Eight families founded Congregation Kol Ami, a Reform Jewish congregation in Frederick, Maryland, on February 21, 2003, and its story begins right here. Founded by a group of eight families on February 21, 2003, Kol Ami does not meet in a typical synagogue building but holds its services in the Unitarian-Universalist Congregation of Frederick church at 4880 Elmer Derr Road. In the early years this congregation borrowed a Torah in 2004, then in 2005 they hired a trainee rabbi, Daniel Sikowitz, began their religious school, and joined the Union for Reform Judaism.
Sikowitz was elected the congregation’s first rabbi in 2007. Also in October 2007 a group of women at Kol Ami celebrated their b’not mitzvahs—women older than the traditional age who had never had that opportunity when they were younger. In 2008 the congregation paid $20,000 for a Torah saved from the Holocaust in Lviv, Ukraine; it became Kol Ami’s first owned Torah, and members, some of Ukrainian descent, helped write it.
The congregation also frequently participates in social action programs. Kol Ami still gathers in the Unitarian-Universalist church at 4880 Elmer Derr Road, the building in front of you.