Our Rabbis

The New Shul’s co-rabbis are Michael Wasserman and Elana Kanter, who have served together since founding the shul in 2002. They have been married to each other since 1984, and have three children.

Rabbi Wasserman is a graduate of Harvard University, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Rabbinic Leadership Initiative. He is the author of The Dancer and the Dance: Essays on Skepticism and the Search for Meaning (Wipf and Stock 2022). The Jewish Book Council has published a review of it, which you can read here.

Rabbi Kanter is a graduate of Barnard College, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She is a recipient of the Covenant Award for Exceptional Jewish Educators (1998). In addition to her work at The New Shul, she serves as the founding director of The Women’s Jewish Learning Center.