Who We Are, What We Do:

Shalom Rav sponsors regular Shabbat services and family Holiday celebrations, providing varied opportunities for collective worship drawing from both the Renewal and Reconstructionist traditions.

Our services and celebrations are greatly enhanced by the contributions of our Musical Directors, Barbara Taft and Abraham Davidson. They bring joy and life to High Holiday Services, the Friday night Community Shabbat Service, and many other celebrations and ceremonies.

Services are led by our Educational Director, Rabbi Monty Eliasov, who was ordained by Rabbi Gershon Winkler and studied Chassidic prayer styles under the guidance of the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Rabbi Monty teaches extensively from the Kabbalah and has created a unique pathway to the Jewish tradition called "Twelve Tribe Judaism"; he is an active teacher and leader in the Austin spiritual community. Rabbi Monty offers our members guidance toward individual paths of spiritual exploration, including life cycle guidance: for example, baby namings, b'nai mitzvot, b'nai Torah (recommitment to Judaism), weddings, shiva, etc.

Shalom Rav embraces the Reconstructionist view of Judaism as "the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people".  Through our affiliation with the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (JRF), we share ideas with other Reconstructionist communities and have access to the resources of the JRF and its rabbinical college (such as their path breaking gender-inclusive prayerbooks and teaching materials). We also find inspiration in other Jewish movements and organizations and draw freely on their resources and ideas, integrating their teachings into our holistic reconstruction of Jewish life. In particular, we openly align ourselves with the creativity of the Jewish Renewal movement and with the "Flexidoxy" approach that is being developed by Rabbi Winkler.

Shalom Rav welcomes members without regard to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or age. Some of our members have come to us from other incarnations of Judaism, while others never had any Jewish upbringing at all. We openly invite those who have traversed many other paths to come to us and view Judaism in the new yet ancient light of holistic tradition.

Our congregation is:

• Democratic: decisions are reached through a collaborative process;
• Participatory: we encourage all members to participate in and lead both community and religious activities, and to apply their unique skills to building and sustaining the Congregation;
• Inclusive: we seek to involve all Jewishly-identified members (both children and adults) fully in all religious services. We also extend full participation to non-Jewishly-identified partners who wish to join in Jewish ritual. We do not require conversion for membership.

Shalom Rav recognizes and embraces the multi-faceted nature of Jewish identity. Our members express their Judaism in many ways, for example:

• Community-building, expressed through working for the collective well-being of the Congregation: organizing Mitzvot, serving on the Board and committees, sharing meals and fellowship, etc.;
• Spirituality: exploring interaction with the divine, meditation, crafting liturgy;
• Ethnicity, expressed through the creative arts (literature, poetry, music, dance, and the visual arts), diet (Jewish regional cooking, vegetarianism, kashruth), Zionism (exploring our relationship with the State of Israel), language (study of Hebrew, Ladino, Yiddish...);
• Intellectual study of Jewish history, philosophy, and theology;
• Social responsibility, expressed through honoring the imperatives of Tikkun Olam and Tzedakah.

We encourage our members to share their individual explorations with the Shalom Rav community through sponsoring study groups, leading services and workshops, teaching songs, hosting celebrations, and many other initiatives.

Judaism is a collective endeavor. In community we find the guidance and strength to develop our individual and collective Jewish identities. As members of Congregation Shalom Rav, we connect ourselves to a 4,000-year-old worldwide community of Jews, and commit to maintaining the stability, strength, and caring of our congregation and of the Jewish people as a whole.

Please feel free to get in touch with us.

Other Reconstructionist and Renewal Judaism Resources on the Web

Jewish Reconstructionist Federation
Jewish Renewal