Clergy Profiles

Rabbi Kenneth Chasen
Sermon Archives

Rabbi Kenneth Chasen became the Senior Rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple in 2003.  Prior to joining Leo Baeck Temple, he served as the Associate Rabbi of Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York, where his tenure was marked by significant innovation in the areas of religious worship and lifelong Jewish education.

Rabbi Chasen received his bachelor’s degree in 1987 from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, graduating summa cum laude with honors.  Following his college graduation, Rabbi Chasen embarked upon a career in television film and music composition in Los Angeles, editing and composing musical scores on numerous film and network television projects.

Upon commencing rabbinical school in 1993, Rabbi Chasen was awarded the highly selective Wexner Graduate Fellowship.  Rabbi Chasen holds a master’s degree in Hebrew Letters from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), where he received rabbinic ordination in 1998.  He was the recipient of numerous honors and awards throughout his rabbinical studies, culminating with the Simon Lazarus Memorial Prize for attaining the highest overall academic standing in his ordination class.

The rabbi composes, records and performs original Jewish music as a member of the popular group, Mah Tovu.  Mah Tovu has released three CDs and two books – “Days of Wonder, Nights of Peace” and “Day of Days” – which guide Jewish families in the creation of meaningful Jewish rituals in the home.  Mah Tovu’s melodies are sung in synagogues, school and summer camps throughout North America and Israel.

Rabbi Chasen serves on numerous boards, including the Board of Trustees of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the President’s Council of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), and the National Board of Directors of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA).  He is also a member of the Synagogue 3000 Leadership Network, a select group of rabbis, cantors and spiritual visionaries from across the country whose congregations are especially noteworthy examples of what synagogues can be in the 21st century.  His articles have appeared in numerous books and journals, including Sh’ma and the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

Rabbi Chasen is married to Allison Lee, the Associate Director of the Western Region for American Jewish World Service.  Together, they share the joys and challenges of raising three children, Micah, Benjamin, and Eliana.

 

Rabbi Rachel Timoner

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Sermon Archives

Rabbi Rachel Timoner is thrilled to serve this extraordinary community as Assistant Rabbi.  Her passions are community-building, social justice, spiritual life, and lifelong learning, and she has an opportunity to do all of these at Leo Baeck Temple.  She helps to build community through the Generation Baecks Group, Havurat Vatikim, and the Caring Community.  She supports congregant social action efforts through Peacebuilders, the Green Team, the Homelessness Task Force, and the Sudan Focus Group.  As part of the clergy team, she co-leads Kabbalat Shabbat and the Shabbat Morning Minyan, and explores spiritual life with congregants through classes and retreats.  She teaches lifelong learning classes several days a week, and serves as rabbi to the religious school. 

Rabbi Timoner grew up in Miami, Florida, received a B.A. from Yale University, and received semicha from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2009, where she was honored with the Lorraine Helman Rubin Memorial Prize for Scholarly Writing, the Women of Reform Judaism Centennial Prize, the Professor Stanley Gevirtz Award for Excellence in Bible, and the Louis and Minnie Raphael Memorial Prize for Outstanding Service to a Small Congregation. 

From 1998 to 2004, she was a facilitator and consultant in organizational development and strategic planning. Previously, Rabbi Timoner raised funds to rebuild the San Francisco Women’s Building, a community center for low-income women; worked to mitigate the impact of welfare reform in California; worked in San Francisco City Hall for Supervisor Harry Britt; and founded two leadership programs and a peer hotline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth. 

Rachel lives with her partner Felicia and her sons Benjamin and Eitan.
 

Cantor Linda Kates

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Cantor Linda Kates is proud and honored to join the Clergy team of Leo Baeck Temple. She is a native of Los Angeles and has lived in the San Fernando Valley most of her life.  Growing up Cantor Kates sang in school and temple choirs and eventually found herself on staff at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley in 1983.  This is where her love for Judaism flourished and her journey really began. 

From there she was sent to Stephen S. Wise Temple where she stayed for 25 years.  At Stephen S. Wise Temple she studied with the renowned teacher of Hazzanut, Cantor Nathan Lam.  In 1995, Cantor Kates was certified by the Cantors Assembly of Conservative Judaism as a Master of Cantorial Studies and given the title of Hazzan.  She continued to spread both her talents and her love of the cantorate by co-chairing the Western Region of the Cantors Assembly for the last ten years, organizing workshops, conferences and projects, as well as serving on their Executive Council from 2003-2006. 

Cantor Kates is passionate about teaching young students both in the B’nai Mitzvah program and other programs that will soon be appearing at Leo Baeck Temple.  She hopes to inspire Torah readers after their B’nai Mitzvah to continue chanting here at the temple as the LBT Yad Squad.  Also in the future, you will see young singers join her on the Bimah, both at Shabbat services and High Holydays.  Her joy and hope is to encourage young singers to consider a career as a cantor.

Another of Cantor Kates’ goals here at Leo Baeck Temple is to expand the LBT Women’s programming.  At her last temple she started the Women of Wise (WOW) and grew it from twenty women in the first year to 400 paid WOW members by the time she left. You will see many of her new programs in this year’s LBT Women’s brochure.  As Cantor Kates recently stated, “Women can be the movers, shakers, nurturers, and visionaries of an institution.  We can also be an integral part in building a community of leaders in our own temple and leaders of social justice in our larger community.”  She hopes the women of LBT will come to learn together, laugh together, and build together a strong community of intergenerational members.

Linda is so proud of her work throughout the Jewish community of Los Angeles. She looks forward to a long and inspiring career at Leo Baeck Temple along with her husband, David, and her two daughters, Bria and Chloe.

 

Founding Rabbi Leonard Beerman

Sermon Archives

Leonard Beerman is a rare blend of disciplined scholar and sensitive humanitarian.  Add to that a commitment to Jewish values, a sparkling wit, and a deep sense of compassion and you begin to get a feeling for the man.

Borin in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 1921, Rabbi Beerman was ordained and received his Masters in Hebrew Letters and an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati.  His first pulpit upon ordination was with a tiny congregation on the Westside of Los Angeles … he has yet to find another congregation that suits him!

 

Rabbi Emeritus Sanford Ragins

Rabbi Sanford Ragins is almost a native Angeleno.  Chicago-born, he grew-up in Los Angeles and earned a Bachelor’s degree at UCLA.  A member of the first class to study for the rabbinate on the Los Angeles campus of HUC-JIR, he spent a year of study in Jerusalem before completing his rabbinical program and achieving ordination at HUC-JIR’s Cincinnati school in 1962.  By then, Sandy had met and married Masayo Isono, an HUC-JIR graduate student from Waseda University in Tokyo.  While Sandy served a synagogue in Hingham, Massachusetts and pursued a Ph.D. in the History of Ideas at Brandeis University, Masayo earned a Master’s degree in the University’s Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department.

In 1964, Leo Baeck Temple invited Sandy to serve as its Rabbi while Leonard Beerman was on sabbatical.  He was persuaded to stay on as the temple’s very first Assistant Rabbi for the following year.  He went on to serve other congregations in places as diverse as Nebraska and New York, but he eventually returned to Los Angeles and Leo Baeck Temple and became our Associate Rabbi in 1972.  When Rabbi Beerman announced his retirement in 1986, Rabbi Ragins was chosen as Senior Rabbi of the temple.  It was our congregation's privilege to have Rabbi Ragins serve in that capacity until his retirement in 2003.

Devoted to many religious and communal organizations, not only in the United States but in Israel and in Europe, Sandy has held countless leadership positions.  He has served three times on the National Board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and has held the challenging position of that organization’s Chair of the Ethics and Appeals Committee.  Rabbi Ragins has been a member of the National Board of the Union of Reform Judaism and President of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis.

Sandy has lectured at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles, at Waseda University in Tokyo, and at the Institut Kirche und Judentum in Berlin.  He has been a long-time visiting professor at Occidental College in the Los Angeles area.  Sandy’s writings include articles on Judaism and homosexuality, Eastern European Jewish history, and Zionism.  He has published a book on Jewish responses to anti-Semitism in Germany before World War I.

Sandy is spending his retirement hard at work … teaching, writing, and continuing to find ways to bring peace and healing to a broken world.  He enjoys having more time to spend with his family, Masayo, Arona, Marc, Noam, Mindy, Yohanna, and especially with his grandchildren Natalie and Alexander.

 

Cantor Emeritus William Sharlin

William Sharlin was born in 1920 in Harlem, New York City, to parents who had emigrated from Palestine. From earliest childhood his spiritual life was defined by his Orthodox family, his intensive Hebrew education and the synagogue - the place he characterizes as his “natural environment.”

In 1935, William’s parents returned to Jerusalem where he completed high school and studied piano at the Jerusalem Conservatory.  Composing music provided an important outlet for him during the political turbulence in Palestine and the untimely death of his mother a year after their arrival. In 1939, William returned to New York to study, earning a Master of Music degree in composition and piano from The Manhattan School of Music.  He entered the School of Sacred Music at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, earning a Bachelor of Sacred Music. When HUC-JIR offered him a three-year fellowship to the rabbinic school in Cincinnati, he accepted. There he began vocal studies while concentrating on composing and education. In 1954, he became Cantor of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles, California. 

Beyond the walls of Leo Baeck Temple, Cantor Sharlin has served as Chairman of the Sacred Music department and Adjunct Professor at the Los Angeles campus of HUC-JIR.  He received the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters upon his retirement in 1994. Widely known as a significant composer of Jewish music, generations to come will be touched by his gifts.