RABBI HAZZAN JEREMY LIPTON

Rabbi Hazzan Jeremy Lipton is the newly appointed Rabbi of Bethlehem Hebrew Congregation.  As a dually ordained rabbi and hazzan, he is committed to attending to the various spiritual, educational, and pastoral needs in each of the communities that he has served. Rabbi Lipton has been immersed in leading and partnering with synagogues for more than twenty-five years as Klei Kodesh, most-recently as the Senior Rabbi at Beth El Congregation in Akron, Ohio, and previously at Congregation Agudas Achim in San Antonio, Texas, as well as at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles, California. In 2017 and 2018 he also served as Rabbi-in-Residence at Congregation Beth Tikvah in Toulouse, France (part of Masorti Olami’s Outreach Partnership program), where he created multiple learning opportunities, teaching Torah, rabbinic texts, Jewish history and culture, synagogue skills, and liturgy.  

For the past ten years, Rabbi Lipton has been the Director of Placement for the Cantors Assembly, the Conservative movement’s international organization of hazzanim. Along with various governance and leadership roles that he undertook within the Assembly, he has chaired national and international conferences, including their 2016 Mission to Spain, where he co-lead a group of 350 lay people and clergy on an incredible journey of Jewish discovery. He has also been an active member of the Jewish Educators Assembly and has served on its Board of Directors.

In addition to Rabbinic Ordination and a Master’s Degree in Jewish Studies from the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York, Rabbi Lipton also holds a Doctor of Music Degree, honoris causa, from the Jewish Theological Seminary, as well as Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Music. His multi-dimensional background encompasses an array of teaching experiences, including those in colleges, universities, and seminaries.

From 1992-2008, Rabbi Lipton was the director of American Jewish University’s highly successful Baal Tefillah Institute, where he mentored lay and professional leaders in essential synagogue skills, including liturgy, cantillation, and nusach hat’fillah for the entire liturgical year. He has also held several academic posts—as professor of liturgical studies at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California, as well as adjunct lecturer in nusach and liturgy at the American Jewish University’s Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York. Clergy from across the United States continue to seek him out as a master teacher, coach, and mentor.

Rabbi Lipton characterizes his approach within each of his professional domains as contagiously enthusiastic; he is known for his extraordinary patience, unique ability to bring people into relationship with each other, flexibility, easy collaboration, and his capacity to nurture and reach all levels in diverse synagogue populations.