For the fourth consecutive year, Jewish synagogues and organizations in Baltimore are coming together to host a Pride Shabbat event.

This year, however, is different. What started as a small event hosted by Beth Am Synagogue and its partners has blossomed into a communitywide effort including Jews from a range of denominations, backgrounds and walks of Jewish life in Baltimore.

Susannah Kolstad, director of congregational engagement and programming at Beth Am, said this year’s event feels like it’s the result of hard work from many different people.

“The main thing that I’ve heard, pretty much across the board, is [that people are] feeling like in the past it felt like it was a Beth Am event, where we were inviting partners to participate, and people would come from other organizations, but they felt like they were coming to our event,” she said. “This one really feels like, from the very beginning, it’s a communitywide program, and we really decentered ourselves.”

The event has grown each year of its four years of existence. This year’s Jewish Community Pride Shabbat takes place June 26 at the Maryland Zoo, where organizers found a pavilion big enough to accommodate a large crowd.

“Every year, the goal among the organizations has been to add as much of a wide spectrum of the Baltimore Jewish community to make this a strong statement of pride and inclusivity, and each year more folks want to be involved,” Rabbi Tyler Dratch, associate rabbi at Beth Am, said.

This year is the first that Eshel, an organization serving LGBTQ Orthodox Jews, is participating. It’s also the first year that a representative of the Baltimore mayor’s office will be in attendance.

“Each year, the community gets bigger, and that’s the central point — to show that the full Jewish community, in its widest definition, celebrates the inclusion and beautiful diversity of our community,” Dratch said.

The work it takes to put together such a large event is tedious and time-consuming.

Kolstad said that there are 22 different organizations involved, and that they have been meeting periodically throughout the year to shape the vision of the event, what it should include and who should focus on what.

What they came up with is an hour of fun, with face painting, games and chit-chat, followed by a bring-your-own kosher picnic dinner and Shabbat services. Face painting and picnicking are not explicitly Jewish activities and can be enjoyed by a wide range of people, while Shabbat presents different challenges. Kolstad said the goal was to create a service that welcomed everyone.

“The benefit is that we had the clergy that were involved in planning that were being really respectful of the fact that they were trying to meet the needs of everyone, and I think it was beneficial that we were doing a Friday night service, which is fairly universal between all of these organizations,” she said.

The goal is to bring Jews together, not push them apart, Kolstad added.

“I think most people will feel like the service feels familiar regardless of their background, which was really the hope,” she said.

When Beth Am officials and their peers first conceived the event about half a decade ago, the intent was to find a way to mark Pride Month in a Jewish way — not just to celebrate LGBTQ Jews, but to show the Jewish community’s support for all members of the queer community.

“[We’re] saying, not only is our community safe for all Jews, but that we see our diversity as strength,” Dratch said.

aguckes@midatlanticmedia.com