Rabbi Adam Kligfeld

Raised in a traditional Conservative home in Connecticut, Rabbi Adam Kligfeld brings to his work as Senior Rabbi Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles, California a commitment to Jewish ritual, his love for Israel, his enthusiasm for Jewish education and teaching Torah, and a devotion to creating community that is as spiritually mindful and enriching as it is kind and mutually empathic.

Rabbi Kligfeld came to Beth Am in 2009 after serving for 9 years at Congregation Eitz Chaim in Monroe, NY where he reinvigorated Eitz Chaim's Kabbalat Shabbat service, turning it into a spirited Carlebach-style approach to davvening, and revamped the Bnei Mitzvah program in order to teach all students the ongoing skills for reading Torah and serving as shaliah tzibbur on Shabbat. Over a four-year span, Rabbi Kligfeld helped Eitz Chaim to envision, plan and ultimately implement their dream of constructing a brand new synagogue building, placed strategically in the center of several residential neighborhoods in Monroe, fostering growth, and an even greater sense of a local Shabbat community.

In his decade of service to Beth Am, Rabbi Kligfeld has spearheaded major efforts to reinvent the prayer experience in the community, both viz. the content and music of the service, and also regarding the space itself. Beth Am’s newly designed, in-the-round, bathed-in-natural-light sanctuary will open in 2019, and will be a fitting incubator for the new modes of tefilah that have been born in the community in the last few years: The Shabbat morning Hama’alot service, which is an intentional, minute-by-minute curated service that has subsequently been the model for similar services being created in other synagogues; and Sovev, the Friday-night experience, built off of some of the newest and most enriching niggunim and liturgical music being composed in the Jewish community, and which uses in-the-round seating, an inner circle of Sovevim to create energy and harmony, and interwoven kavannot to bring out the deeper meaning of the prayers. Rabbi Kligfeld, along with his fellow clergy, are thrilled to share these developments and successes with colleagues and peers as communities around the country reinvigorate their prayer experiences.

Rabbi Kligfeld teaches regularly in the Pressman Academy Day School and Religious School, along with being a teacher and story-teller in the ECC. In addition to teaching a regular, weekly class on Humash with Rashi, Rabbi Kligfeld teaches throughout the Rabbi Joel Rembaum Institute for Adult Education and Family Programming.

Rabbi Kligfeld is an active member of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, a graduate of the Hartman Institute’s Rabbinic Leadership Initiative, and is a newly-appointed rabbinic mentor in the CLI (Clergy Leadership Incubator) directed by Rabbi Sid Schwarz. One of his passions is building bridges and connections within the Jewish community, and he has been instrumental in organizing joint events for Selichot, Shavuot and Tisha B’Av bringing together members from myriad local congregations from a variety of denominations. Rabbi Kligfeld is also deeply committed to interfaith work, and is proud of recent communal partnerships and friendships created with local Muslim communities, including organizing a series of Shabbat dinners coinciding with Iftar meals to end Ramadan fasts.
Rabbi Kligfeld served on the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement for ten years, and in that capacity stimulated a process of self-review for the CJLS that culminated in a series of recommendations for its future work and progress.

Rabbi Kligfeld is a 1995 graduate of Columbia College, magna cum laude, with a degree in psychology and Jewish history. He was ordained as a rabbi in 2000 by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, with a focus on Talmud.