As a young professional, Rabbi Joshua Beraha found himself torn between the universal and the particular — the general field of education and the Jewish community. He was able to find both as a rabbi.
He was named senior rabbi of Temple Micah in Washington effective July 1, after serving as the Reform shul’s associate rabbi since 2014.
“I am humbled to become the next senior rabbi of Temple Micah,” Beraha said. “I feel like there’s a weight of responsibility out of allegiance to my predecessor, the Rabbi Emeritus [Daniel] Zemel, who is my mentor, teacher and friend … and also trying to write the next chapter of Temple Micah.”
Beraha has stayed at Temple Micah for more than a decade because of the “great people and culture” that make up the community. But he didn’t have the rabbinate in mind growing up in Providence, Rhode Island.
“I had all different ideas like any child, but the rabbinate came later,” he said. “My first job out of college was a public school teacher in New York City public schools.”
Beraha was part of the New York City Teaching Fellows. He earned his master’s in education, and in return, taught full-time in a high-needs school on the Lower East Side.
“Being raised in the Jewish community, I was raised to be a good citizen, and I was drawn to education in an underprivileged, underserved area out of that commitment to be a good citizen,” Beraha said. “And I love working with people — I’m an extrovert.”
He wanted to do good for the world, but from the context of a Jewish community. So Beraha left public education and pursued the rabbinate. He said not much has changed.
“It feels like I’m still doing the same work,” Beraha said. “It’s just in a very different context … I find a lot of similarities in the work, just connecting with people and connecting with big ideas. I see education as the driver for social change, and I see education in the Jewish community also as the driver for change.”
As he transitions from associate rabbi to senior rabbi, Beraha will shoulder the task of providing strategic leadership to Temple Micah, focusing on religious leadership, community and culture, pastoral care, continuing education and social justice.
“Overall, I’d say my work is to consider the flavor of Temple Micah, like, ‘Who are we as an institution?’” Beraha said. “‘What do we stand for, and what do we bring into this world?’”
A large part of Temple Micah’s mission and values is its commitment to social justice, according to the synagogue.
“I see social justice as something that’s Jewish,” Beraha said. “I think that the Jewish conversation is one about how we achieve a better world than the one we’re living in now. This is deep in the roots of Temple Micah.”
The community is home to a group that has “adopted” immigrant families and helped them begin anew in the United States. Temple Micah’s annual underwear drive benefits Friendship Place, which provides housing services for those experiencing homelessness in the district.
And the shul community has launched a program of its own: Micah House, a two-year transitional home for women overcoming substance abuse and homelessness in the district.
“These are examples of direct work we’re doing in the community … so I would like to continue the work on those and also find a way to build and try to respond to the moments,” Beraha said.
Social justice is important to the rabbi in a Jewish context.
“The whole Jewish story is one of a movement towards freedom,” he said. “That’s the Jewish story … We each have a purpose — that’s from Genesis — and then we are supposed to hold out hope for a different world … That’s the pattern: we have a role to play, and that role is a hopeful role, one of looking forward.”
Beraha thinks of himself as fitting into that role: “I think if you are a Jew, you are asked to be a hopeful person.”
He said he draws inspiration from his rabbinic mentor.
“[Rabbi Zemel] taught me the importance of reading widely … beyond the field of Judaism, and also to always read with a pen in hand,” Beraha said. “Find complicated sentences and underline them and read them twice.”
As Beraha prepares to take the helm of leadership at Temple Micah in less than half a year, he remembers the rabbi emeritus’ words.
“Rabbi Zemel said that there are two different kinds of rabbis: a rabbi for whom everything makes sense and a rabbi for whom nothing makes sense,” Beraha said. “I feel like the starting point of my Judaism is that nothing makes sense and that means everything has to be questioned and brought into conversation with the context of our lives today.”
He tied this idea back to social justice.
“If we look around, the world is falling apart from democratic norms here to democratic norms in Israel, and I think we need to address the country we live in and the country we love, and figure out where our places are in that larger story,” Beraha said.
