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An international gathering of religious progressives to affirm
the contribution of reasonable and tolerant religion to public discourse in our society.
Jonathan grew up in a committed progressive Jewish family and always wanted to be a Rabbi. He went to a large orthodox Jewish day school, because it was the only choice in Jewish day schools, and had excellent engineering facilities. There he began to experience orthodox Judaism, which reinforced for him the values of his own progressive tradition! The family felt he should be an engineer and he spent two years studying Production Technology before leaving to work in industry as a stores and systems manager and buyer, first in plastics, then furniture.
Eventually he was accepted into Rabbinic training and spent five years, including nine months in Jerusalem and six months in Sydney Australia. Apart from Israel, one of the most significant influences was the annual Jewish-Christian-Muslim conference which was held in Germany.
On being ordained in 1988, Jonathan took up a position near London where he remained for 15 years. During this time he was involved in establishing a unique pluralist Jewish primary school which opened in 1995. His attention then turned to a secondary school, the campaign for which has continued since he left and which will open in 2008.
Jonathan has also become heavily involved in environmental work, constructing an underground home in London and running a car on compressed natural gas, charged up every night from the mains.
In January 2003, Jonathan and his family moved to Australia when took up his current position as Rabbi at the Leo Baeck Centre in East Kew.
Here in Australia he has built a ‘Seven Star Energy and Water Efficient showhome’, and established JECO, the Jewish Ecological Coalition. He was also involved in establishing the Jewish-Christian-Muslim Association of Australia which runs residential conference, a schools programme and other events.
He has a wonderful congregation of nearly 300 households, a part of the Union for Progressive Judaism.
Personal statement: I believe in putting prayer into practice. I am interested in faith frameworks for modern life, and my studies, talks and meetings with others have persuaded me that those of us who consider ourselves ‘religious’ have an enormous amount in common, as well of course as important differences. I firmly believe that we must learn to live together with interest and respect for, and indeed celebration of, difference and diversity. We pray to the same God, who created this magnificent diversity – who are we to try to make others the same as us? I also believe that God put us on earth as care-takers of creation – and we have done a pretty poor job recently and are fast running out of time! Hence I see it as our religious obligation to resolve difficulties and problems in our world.
