Rabbi's Welcome
Shalom and Bih-roo-cheem Hah-bah-eem – WELCOME! – to Temple Brith Achim’s virtual home on the World Wide Web. I’m so glad you have chosen to spend some time visiting our website, as I know this site is rich with ideas and information to help make our site and our congregation more familiar to you, and to help you feel more comfortable during your visit as well.
While your journey through these pages will offer you many glimpses into the myriad programs, activities, and worship experiences that fill our Temple Events Calendar to overflowing almost every week of every year, they are only glimpses. Sharing time with us in person will give you, and us, tangible opportunities to make Judaism come alive, shaping and changing our lives through prayer and through study, through celebration and through support, through dance and through song, through community and through connections – through “Brith Achim,” brotherhood/sisterhood.
Everyone of every age, from every background, will be able to find a home here with us, as we continually and continuously strive to be a home for all. Temple Brith Achim provides worship experiences and other events and activities not simply to fill time. We offer experiences that are worthwhile and effective, meaningful and informative, enjoyable and relevant. Not everyone will participate in every scheduled program or activity…but our ultimate goal is to offer SOMETHING for EVERYONE!
Just as you now have the chance to get to know a little about us through visiting this website, we welcome the chance to get to know a little about you as well, perhaps through your visiting us in person. Our dedicated Lay Leadership and our devoted Support Staff, along with our Education Director and myself, are eager to block out time to spend with you, answering questions, addressing concerns, and discussing the unique and wonderful community that is the Temple Brith Achim Family.
Rabbi's Bio
Our new Interim Rabbi, Chana Leslie Glazer, is a pluralistic Jewish spiritual leader and educator of all ages.
Rabbi Glazer was raised in the Reform and Conservative movements and was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in 2013. She has led Reconstructionist, Conservative, Traditional and pluralistic, non-denominational congregations, including serving as a college-campus rabbi with Hillel. She has also spent significant time studying with the Jewish Renewal movement - over more than 10 years. She brings wisdom from all these communities into her rabbinic work.
Most recently prior to TBA, Rabbi Glazer served as spiritual leader of Congregation Adat Reyim, of Springfield, VA (non-denominational). While there she demonstrated many of her core strengths as a rabbi, including:
- Deftly leading the congregation through the pandemic, using spiritual tools, pastoral skills, and ritual and technological innovations;
- Maintaining a strong focus on membership recruitment and engagement, through initiatives designed to meet members’ social, intellectual and spiritual needs;
- Engaging children and teens with care, through stories, discussion, song, prayer – and empowerment;
- Bringing her keen commitment to social justice, and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging, into the congregation;
- Welcoming and offering outreach to members of the LGBTQ community - especially transgender and non-binary children and their families;
- Offering strong support for Interfaith Families;
- Helping to relaunch and expand the area’s interfaith clergy group;
- Working with parents, children and communal leaders to advocate for antisemitism response in public schools, and for the inclusion of Jewish, Muslim and Hindu holidays in the schools’ academic calendars.
Rabbi Glazer has also served as the spiritual leader of Congregation Am Haskalah of the Lehigh Valley, PA (Reconstructionist); Beth Sholom Synagogue of Memphis, TN (Conservative); and Beth Israel Synagogue of Roanoke, VA (Unaffiliated/Traditional). She was the Chaplain for Jewish Community at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA, where she won two diversity awards and served as the campus rabbi, Hillel director and director of Jewish Life. She also spent a year as a student chaplain at the Abramson Center for Jewish Life of North Wales, PA, a senior living residence – which was invaluable experience in working with Jewish elders.
As a rabbinical student, she organized divinity and seminary students from five faiths to form Philadelphia Emerging Religious Leaders (PERL). For that work she was awarded RRC’s Rabbi Devora Bartnoff Memorial Prize for Spiritually Motivated Social Action. PERL was later integrated into the Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia.
Prior to her rabbinical service, Rabbi Glazer spent more than a decade working as a journalist, foreign correspondent and editorial manager, most of which was served covering Latin America and the Caribbean. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Cornell University with an interdisciplinary degree in Government, International Relations and Latin American Studies.
Rabbi Glazer speaks five languages and loves connecting with people and learning. She enjoys art, theater, music and culture of many kinds, current events, travel, spiritual practices including prayer, yoga and meditation, as well as getting outdoors and playing with her irresistible rescue dog, Nina Mina.