Rabbi Rachel Timoner

Rabbi Rachel Timoner is grateful and proud to serve as Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim (CBE) in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She is honored to stand with families at moments of great joy and deep sorrow in their lives, and delighted to be part of a flowering of creativity, community, learning, spirituality, and action at CBE.

Rabbi Timoner’s initiatives include weekly classes designed to get to the heart and meaning of the prayer experience, a rabbinic conversation on antisemitism, a study series on systemic racism in America, and discussions on peoplehood and nationalism. Other initiatives include a sukkah about the refugee experience, a dialogue and study series on Israel, a revival of CBE’s youth group, a partnership with Antioch Baptist Church to address racism and antisemitism in Brooklyn, and a Dismantling Racism Team.

Rabbi Timoner helped launch RAC-NY and Reform California, two statewide efforts to bring Reform Jewish values to bear on core issues of our time – immigration, affordable housing, and racial profiling. In November 2016, Rabbi Timoner, in cooperation with City Councilmember Brad Lander, co-founded #GetOrganizedBK in CBE’s sanctuary; over the next two years, 10,000 Brooklyn neighbors came together to resist autocracy and protect human rights. In May 2022, she gathered 55 women rabbis of all denominations to meet with the Mayor to change the face of Jewish leadership in New York.

A graduate of Yale University, Rabbi Timoner received S’micha from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and was a Rockefeller Next Generation Leadership Fellow and Wexner Graduate Fellow.

She serves on several boards, including the New York Jewish Agenda, the Brooklyn Community Foundation, the New York Board of Rabbis, the UJA-Federation of New York, Plaza Community Chapel, Community Help in Park Slope (CHiPS), and the International Council of the New Israel Fund.

She is a T’ruah chavera, and also a graduate of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s Clergy Leadership Program and Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training. She is the author of Breath of Life: God as Spirit in Judaism.