With a cum laude degree in writing from Northwestern University, Rabbi Leder studied at Trinity College, Oxford, before receiving his master’s degree in Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati in 1986. He was ordained in 1987.

Rabbi Leder has published essays in Reform Judaism and the Los Angeles Times. His Torah commentaries in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal have been read weekly by over 50,000 people.

His first book, The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things, received national acclaim and brought him appearances on ABC's Politically Incorrect and NPR's All Things Considered. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein called him “everything we search for in a modern wise man; learned, kind, funny and non-judgmental, he offers remarkably healing guidance...he finds the true fabric of our spiritual lives."

His second book, More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul (Bonus Books, 2004) drew favorable attention in The New York Times, Town and Country magazine, numerous newspapers, television programs, and on NPR.

The American Jewish Press Association selected him for their Louis Rapoport Award for Excellence in Commentary, and he is a fellow in the British-American Project, a think tank that brings together leaders from America and Great Britain.

He is among the national figures interviewed for Charles Barkley’s book about race in America, Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man? (Berkley, 2005). For his work in promoting African-American/Jewish dialogue, he has received the Religious Action Center’s Kovler Award.

Most important, he is married to Betsy and father to Aaron and Hannah. He is also a Jew who likes to fish. Go figure.

Rabbi Elissa Schwartz Ben-Naim brings expertise in education to her role as rabbi for Brawerman Elementary School and head of its Judaic and Hebrew studies program.

Following college in 1991, she received a Fulbright fellowship for study in India, where she researched “Women in India: Female Gurus and the Goddess Tradition.” She earned her 1997 master’s degree in Jewish Education at Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem and Los Angeles, and was ordained as a rabbi in 2000.

Rabbi Ben-Naim has published in Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues, and was selected by the Melton Research Center at the Jewish Theological Seminary to participate in writing a cross-denominational standards and benchmarks curriculum project for Reform, community and Conservative day schools.

Rabbi Eshel first joined our Temple community in the Summer of 2001 when, returning from his first year of rabbinical school in Israel, he served our camps as a unit head. Rabbi Eshel has spent every subsequent summer working with our camps. As part of his training, he served as the Temple’s rabbinic intern from 2004-2006. He joined the Temple clergy as a full-time rabbi in the summer of 2006. His responsibilities include serving as camp rabbi in the summer and as a faculty rabbi for both Brawerman Elementary School and the Temple’s Religious Schools. David holds a B.A. in History from UCLA; he received an M.A. in Jewish Education from and was ordained by the Hebrew Union College. David’s wife, Stephanie, is a Religious School principal for Temple Judea in Tarzana and West Hills. They have two wonderful children.

Rabbi Shapiro first joined the Temple family in 2003 as the music specialist and song leader in our Religious School. Since then, he has taught music, Judaica, and Hebrew in our schools and served as a Judaic educator and student rabbi at our camps. As a part of his rabbinic training, he served as the Temple's Rabbinic Intern from 2009-2011.

A California native, Rabbi Shapiro holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California and a master's degree in Hebrew letters from the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion where he was ordained in 2011.

Committed to tikkun olam, Rabbi Shapiro oversees our social action and interfaith programming. He oversees the Karsh Family Social Service Center, a new facility that brings together our food security program with free and low cost dental, vision, pro bono legal, and counseling services for the most needy in our city.

From the Karsh Center to our Food Pantries and Disaster Response Team, he strives to bring people together to engage in meaningful work and experience the pride and warmth of our Jewish community.

Rabbi Shapiro grew up in Santa Barbara, California where his family still resides. He is married to Ashley, the love of his life, and is also an avid golfer.

Rabbi Susan Goldberg came to Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Koreatown in 2013. A fourth-generation Angeleno, she is thrilled to continue her focus on renewing LA’s east-side Jewish community to help it once again be an active part of the multicultural beauty of these neighborhoods. She brings a spiritual depth and intellectual rigor to her rabbinate. Rabbi Susan served as a revitalizing rabbi for Temple Beth Israel of Highland Park and Eagle Rock and as rabbi in residence for East Side Jews, a project of the Silverlake Independent JCC. Her leadership has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Lilith Magazine, Pasadena Magazine, the Jewish Journal, and on radio stations KPCC and KNX. 

Rabbi Susan was ordained by the Academy for Jewish Religion, California. Prior to becoming a rabbi, she was a dancer and choreographer, performing in venues all over the world and teaching Laban Movement Analysis in a number of universities, including Loyola Marymount, Cal State Long Beach, UCLA, and CalArts. Rabbi Susan has also been committed to cross-cultural dialogue and social justice. She has served as a consultant to and the designer/facilitator of workshops for such organizations as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Friends Service Committee, and The National Conference for Community and Justice (formerly The National Conference of Christians and Jews), and was the Co-Director of the Human Relations Awareness Program for the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission. She was a cofounder of Arts and Action, a community arts and culture space in the MacArthur Park neighborhood of LA. Currently she is part of the Southern California Muslim Jewish Forum, the Interfaith Clergy Roundtable for the Department of Mental Health, and is the Rabbi consultant for the groundbreaking television program, Transparent. Most importantly, she dances in her living room with her husband and their three kids.  

Rabbi Susan Nanus, a playwright, screenwriter, and teacher, is the director of adult programs at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, where she creates, writes, and produces Jewish cultural programs, leads services, and teaches classes. Susan is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, and has had plays produced all over the country, including on and off Broadway. Sixteen of her television movies have been produced on network and cable television; she has earned three Christopher Awards and the Writers Guild Award for Best Long-Form Screenplay.

Concurrent with her writing career, Susan was the coordinator of senior programs at the Westside Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles; a Jewish educator, running her own religious school for eight years; a Jewish day camp director; and a teacher of Hebrew, religious school, and conversion classes both in New York and Los Angeles. And last but not least, Susan is the proud mother of daughter and best friend, Lili.

Cleveland native Cantor Don Gurney joined Wilshire Boulevard Temple in 1999. After graduating from New York’s Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, School of Sacred Music, in 1986 he became director of its chorus and instructor in liturgical and 19th century synagogue music, remaining on its faculty until 1999. He also served as chazan at Emmanuel Synagogue in West Hartford, Connecticut from 1986 to 1994.

From 1994 to 1999, Cantor Gurney served Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York, and made his Lincoln Center conducting debut at the International Choral Festival in 1995. His tenor voice can be heard on two CDs, One Voice and Meditations of the Heart.

Cantor Gurney is married to Los Angeles native Nancy Binder. They are the proud parents of daughter Gillian.

A classically trained soprano, Cantor Peicott earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees in Music from the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and was recently ordained at the Academy for Jewish Religion—California. She joins us after spending the past five years of her cantorial career at Sinai Temple. In her time there, she taught trope and t’filah, sang at Friday Shabbat services, and created the Sinai Temple Meshorerim choir, composed of Grade 3–7 students. Cantor Peicott was also a pivotal part of Sinai’s b’nei mitzvah program; as a tutor and mentor, she helped students build and maintain stronger connections to their Judaism. As a Cantor, she strives to lift congregants to a higher spiritual place in synagogue through the power of music and prayer. 

Rabbi Karen L. Fox is the first woman rabbi to serve at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the fourth woman rabbi in Jewish history, and one of the few rabbis licensed as a psychotherapist. During Rabbi Fox’s 25 years of leadership at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, she impacted generations of Temple families, creating a vibrant Jewish life for them as a community and individually. As Rabbi Steve Leder, Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s Pritzker Chair of Senior Rabbinics, said: “When it comes right down to it—very few rabbis deeply affect another person’s life. Karen is one of the few. She is the best one-on-one rabbi I have ever known. She is a rabbi’s rabbi.” 

When she arrived at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in January 1985, Rabbi Fox immediately made a difference in the life of the Temple. She reinvigorated Jewish learning and living for hundreds of campers and staff as Director of Camp Hess Kramer and was ultimately honored as a “Legend” of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple Camps. Starting in 1998, she developed unique opportunities to engage adults at the Temple’s Audrey and Sydney Irmas Campus. Through the Caring Community and the Fields Center for Jewish life and Values, Rabbi Fox taught and implemented core Jewish values, teaching lay leaders to care for each other and their families during moments of life cycle transitions. Rabbi Fox facilitated a compassionate cadre of volunteers who continue to reach out to ill and homebound congregants—the chaverim-caring friends.

Through her love of Torah, Rabbi Fox led many adults and young people to commit to the study of Jewish texts and find personal meaning of these Jewish treasures in their lives. As the founder of the Women’s Torah Study group and its leader for 18 years, she guided Los Angeles women to uncover the wisdom and wonders of Torah, focusing on different commentators each year.

Rabbi Fox today is an activist on behalf of Israel, leading specialized adult trips to Israel and advocating for the Reform Jewish movement in Israel. Rabbi Fox is the national Rabbinic Associate Chair of ARZA (Association of Reform Zionists of America), which promotes the Reform voice in Israel.

Rabbi Fox has continued to enhance Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s national and international reputation by engaging in the larger Jewish community, along with our other rabbinic leaders. Rabbi Fox served as President of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis, as a member of the National Board of Israel Bonds, and as a member of the Board of Trustees, the Israel Convention Planning Committee, and the Ethics Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (the world-wide organization of 2,000 Reform rabbis). She has mentored dozens of rabbinic students and cantors, and continues to guide the next generation of rabbis as an Adjunct Professor at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. 

From 1978-82, Rabbi Fox was the first woman rabbi to serve the national Reform Jewish Movement as a Regional Director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now Union of Reform Judaism). In 1980, she and her brother, Rabbi Steven A. Fox, were the first sister-brother siblings in American Reform Jewish history to both be ordained as rabbis.

After completing her bachelor’s degree at UCLA in 1973, she earned a master’s in Hebrew literature and was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, in 1978. She earned an additional master’s degree in counseling psychology from Pepperdine University in 1992, and is a licensed California marriage and family psychotherapist. Rabbi Fox continues to study at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and as a member of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. 

Rabbi Fox has published a user-friendly guide to Jewish holidays, called Seasons for Celebration (Putnam, 1992), along with numerous articles on Jewish thought and women’s experiences in religious and therapeutic journals.

She is married to Michael Rosen, and is a proud mother to Avi and Benjy (Julie) and an Omi (Grandmother) to little David.

If you'd like to reach Rabbi Fox, contact Phil Wallace at (424) 208-8932 or pwallace@wbtla.org

News - Rabbi Fields Memorial

Rabbi Bruce Raff is passionate about Jewish education and Jewish living. He comes to Wilshire Boulevard Temple following 26 years as the Director of Education and Rabbi at Temple Judea in Tarzana. Bruce loves to innovate, creating new and different ways to make Jewish education family-friendly. His Nisayon model of doing Religious School and his use of teaching Hebrew through tutoring has transformed Religious School from a chore to a delight. His goal is for every student to love learning about Jewish life. He understands family life and wants Jewish education to be accessible and doable for all of our congregants. His other passion is mentoring young educators, and to date Bruce has mentored more than 75 graduate students.

Bruce has masters degrees in Education from the University of Judaism and in Hebrew Letters from the Hebrew Union College, and was ordained as a rabbi at HUC-JIR. Bruce is married to Tamar, the Judaic Studies Principal at Valley Beth Shalom Day School, and his two sons, Rami and Micah, are also both Jewish educators.