Temple Calendar

With Rabbi Stone's retirement only a few years away, the BZBI Board of Trustees is starting to plan for the search for a new rabbi. As a first step, the Board has asked the Ritual Committee to inaugurate a Guest Rabbi program, the purpose of which is to expose the congregation to a variety of rabbinic styles. The rabbis who will join us are not applying for a job; rather, this is a way to get everyone thinking about what qualities we would most like to see in our next rabbi.

Over the next six to nine months, six rabbis will visit BZBI to lead Shabbat services, offer teaching sessions before and/or after services, and participate in other ways in our Shabbat observance. Again, these rabbis are not coming here as "job candidates," although participating in this program will not automatically disqualify them from consideration when the search begins in earnest in 2014.

Rabbi Dan Ain received a B.A. in Philosophy from Brandeis University and a J.D. from Boston College Law School before being ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary. A prolific writer (for Huffington Post, Jewish Week, Sh'ma and Conservative Judaism, among others), he is currently the rabbi-in-residence at 92YTribeca,where he curates the Jewish Life program and leads provocative and offbeat conversations with prominent local personalities in the biweekly Shabbat Dinner series. He also hosts The New Shul's "Rebbe's Table" at City Winery in Tribeca. As adjunct professor at the Academy for Jewish Religion, he lectures on "Faith, Technology and Halakha" and grapples with the clash between burgeoning technological beliefs and traditional Jewish faith.

Rabbi Dan will lead a Shabbat morning study session (9:30-10:00) entitled "Faith or Technology," at which he will discuss the recent anti-internet ultra-Orthodox rally at CitiField. Following kiddush, he will conduct an interactive session about his experiences reaching out to unaffiliated and off-the-grid Jews.