there are hundreds of families over the past 25 years who had never had any connection with anyone Jewish, who now have positive feelings about Jews and understand a bit more about our lives," said Rabbi Avi Magid, who counts that as a legacy of his service.

Seeing Hawaii's welcoming openness reflected in the preschool, which was deliberately named with "community" first, gives Magid particular satisfaction. So does the face of Temple Emanu-El itself, where a third of the congregation is interfaith families.

"Look at children in the Hebrew school. A majority come from interfaith families. Their faces don't match faces in synagogues anywhere else.

"The involvement of interfaith couples and multiethnic couples was a great rarity when I first came in 1979," said Magid. It is a direction that the Reform Judaism movement supports, and "we did it in a formalized way. It just became: That is what we are."

It was a openness that the rabbi fostered "as a result of my own personal inclination. I grew up with the civil rights movement in North Carolina."

That inclusive spirit has been developed in the state's largest synagogue during Magid's 20 years as rabbi. His service as spiritual leader there ended quietly six months ago when Magid, 57, took medical leave. He retired in May.

"The time came when I reached down for more energy and it wasn't there," said Magid in a recent interview. Besides serving the congregation, he was tapped to stand in for the Jewish military chaplain who was deployed to Iraq, and was on call to Jewish visitors as well.

He is taking medical advice to take care of himself but doesn't rule out future involvement in the community: "I'm healing, trying to figure out what I want to do. I kind of want to hang out with myself for now. I'm considering a variety of things; I'd like to be able to give back to the community, as they say."

Magid and his wife, Shayna, live in Kaneohe. Their daughter is a high school sophomore.

After his first 10 years, the rabbi left to take a six-year appointment with a New York synagogue, and returned in 1995. Both times when he was called to Hawaii, he found a congregation split with dissension over internal issues. "One of my strengths, which I didn't know was a strength, was to act as a communitywide healer, a firefighter. Not that I set myself up to do that; it is interesting that it has fallen to my lot."

Temple Emanu-El evolved from a Jewish Community Center that was established just before World War II. Since then, Hawaii's Jewish community has divided according to standards of religious observance. The Nuuanu synagogue is Reform but also holds traditional Jewish services. Congregation Sof Ma'arav is a Conservative group, and Chabad of Hawaii is Orthodox. There are other smaller congregations on Oahu and the neighbor islands.

"One way this congregation is unlike others is that it has no roots. There are very few third- and fourth-generation members of the synagogue," Magid said. "Consequently, passing on of leadership from one generation to the next is very difficult.

"The good thing about not having roots: There are very few people around telling you, 'No, you can't do that, we've never done that before.'" That opened the way for "an incredible number of changes," implemented during his tenure. "The congregation was very creative in different kinds of ways."

The worship services was changed from English language with hired choir and organ to "a lot of chanting, guitar music; the people participated a lot. The styles changed dramatically. It is a very different kind of worship service -- I don't want to say better or worse, just different."

The role of rabbi is a teaching and storytelling one. He conducted "Introduction to Judaism" classes to prepare mixed-faith couples for marriage, taught youngsters in the School of Jewish Studies and adult education courses on a variety of subjects.

Magid expects to turn to writing in his retirement, possibly to undertake a history of Jewish people in Hawaii, to compile the series of tales he's told the children about his great-grandfather, and to explore similarities between Jews and Hawaiians. "There are many similarities in Hawaiian words, Hawaiian concepts and customs. In the Bible the high priest who ministers and does the sacrifices is a public health officer, a counselor to the people. He is called the 'kohen,' and that's where you get names like Cowan and Corbett. It is the exact same thing as the kahuna; you have kohens and kahunas.

"The term hanai means to give a child for someone else to raise. There is a story in the Bible about that, too, about Hannah, the exact same thing. It's pretty astonishing -- and I have lots more."

Magid lived in Israel for a year in 1970-71 during his rabbinical study and has returned 13 times.

"I'd go now if I had the opportunity," he said. "I have never had any sense of fear, although I am not foolhardy. It really does touch my soul; it is something extraordinary. You know you are in the midst of history while you're there. I always wanted to take an interfaith group to Israel."

It was on a visit to Israel that he decided to drop the first name his parents gave him.

"The passport lady said, 'What is your last name?' I said, 'May-gid.' She said, 'Oh, "Mah-geed,"' a very good Hebrew name. It's an itinerant preacher, a Jewish Billy Graham."

When he told her his first name, Arnold, she asked instead for his Hebrew name, which is Avram. "She said Avi Magid, welcome to Israel. All of a sudden, I realized that's who I am."