Our Student Rabbi
Greg Weisman is a fourth-year rabbinic student at the Hebrew
Union College (HUC) and Congregation Kol Ami’s student rabbi. He comes to Kol
Ami with excitement, hoping to bring energy and enthusiasm to Jewish learning and
communal life.
Greg is a native of Chicago, Illinois. He grew up at Temple
Jeremiah in Northfield, where he became bar mitzvah and was confirmed. During
his summers he was a camper and counselor at Camp Kawaga, a summer residential
camp in Wisconsin's Northwoods.
Greg received his bachelor's degree from Boston University,
majoring in philosophy and political science and minoring in Judaic studies. It
was at BU that Greg truly began his path toward the rabbinate both by his
studies and his participating in Hillel. After graduating in 2005, Greg moved
to Jackson, Mississippi to become an education fellow at the
Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life. The fellowship presented
him with a hands-on opportunity to enter the field of Jewish education. In his
position, Greg wrote religious school curriculum, planned and hosted an annual
three-day education conference, and made field visits to many congregations
across the South. In two years, Greg made over fifty weekend visits to a dozen
congregations from northern Arkansas to central Georgia.
Upon completing his two-year fellowship, Greg moved to Jerusalem
to begin his rabbinic studies at HUC. After one year there, he came to Los
Angeles and served Congregation Havurim in Temecula, California as their
student rabbi from 2008-2010. In 2010 he was awarded HUC's Louis and
Minnie Raphael Memorial Prize for Outstanding Service to a Small Congregation.
In
2011 Greg received his Master of Arts in Jewish Education from HUC’s Rhea
Hirsch School of Education. His fieldwork during that program included serving
as a chaplain intern at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and as a coordinator for
Mishpacha, the Family Alternative Learning
Program of Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas. There he helped to create and
implement a year-long family education program, which provided the
congregations younger learners and their parents to engage in acts of tikkun olam and the study of our Jewish
values.
Greg is married to Tami Weisman, Religious School Director at
University Synagogue in Brentwood. You can reach Greg at studentrabbi@kol-ami.org