Rabbi Dan Levin serves as the senior rabbi of Temple Beth El, located in Boca Raton, FL, the congregation where he began his career in 1996. As the congregation’s leader, Rabbi Levin works to create a community where each member is inspired to lead a life of spiritual richness, meaning, purpose, and service. He seeks to build a congregation whose mission is to synthesize the innate questions and moral challenges of the world in which we live with the wisdom and power of centuries of Jewish tradition. It is this synthesis of tradition and the modern world that guides his teaching, worship, and pastoral care. Rabbi Levin believes that God is found in the intimacy of relationship, and seeks to build in the congregation a web of care, love, and oneness with each other, the community in which we live, and with the Jewish people here, in Israel, and throughout the world.
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Episodes
Each episode of Essential Questions with Rabbi Dan Levin will pose an essential question and invite a conversation with remarkable people in the Jewish world and in our community to consider what those questions and answers mean.
Episodes
Sep 18, 2024
Sep 18, 2024
49 min
In this episode of Essential Questions, Rabbi Dan Levin speaks with two of Temple Beth El’s cantors, Cantorial Soloist Michelle Auslander Cohen and Cantor Jake Harris. They discuss their love of Jewish music and what led them to become cantors, how they engage a large congregation for an exceptional communal experience, what goes into preparing to lead the congregation for the High Holy Days, how they personally prepare for the High Holy Days, and more.
Sep 11, 2024
Sep 11, 2024
48 min
In this episode of Essential Questions, Rabbi Dan Levin speaks with Desee Berkowitz, author of Becoming a Soulful Parent, and Rabbi Amy Pessah, author of Parenting on a Prayer. They discuss how to ensure your child’s spiritual growth, how to prioritize spirituality amid other commitments such as sports and academic demands, small ways to bring spirituality and gratitude into children’s lives, balancing the need to protect your children with allowing them to make mistakes, and more.
Sep 4, 2024
Sep 4, 2024
47 min
In this episode, Rabbi Dan Levin speaks with Rabbi Shai Held about the concept of love. They define love in a spiritual context, and discuss how you can develop a “posture” of love, how to learn to love yourself, and what it means to love others, as well as how the concept of love connects with those of hate, justice, and protest.
Aug 28, 2024
Aug 28, 2024
49 min
In this episode of Essential Questions, Rabbi Dan Levin speaks with Rabbi Dr. Mark Washofsky. They discuss the intersection between Reform Judaism and halakha, the ongoing conversation between ancient texts and modern life, and what it means to be “authentically Jewish” within Reform Judaism.
Aug 21, 2024
Aug 21, 2024
49 min
In this episode of Essential Questions, Rabbi Dan Levin talks with Tracey Labgold, Florida Education & Training Manager for Keshet, a non-profit that works for LGBTQ+ equality in Jewish life. They discuss different LGBTQ+ identities, the differences between sexual orientation and gender identity, and the best ways to support those who identify as queer in a Jewish context.
Aug 14, 2024
Aug 14, 2024
44 min
In this episode of Essential Questions, Rabbi Dan Levin talks with Rabbi Laila Haas, who joined Temple Beth El's clergy team in June 2024. They talk about how they both fell in love with Jewish learning, their experiences learning in Israel, what Torah means to them, how they find meaning and purpose in their lives through Judaism, and more.
Aug 8, 2024
Aug 8, 2024
42 min
In this episode of Essential Questions, Rabbi Dan Levin speaks with Dr. Martin Segel and Dr. Marissa Roecklein about cognitive dissonance, or the discomfort that occurs when you hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time. They discuss why it is so hard to recognize within yourself, what enforces it, and tools to combat it.
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024
43 min
In this special Passover episode of Essential Questions, Rabbi Dan Levin speaks with Rabbi Debra Robbins, author of New Each Day, which we are using for our Omer practice this year. They discuss ways to incorporate a daily prayer practice into your life, select poems Rabbi Debra Robbins wrote in response to the psalms in New Each Day, and her experience in writing the book.
Rabbi Dan Levin
Rabbi Levin is a past president of SEACCAR, the southeast region of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and serves on the Budget and Finance committee of the CCAR. He is proud to be a member of the President’s Rabbinical Council of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, and serves on the Alumni Leadership Council. Previously, he served as a member of the Reform Movement’s Think Tank, a group seeking to create a visioning process for the future of Reform Judaism, and as a partner in the Kalsman Institute for Judaism and Health. He has mentored younger colleagues through the CCAR, The Wexner Foundation, and the CLI Fellows program of CLAL – the Center for Learning and Leadership.
Locally, he has served on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, as a board member of Ruth and Norman Rales Jewish Family Services, the American Jewish Committee, and the Mathew Forbes Romer Foundation. He was a featured writer for the Union for Reform Judaism’s Ten Minutes of Torah, and blogs.
Rabbi Levin is a Senior Rabbinic Fellow with the Shalom Hartman Institute. A recipient of the prestigious Wexner Graduate Fellowship, Rabbi Levin studied at the Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and New York campuses of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, and was ordained in May, 1996. He graduated from Colgate University with a degree in Philosophy and Religion in 1991, and also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He and his wife Aimee are the parents of three children, Ari, Meredith, and Eliana.