Welcoming Rabbi Yoel Kahn

Please welcome Beth Am’s new and part-time (and temporary) member of the clergy team, Rabbi Yoel Kahn, a life-long resident of the Bay Area and now Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth El in Berkeley, is an experienced and skilled rabbi who will bring his talents to Beth Am.

Rabbi Kahn will work approximately two days a week, helping the Beth Am clergy team with rabbinic duties — teaching, leading services, helping with programs. In addition, with his almost 40 years of experience, he will serve as a resource for our entire clergy team. His job will be to support the Beth Am community and to help us be successful in all we are doing during this transition period. In this way, he helps lift our congregation through our investment in these valued leaders of our community. Rabbi Kahn will begin working with all of us at Beth Am starting at the end of December. Our efforts with Rabbi Kahn will be reviewed over the summer, and — if we believe our work together has been successful — we will extend his service with us another year.

Yoel Kahn, is Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth El, Berkeley, where he served as Senior Rabbi from 2007 -2021. After his ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1985, he served as the Rabbi of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco and received his Ph.D. through the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He later served as the Executive Director with the Hillel Foundation at Stanford University and as Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union. In recent years, he has been Rabbi-in-Residence at Congregation Shir Hadash in Florence, Italy. 

Rabbi Kahn has served on the Liturgy Committee, Responsa [Law] Committee and the Board of Directors of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and as President of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis. He has taught and published widely; his research on the history of Jewish liturgy was the subject of his award-winning book The Three Blessings: Boundaries, Censorship and Identity in Jewish Liturgy (Oxford University Press, 2010). He is Vice-President of the Board of Directors of New Lehrhaus and maintains a private practice in spiritual guidance and counseling. 

Please welcome Rabbi Yoel Kahn to the Beth Am community!