Rabbi Burt Jacobson, Founding Rabbi

Rabbi Burt Jacobson was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1966. He was involved in the creation of both the Havurah and Jewish Renewal movements. In 1984 he founded Kehilla Community Synagogue in Berkeley (now in Piedmont).

Rabbi Burt currently serves as Founding Rabbi of Kehilla. He has been a student of the teachings of the Ba’al Shem Tov for twenty-five years, and is engaged in writing a book that reconstructs the life and spiritual philosophy of the Ba'al Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism. Rabbi Burt celebrated the 40th anniversary of his ordination as a rabbi in 2006. He has been greatly influenced by the work of Martin Buber, the Baal Shem Tov, and Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Rabbi David Jonathan Cooper, Community Rabbi of Kehilla

In 1984, Rabbi David, inspired by Rabbi Burt Jacobson’s vision of a community synagogue, became one of several co-founders of Kehilla. Prior to David’s service as Kehilla’s community rabbi—which began in 1999—he had various careers including political activist, community organizer, attorney, bookstore owner, religion/theology graduate student. He regards it as one of his highest joys that he has been able to be part of a synagogue of such wonderful, exciting and loving people.

Rabbi David’s conception of Kehilla as a synagogue is that it must be a subversive institution, i.e. provide a true community that acts on progressive and Jewish values as an alternative to those of American individualism and its prevalent consumer/market consciousness. He shares the idea that the synagogue should be a place where people can live and children can be raised in an atmosphere that is multicultural, LGBT-friendly, and where our connectedness to the State of Israel is marked both by our support and by our criticism when necessary. The synagogue, in his view, should also welcome a variety of philosophical, theological and atheological approaches to enliven our collective spiritual exploration.

Rabbi David was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York where he attended Hebrew day school for 10 years, and further pursued his Jewish studies on the high school, college, post-graduate and rabbinic program levels.

His youthful synagogue participation was inter-movement: Conservative school and synagogue, regular Orthodox synagogue attendance and camp, Reform synagogue and camp. Part of his extended family owned an orthodox hotel in Monsey, NY where he celebrated becoming Bar Mitzvah. For eight summers, he attended the orthodox Zionist Hebrew-speaking Camp Massad Aleph where he also served as a counselor.

Rabbi David credits his eclectic exposures for his familiarity with the varieties of Jewish liturgy and practice. He credits his years of inter-disciplinary study and his grappling with the realities of our post-holocaust generation for his non-conformist theological outlook and the variety of Jewish and non-Jewish religious practices which continue to influence his spiritual endeavors.

Rabbi David’s immediate family was politically liberal, and he was active in high school with the socialist Hashomer Hatzair movement and the High School Student Mobilization Committee of the SDS. Throughout high school, college, law school and several years of practice as an attorney, David was involved in anti-war, anti-sexist, pro-LGBT and affirmative action struggles while becoming increasingly involved in the embryonic Jewish Renewal Movement.

In the late 80’s he studied in the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union and provided leadership and guidance as a co-host of the Jewish Conference of the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), one of the first cyberspace Jewish conferences on the Internet.

In the early 1990’s he co-founded Berkeley’s Afikomen Jewish Books and Arts which he co-owned and ran until 1999. He also was on the committee initiating the Center for Jewish Living and Learning of the Jewish Federation of the East Bay.

During Kehilla’s first 15 years, David served as a spiritual lay leader of the congregation. In 1999, David applied and was accepted for the community rabbi position, the capacity in which he now serves. In that same year, he registered in the Jewish Renewal seminary, the Aleph Rabbinic Program. In 2005, he received his rabbinic ordination.

David lives with his partner, Marilyn Golden. His now adult children, Talia and Lev, were raised in our synagogue and have themselves served Kehilla in various capacities.

Shulamit Wise Fairman, Music Director

Shulamit Wise Fairman hails from Mid-Missouri, where she began her personal and professional Jewish journey. Graduate studies in Boston led to a freelance career as a prayer leader, educator, and ritual creatrix. B'nai Or, the Jewish renewal community in Boston, became her spiritual home for six years, where she was mentored by her beloved Rabbis, Daniel and Hanna Tiferet Siegel. Since her youth, music and activism have been integral threads in the spiritual matrix of her life. Serving Kehilla since June of 2005, Shulamit continues to weave her vision of community building, personal healing, and world change through music and prayer.

Debbie Fier, Musical Prayer Leader

Debbie Fier brings over 30 years’ experience to her life as a performing vocalist, drummer, pianist, composer, percussionist and teacher. She has studied numerous drum and dance styles for over 25 years — including Middle Eastern, North African, Indian and Afro-Cuban, has taught drumming to individuals and groups, adults and children, and has led many, diverse community drumming circles - musical, educational and spiritual.

Debbie has spent over 20 years exploring voice in many different contexts, including western/classical vocal technique, theory, ear training, improvisation, jazz, meditative chanting and Indian raga singing, as well as exploring and teaching about the healing qualities of music and the voice. Debbie has spent many years studying different forms of spirituality and meditation. Over the past 6 years, she has found a home at Kehilla Community Synagogue as a spiritual leader through drumming. For more information about classes, workshops, recordings and performances, go to www.DebbieFier.com

Rabbi Chaya Gusfield, Spiritual Leader

After several years of lay leadership at Kehilla, Rabbi Chaya Gusfield was called to the rabbinate and was ordained by Jewish Renewal’s Aleph Rabbinic Program in 2006. She completed her training as a Spiritual Director from the Mercy Center in 2001 and has also been serving individuals and groups as a Spiritual Director since that time.

Chaya is employed at Beth Chaim Congregation in Danville but continues to teach and lead, when she can, throughout California, including Kehilla, her home community. In addition to her passion to teach and lead adults and youth, she has a strong passion for serving the ill and grieving.

Howard Hamburger, Spiritual Leader

Howard Hamburger writes: "Being involved with Kehilla adds so many dimensions to my life.  I attended Kehilla's first High Holiday services and became a member soon after. I love Kehilla because we, as a community, work passionately for social justice and try to approach prayer, Torah, and our relationships with each other with spirituality. As we are human beings, we don't completely succeed at any of this, but we continue to work and play and pray with that intention."

Edie Murphy, Musical Prayer Leader

Edie Murphy has been one of the musical prayer leaders at Kehilla since about the year 2000. She is also a Physical Therapist in private practice in Oakland, and sings in a quartet of women called Treble Makers. She grew up in a minimally observant conservative Jewish household with parents who felt the need to rebel against their more observant upbringings. However, in high school, she found a sense of belonging to a community in USY, the conservative movement youth group. Since she was female, her parents saw no need for Bat Mitzvah, so this was a present she gave to herself in her 50th year. It was a real opportunity to deepen her relationship to prayer and leadership in services. Learning trope was delightful experience that gave her a way in to Torah study and to prayer.

Edie has been a member of Kehilla since 1991, when her son Gabe was born. Joining a Chavurah made her family feel even more a part of the community. The more she has participated in Kehilla activities and committees over the years, the more she has come to feel that she truly comes home when she steps through the doors.

Julie Nesnansky, Musical Prayer Leader

Julie Nesnansky has been a Cantorial Soloist at Kehilla for the past 8 years, and is a proud member of the Musical Prayer Leader/Spiritual Leader team. In addition to co-leading Shabbat and holiday services, she teaches songs and some percussion instruments to students in the Hebrew School, and has co-written and performed songs in honor of several service leaders over the years. She leyns (chants) from the torah during High Holy Day services and at various Shabbat services throughout the year. She has taught trope (the torah chanting system) to several students for their Bar/Bat Mitzvahs.

For 20 years, Julie has been a Special Education Teacher in the West Contra Costa Unified School District, currently working with preschool students who have autism. She has also taught students with special needs at Temple Beth Abraham (TBA) in Oakland, and for one year taught TBA’s 5th graders to sing their synagogue’s Friday night service.

Julie has performed in folk, Balkan, and jazz groups, singing (and playing the acoustic folk bass) in venues as varied as folk festivals, birthday parties, weddings, memorial services, fundraisers, clubs, retirement parties, and classes. She has sung publicly for 30 years, and has been recorded on half a dozen albums. Born and raised in Southern California, she has lived in Oakland for 25 years, the last 16 with her beloved husband, Allan Creighton.

Avi Rose, Spiritual Leader

Avi Rose first joined Kehilla in 1993 when he gave a Yom Kippur sermon about full inclusion and welcoming of lesbians and gay men. He has offered spiritual leadership in the congregation since the mid 1990's.

Avi is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who currently serves as Executive Director of Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay. He received his B.A. degree from Brandeis University in 1976 and later earned his MSW from the University of Southern California and an M.A. in Jewish Communal Service from Hebrew Union College. Much of Avi’s career has been devoted to HIV/AIDS work as well as community-based health care for low-income people.

Avi is also known for having co-edited a groundbreaking anthology, Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish, published in 1989. He has been highly involved as a writer, speaker and organizer with efforts to address LGBT and HIV/AIDS issues in religious communities and was a founding board member of the AIDS National Interfaith Network.

Avi is also a longtime board member of Jewish Funds for Justice and has served on several other boards of directors and planning and advisory bodies for agencies, foundations and communities. In 1995 he was honored with KQED’s "Community Hero" Award.

Avi lives in Oakland with his partner, Ron Strochlic, and their children, Oren and Aviva.

Ilana Schatz, Spiritual Leader

Ilana Schatz has been connected with Kehilla from its very beginning, by helping facilitate its founding community meeting and leading its first Erev Shabbat service. She has been a lay spiritual leader at Kehilla for almost ten years, and has particularly enjoyed the opportunity to create nature-based services, including Equinox and solstice Shabbat services and Tu B’shvat seders. She has felt deeply honored to lead life cycle rituals and Bar/Bat Mitzvahs.

Ilana’s professional work for the past 15 years has focused on linking Jewish values with economic and social justice issues and creating opportunities for Jewish individuals and organizations to get involved. Her current project is an outreach effort to raise awareness about the fair trade movement, and Judaica products made by fair trade organizations (http://www.fairtradejudaica.org).

Ilana is grateful to have Kehilla as her Jewish community and “home”. Outside of Kehilla, her spirit is also nourished by dear friendships, hiking and being in nature, dancing, gardening, and most of all, traveling and making plum jam and wine with her husband, David!

Elizheva Hurvich, Service Leader

Elizheva Hurvich loves Jewish life! She comes to Kehilla with a rich and ecclectic background.  A Bay Area native, she grew up at Congregation Kol Shofar, supplemented by her family's "hippie Shabbat" experiences on rugs of Joseph and Nathan Segal's Community services.  Her Jewish background includes summers with her Zionist grandparents and relatives in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida.  (Yes, there are Jews in them thar hills!)

Elizheva has been blessed to travel much (including living with her family in a camper that travelled around the United States) and to live for extended periods on the East Coast, in France, and in Israel.  Having studied with Reconstructionists, Renewalists, Conservatives, Orthodox, she earned a master's degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University in Jewish Art and Material Culture.  When asked to name her affiliation, she claims to be a post-trans-reconformodox-Stam-Jew. 

Elizheva is also an artist who has worked in many media.  She has created dozens of Huppot and tallitot, quilts, dolls, and several artbooks.  In addition to being the director of Kehilla School, Elizheva is a teacher and a ritual leader.  With a spirituality that has Jewish roots and is linked to nature, Elizheva hopes to continue Renewing her life practice for many years to come.
 

Sandra Razieli, Service Leader

Sandra Razieli is the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Program Director and has been teaching at Kehilla since 2000.  She is also a service leader and enjoys participating in the community as a congregant. 

Sandra has studied and lived extensively in Minnesota, Israel, and California, and has degrees from the University of Minnesota and Stanford University.  As an anthropologist with a focus on the modern Middle East, her academic interests overlap nicely with her work at Kehilla.  She created the 6th grade curriculum at Kehilla and is the author, along with Alaiya Aguilar, of Tree of Life: Torah for Bar/Bat Mitzvah Students.

Sandra also teaches yoga with a specific interest in yoga for scoliosis.  She holds a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT500) designation from Yoga Alliance and a teaching certification from the Institute of Yoga and Jewish Spirituality.  She is also an avid soccer player.