Our Clergy

Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen

Rabbi Bruce Louis Cohen serves in our synagogue as both senior clergy and as music director. A multi-lingual scholar and poly-instrumental professional musician, Rabbi Cohen’s combined skill sets and achievements in theology and the creative arts seem to make Manhattan inevitable as where he would serve.

He has long occupied widely-acknowledged “front-line” niches in both theological leadership and creative artistry: his range of experience and skills include being a yeshiva instructor (teacher of rabbis), a private school principal, teacher, and author of curriculum; an international shaliakh (official envoy for North America’s largest Two-Testament Jewish association), and more. On the artistic side, he has done front-line theatrical directing/producing, musical composition, recording, producing, performance, concert band conducting and stage-directing. He has been a contributing author and editor of many books and periodicals – even one of the world’s foremost English dictionaries. Rabbi Bruce has also long been acknowledged to be among the foremost pioneer-generation composers, performers, and recording artists in the “Messianic” genre, as the Music Review in The Messianic Times emphatically affirmed when his Greatest Hits album was released in 2006. Five of his songs have been “covered” by world-famed secular pop-vocalist, Helen Shapiro, as well as other recording artists.

Rabbi Bruce’s vision for “The City,” and for our synagogue community within it, embarks from his conviction that excellent education and acumen lead more naturally toward God than away from Him. Rabbi Bruce believes the Jewish population of Manhattan needs to see and hear a Judaism to which one’s heart and mind both nod “yes” on all levels; and in his view, there is no sound Judaism without the atonement provided by God through the Suffering Messiah. (See The Book of Isaiah chapter 53 and Talmud Bavli Tractate Sukkah 52a).

He believes Manhattan’s Jewish population can be most effectively influenced toward positive human and eternal lives in relationship with God and Messiah (John 17:3) by experiences of faith, doctrine, and community life that earn respect on their merits. In Rabbi Bruce’s view –  passionate spiritual vibrancy and academic excellence are in no way naturally mutually-exclusive.

Clicking on the following link will take you to Rabbi Cohen’s website devoted to his work arenas in writing, theater, and music beyond our synagogue.

LEADERSHIP STRUCTURE

Beth El of Manhattan has three separate layers of leadership in its structure.

1. RABBINATE:
Our rabbi serves as our community’s lead religious official and primary vision-caster, fomenting constructive exchange and development of ideas and practice in our Manhattan community. As eloquently written in “The Leadership Development Guide” for Conservative Judaism – “Authority for religious practice in each congregation resides in its rabbi. It derives from the rabbi’s training, and by the fact that the community has chosen that rabbi to be its religious guide.” Our founding and current rabbi is Bruce L. Cohen. Rabbi Bruce is also collegially accountable to a circle of rabbis from Los Angeles to Jerusalem to Cape Town who advise and support Beth El, some also serving as it’s available Beit Din for matters requiring one.

 2. “VA’AD” (LEADERSHIP BOARD):
This is a group composed of varying combinations of Gabbai’im (Pulpit officiants), Z’keneem (Elders), and Shamashim (Assistants or Deacons). These are members of Beth El, raised up from within the synagogue as leaders according to the Two-Testament model (Exodus 18:21-22 and 1Timothy 3).

3. BOARD OF TRUSTEES:
The above-cited Va’ad functions at present as the Interim Board of Trustees pursuant to NY State Religious Corporations Law, Article 9, under which Beth El was incorporated in 1996.