Our Clergy
Please join us in welcoming our new Rabbi as of July 2024:
Rabbi Barbara Symons
I am thrilled to drop my anchor in City Island to become the rabbi of Shul by the Sea. I welcome you to join me as we pray, learn, and repair the world together discovering and rediscovering the balance between tradition and today. We will engage with one another through sacred texts, inspiring music, the beauty and diversity of Judaism and Jewish culture and just plain fun while nurturing partnerships within and beyond the Jewish community.
A bit about me: I graduated from the University of Michigan and was ordained by Hebrew Union College in 1994. Mostly recently, I served Temple David in Monroeville, Pennsylvania for 18 years and have been named Emerita. I am thrilled to have even a small part in raising up prophetic voices through the diversity of contributors in the book I edited Prophetic Voices: Renewing and Reimagining Haftarah (CCAR Press 2023). I met my husband Rabbi Ron Symons during our first week in Jerusalem at Hebrew Union College and am daily and deeply proud of, and inspired by, him and our three children all of whom are not only committed Jews but learned, creative Jewish professionals.
We are so thankful for the year we had with Rabbi David E. Levy. Please click thru for his website if you wish to reach him.
Interim Rabbi David E. Levy says: My route to becoming a Rabbi was certainly not a straight line! My first step was on Masada at 5:30 am on my 2001 Birthright Israel trip. As I watched the sun rise out of the Dead Sea, I felt connected to the Jewish people in a way I never had before. That moment catalyzed a trajectory that culminated three years later in a call to HUC-JIR from my cubicle at GE. In between those two moments, yes I got my Bachelors degree in Information Systems, but more importantly I fell in love with the wisdom of the Jewish tradition, and helping individual Jews and Jewish communities thrive. That passion has only grown over these past twenty years as I continue to invest in my own learning and growth, and create opportunities for communities and individuals to do the same. I live in Westchester, NY with my wife Kate, our three sons, Benji, Micah, and Ezra and our dog Gizmo.
Our former Rabbi David Markus is North America’s only pulpit rabbi also to hold a full-time oath of office, weaving spiritual and secular while staying fully faithful to both. One of only two rabbis whom New York Jewish Week named among Jewish life’s “36 to Watch” for 2022, Rabbi David is a prominent liturgist, musician, educator and pathfinder for a vibrantly modern Jewish life with depth of mind, heart and soul. Rabbi David nourishes his pulpit service with innovation from Bayit: Building Jewish (a trans-denominational innovation incubator whose board he chairs), as rabbinics faculty of the Academy for Jewish Religion (New York’s pluralist accredited seminary), and his practice as spiritual director for seekers of all faiths. Rabbi David began at TBE as a student intern and stayed on for 13 years, until July 2023. We wish him all the best.
Rabbi Emerita Shohama Wiener was the first female president of any Jewish seminary in history, the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York, and also served for 15 years as Rosh Hashpa’ah (Head of Spiritual Direction) and member of the Vaad (Academic Council) for the ALEPH Ordination Programs. Under Rabbi Shohama, Temple Beth El became a “training synagogue” for the renewal of Judaism. Rabbi Shohama became Rabbi Emerita in 2019 and returns to TBE for Shabbat by the Sea and the High Holy Days. She currently lives in Florida.