Chris Smith: Sonoma County’s newest rabbi also rocked as a singing drag performer

Irwin Keller felt he was born to be a rabbi. But when, as a young man nearly 40 years back, he was ready for rabbinical school, it wasn’t yet ready for him.

Keller is gay, and back then gay people were not welcomed to train as rabbis. So while continuing to intensively study Judaism on his own he became a lawyer keen on activism. At the University of Chicago Law School in the late ’80s, he was the primary author of Chicago’s first gay rights law.

Keller moved to San Francisco and tried, but didn’t like, corporate law, so he went to work providing low-cost legal services to people with HIV and AIDS. Something wild and transforming happened in 1993, when he and three musical friends bought tickets for a Bette Midler concert and decided to go dressed in drag as the Andrews Sisters.

The night was so much fun, and the public reaction to the foursome so adoring, that Keller and his pals began to perform. Thus was born the Kinsey Sicks, destined to perform off-Broadway and across America and beyond as what came to be dubbed America’s favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet.

There’s more on the Kinsey Sicks at kinseysicks.com.

Appearing in drag as “Winnie” was Keller’s day job when, in 2008, he became the spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Cotati. As Rebbe (teacher), or more commonly Reb Keller, he oversaw the growth of the congregation from 38 families to 130-plus.

Keller split his time between the congregation and the stage until 2014, when he retired from his 21-year run as Winnie and poured himself even more intently into his study of the Torah and Judaism. He entered a rabbinical ordination program based in Philadelphia.

And on Jan. 10, at the age of 60, he was ordained a rabbi. He could now change his title from Reb Keller to Rabbi Keller, but will stick with the former.

“When I hear ’Rabbi Keller,’” he shared, “I look over my shoulder to see who’s being addressed.”

His congregation invites us all to take part Sunday in a Zoom celebration of his ordination that will be rich in music, stories, poetry and humor. Its host will be Ben Schatz, a co-founder of the Kinsey Sicks.

For more details on the celebration, set to start at 5 p.m. visit nershalom.org/event-calendar/rebbe2rabbi.

There is no charge to share in the celebration, but any donations will go toward helping Ner Shalom to fund its new rabbinic post.

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TRASH TALK: Each January, Sebastopol public-interest attorney Dee Schilling dedicates a chunk of the Martin Luther King, Jr., birthday holiday to making the world a little better, and more pleasing to the eye.

With garbage bags in hand, Dee sets off to pick up litter along about a mile of the West County/Joe Rodota regional trail in Sebastopol.

Dee, the widow of minister and civil-rights champion Don Schilling, said that for years she carried out about two bags of trash. In recent years, she said, there was less garbage.

Then came MLK Day 2021. What’s your guess of how much rubbish she picked up this year?

I’ll admit I expected Dee to say she had to rent a Dumpster or a truck to handle it all.

She reported instead, “This time, I got four little pieces of paper and a rotten baseball cap.”

Note to self: Be mindful of those things that are getting better.

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RETURN TO FROG ROCK: I wrote Sunday of how Merle Reuser of Santa Rosa and a buddy took a long, leisurely drive up Geysers Road out of Alexander Valley early this month and came upon a huge rock that had slid onto the pavement.

Merle, best known for his mission to proliferate daffodils in Sonoma County, tried to pull the perhaps 10,000-pound boulder off Geysers Road with his car, but no dice. So he and his pal went for help, and not long later a county roads crew was dispatched to move the rock off the traffic lane.

About a week later, Merle drove back up Geysers Road to see what had become of the great rock. He was surprised and delighted to discover, alongside the road, what he perceived to be the same boulder, only it had been cleverly painted as Kermit the Frog. He figured someone had sometime the previous week come upon the moved-aside rock and made art of it.

Well ... after that column ran, both Merle and I heard from people who know Geysers Road and know that Frog Rock has sat alongside it for many years.

Merle at once realized what had happened. When he and his friend first drove up Geysers Road, fog was thick and he was so focused on not driving off the edge that he passed by Frog Rock without noticing it. A ways farther up, he came upon the rock in the road.

When he returned a week later to see where the county crew had moved it, the weather was clear. He spotted the rock painted as a Kermit the Frog and believed it was the same boulder that had rolled onto and been removed from the road.

Merle has now driven a third time up steep, curvy, seldom-tread Geysers Road. He took in the splendors of Frog Rock for a second time, then continued up and found where the former rock-in-the-road had been moved to the shoulder.

Merle has a fresh thought: He would love to find and talk to the creators of Frog Rock, and to collaborate with them in painting the new roadside boulder.

A PD reader emailed me independently me to say what he believes what it begs to become:

Piggy Rock.

You can contact Chris Smith at 707 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.