RABBI BROUS'S STATEMENT

In the spring of 2004, I had the privilege of partnering with a core group of families and individuals to create IKAR, a soulful, authentic, passionate, intellectually challenging and socially active Jewish Spiritual Center in LA. My dream was to create a holy community that would offer a compelling, progressive Jewish response to the pain, suffering, loneliness and violence of the world.

In rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I luxuriated in the magic, inspiration and fierce challenge of Talmud and traditional text study. After several years, I woke up one morning desperate to find a way to make the Torah I was learning applicable in the world. During my final years of rabbinical school, I studied for a Master's Degree in Religion and Human Rights at Columbia University (where I also did my undergraduate work), studying global failures and achievements, and the role of religion in war and peace. This joint course of study prepared me to work, as a member of clergy, for conflict resolution and social change.

After ordination, I had the great honor of serving as Marshall T. Meyer Rabbinic Fellow at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York City (BJ), a breathtaking synagogue known around the world for its spiritual depth and vitality. At BJ, I worked and studied with my rabbis and teachers, Roly Matalon and Marcelo Bronstein, who transformed my sense of what a Jewish spiritual community can and should look like.

In 2002, after spending 12 glorious years in New York City, my husband, David Light (comedy writer and Spanish omelette guru), and I moved to Los Angeles. For two years I served as Rabbi in Residence and Director of Advanced Jewish Studies at Milken Community High School, where I challenged students to see Torah as radically countercultural and to translate core ideas about justice, human dignity, and obligation into action. For the past several years, I have been a rabbi with REBOOT, an extraordinary network of Jewish trend-setters, thinkers and activists, grappling with Jewish values and identity, and the Jewish future. I am involved in several justice initiatives with Progressive Jewish Alliance, and Daniel Sokatch and I co-teach a course on Social Justice and Spiritual Activism for HUC and UJ rabbinical and communal service students. Since 2005, I have been a member of the Synagogue 3000 Leadership Network, a select national group of rabbis, cantors, and artists working to transform and revitalize American Jewish spiritual communities.

We have two daughters, my blessings and inspiration, Eva Gavriella and Sami Rafaela.