Link

Rabbi Jeffrey Cymet

Rabbi Jeffrey Cymet has arrived in the United States to serve as the featured speaker for Israel and Aliyah promotion in the annual "Lech Lecha" tour sponsored by MERCAZ USA, the Zionist Organization of the Conservative Movement.

Born in Merrick, Long Island, Rabbi Cymet was introduced to Israel as a child when his family moved to the Jewish State. Although they relocated to Florida after two years, from that point on, Jeff was a committed Zionist. He spent summer vacations in Israel with the family and, as an undergraduate at Princeton University, wrote his Junior thesis on "Cultural Conflicts between Secular and Religious Jews in Israel".

After earning his JD from Georgetown University Law Center and getting experience in international law, Rabbi Cymet made aliyah in 1992 and settled as a young lawyer in Tel Aviv. Following his military service in the Israel Defense Forces, Rabbi Cymet met his wife Lorna, herself a new immigrant from Australia, and together they created their new family with the births of their son Yanai and daughter Milly. However, after noticing that all the books on his bookshelves were related to Jewish themes, Jeff packed up his household, with the support of his wife, and moved back to the United States to enroll at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Five years later, in 2008, he was ordained a Conservative rabbi.

Living in Israel, however, was always the goal, even though the life of a Conservative rabbi is far easier in the Diaspora than in the Jewish state. Following his ordination, Rabbi Cymet returned to Israel and assumed the part-time position as spiritual leader of the Masorti congregation in Rehovot. The following year, a second part-time position, at Congregation Tiferet Shalom in Tel Aviv, was added to his responsibilities, and just a few months ago, over the summer, the Tel Aviv congregation agreed to make Rabbi Cymet its full-time rabbi.

As his cv reads, Rabbi Cymet is a "rabbi, teacher, public servant and advocate". He has been active in the fight for religious pluralism and has sought ways to reconnect secular Jews to their Jewish roots by using the work of modern Jewish writers, like S.Y. Agnon, Ahad Ha’am and Philip Roth to illustrate traditional themes. He has also taken a lead in wresting the public expression of Judaism in Tel Aviv away from the ultra-Orthodox, including, for example, demonstrating against missionary activities aimed at children in his neighborhood, bringing Masorti Judaism into public celebrations of the holidays in the city, and actively opposing the custom of using live chickens in performing the pre-Yom Kippur rite of kapparot.