““It was the very first Reboot summit in 2002 and I sat in an open space session convened around the question “Is the synagogue dead?” I didn’t say a word—I just listened as people talked about their boredom, alienation, frustration with conventional Jewish environments. I began to wonder what could be done to create sacred space that would inspire and ignite the Jewish hearts of folks like that— smart, creative, unconventional, disaffected. In that moment, the seeds for IKAR were planted. Two years later, we launched—with several Rebooters in our founding leadership.”
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Rabbi Sharon Brous is a leading voice in reanimating religious life in America, working to develop a spiritual roadmap for soulful, multi-faith justice work in Los Angeles and around the country. Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, which was started in 2004 and has become a model for Jewish revitalization in the US and beyond. With the goal of reinvigorating Jewish practice and inspiring people of faith to reclaim a moral and prophetic voice, IKAR quickly became one of the fastest growing and most influential Jewish congregations in the country. Today it is credited with sparking a rethinking of religious life in a time of unprecedented disaffection and declining affiliation.
Brous’s 2016 TED talk, “Reclaiming Religion,” has been viewed by more than 1.3 million people and translated into 22 languages. In 2013, she blessed President Obama and Vice President Biden at the Inaugural National Prayer Service, and Mayor Eric Garcetti at his inauguration in LA in 2017. She spoke at the Women’s March in Washington, DC in 2017, and at the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in 2018. Brous was named #1 on the Newsweek/The Daily Beast list of the most influential Rabbis in America, and has bee recognized by The Forward and the Jerusalem Post as one of the fifty most influential Jews. She was featured on the cover of TIME magazine in 2018 based on Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms.
Brous is in the inaugural cohort of Auburn Seminaries Senior Fellows program, which unites top faith leaders working on the frontlines for justice. Brous also sits on the faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute-North America and REBOOT, and serves on the International Council of the New Israel Fund and the national steering committee for the Poor People’s Campaign.
She is a graduate of Columbia University, was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.
Rabbi Sharon Brous Featured On Time Magazine’s Norman Rockwell Throwback Cover.