‘Flexidox’ Rabbi Serves Rural Areas : Worship: Gershon Winkler’s informal services are popular, but they annoy some traditionalists.

With a message as old as the hills, Rabbi Gershon Winkler tends to his far-flung flock in his wood-paneled station wagon, shunning synagogues to sing the Psalms of David in farmhouses and prisons.

Winkler, one of a handful of “circuit rabbis” in America, is more likely to tote a guitar than a Bible and more often wears blue jeans than a prayer shawl as he roams the back roads of Baptist-dominated West Virginia.

“This is what rabbis used to be in ancient times,” he said. “They didn’t have synagogues then. Ancient rabbis did other work. They’d travel around to teach and do life-cycle events, then go home and earn a living.”

West Virginia has about 2,000 Jews, about 0.1% of the state’s population, according to the American Jewish Yearbook. There are two small synagogues in Charleston.

Winkler’s flock is spread across about 180 miles in two clusters of several dozen families, a handful of students at West Virginia University, and two federal prisons.

“I’m not a synagogue rabbi,” Winkler said. “They don’t like me. Sometimes I just want to sing songs instead of doing a regular service.”

Most congregations expect a rabbi to be very serious, Winkler said, so worshipers at Morgantown’s small synagogue were annoyed when he called out: “Simon says, be seated!”

Mark Blumenstein, an artist and farmer in Lewisburg, about 75 miles southeast of Charleston, said Winkler fills a unique niche for Jews who are isolated and sometimes turned off by more traditional approaches.

“Gershon represents a breath of fresh air,” Blumenstein said.

Blumenstein met Winkler while they were visiting the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp at Alderson. He asked Winkler to meet with about 30 Jewish families nearby.

Blumenstein, who is married to a non-Jew, says that many of the families wanted their children to be exposed to Judaism.

“The Jewish community here has gotten together because they would like to have Gershon share with them and the children pieces of the puzzle that are missing,” Blumenstein said.

“He’s been like a friend who comes in and speaks and entertains and shares, not so much as a rabbi as a mentor.”

In a recent service at the prison, eight women sang songs, joked, laughed and discussed the Bible. Only one of the women was Jewish. Winkler said the prison has five Jews who attend his services.

Winkler’s service seemed more like a camp sing-along. Inmates followed prayers on song sheets as chosen by members of the group. The songs melded Jewish prayers in Hebrew and English with American Indian themes.

Wearing jeans, a denim shirt and hiking boots, Winkler played guitar and told stories as he explained the prayers.

Inmate Carletha Haskins of Washington, who is serving time for distributing marijuana, asked Winkler to explain why King Solomon needed 700 wives and 300 concubines. Winkler quickly flipped through the Bible, read a section aloud and explained that marriages in biblical times were political alliances.

He moved from King Solomon’s story to the Tower of Babel, switching accents from Yiddish to Orson Welles to Richard Burton.

Winkler’s circuit includes the Lewisburg families, the women’s federal prison in Alderson, a federal prison for men at Morgantown, the students at West Virginia University in Morgantown, and a small synagogue in Fairmont.

He visits each of them once or twice a month. But religious holidays get complicated.

Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days of the Jewish year, means starting in the evening and speeding to each stop, often for only two hours each.

But Winkler has worked to leave his sheep to tend themselves: He and his wife, Lakme Elior, are moving to the Jemez Mountains in the Santa Fe National Forest, N.M.

“I like the idea of starting people off and leaving them on their own to continue to grow,” Winkler said. “The authentic place in me feels very uncomfortable doing rabbi stuff without the intention to get people doing it on their own.”

Haskins presented Winkler with a goodby gift from inmates--a wooden holder for a shofar, the ram’s horn blown during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services.

Winkler’s ministry is far, in distance and in style, from the Orthodox community in which he grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Winkler calls himself a “flexidox” Jew, with the emphasis on flexible.

Orthodox Jews practice strict adherence to all Jewish laws, including eating only kosher food and not working on the Sabbath. Winkler doesn’t believe in rules.

“I weigh situations,” he said. “I don’t ask myself what the rabbis of Brooklyn would say. I ask myself what God would think.”

Despite years of study in religious schools, he did not want to become a rabbi.

“I loved writing stories,” he said. “I’d write cowboy stories and mysteries at lunch and the other students would gather around me and watch the story unfold.”

He became disenchanted with traditional Orthodox teachings even though he was ordained by an Orthodox rabbi who came to Brooklyn from Jerusalem for the ceremony.

“As I taught people to become Orthodox, I became less Orthodox,” Winkler said. “They had so many questions about the laws of orthodoxy that they felt were against their nature.

“I gave them the pat answers and rationalizations that I was taught. But then I went home and it troubled me. I was trying to shoehorn it into them with pat answers, but it didn’t fit naturally.”

Leaving Brooklyn, Orthodox Judaism and his first marriage, he lived near Angeles National Forest in California, Rocky Mountain National Forest in Colorado, and a smattering of other places before landing in West Virginia.

“I was fascinated with the scenery, the rocky ridges, rushing rivers and creeks, the lushness and the people waving at me,” he said. “That doesn’t happen in Brooklyn. It just felt friendly here.”

He did not expect to work as a rabbi and he was performing odd jobs at a dairy farm when he learned about the job ministering to Jewish university students through a newspaper advertisement in the Clarksburg Exponent.

Soon, a newspaper story about him resulted in a call from male prisoners in Morgantown, which led to visits to the women prisoners in Alderson.

“I didn’t know I could make money at it,” Winkler said.

A circuit rabbi earns little, and much of his salary goes for gasoline, automobile expenses and motel bills, and books for inmates.

“Prison work has become the most important work for me,” he said. “I don’t feel what I’m doing is a job. It’s more of a service from the heart.”