The Shalom Collaborative (TSC) is not a traditional Temple. We offer Rabbinic led services and activities as well as member led, and we refer to our Rabbi as Rabbinic Advisor. We encourage our Rabbi to limit his involvement in our day-to-day operations and leadership. In other words, our Rabbi focuses on being a Rabbi.
Rabbinic Advisor, Rabbi Andrew Sklarz
Rabbi Sklarz brings over 30 years of experience in the Rabbinate, including long tenures as Rabbi of The Reform Temple of Putnam Valley in New York (to which he was recruited to return in 2021) and the Greenwich Reform Synagogue in Greenwich CT. His education includes ordination and an honorary Ph.D. from the Hebrew Union College, as well as advanced degrees in social work, school psychology and Hebrew literature studies.
Rabbi Sklarz has put these studies to excellent use not only in the rabbinate but also in social work. His dedication to the seriously ill and more generally to adolescents, adults and families in crisis has resulted several awards and special recognitions, including the Hero’s Award from the Israel Cancer Research Fund. He has served as captain of teams for both the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the American Cancer Society.
Rabbi Sklarz believes there are myriad ways in which people can “connect” to Judaism, and as a self-described non-conformist, he strongly encourages a questioning of the status quo. Most of all, with his warm and compassionate manner, he seeks to create an environment in which Judaism is not only relevant and meaningful, but joyful. A lover of Classical music, theater, yoga and cycling, Rabbi Sklarz is filled with gratitude to be thriving, some twenty years following his diagnosis of Leukemia. Rabbi Sklarz extends much appreciation to his wife, Susan, daughter, Daniella, and son, Alexander, for being his greatest cheerleaders.
Rabbinic Advisor Emeritus, Rabbi Howard Berman
Rabbi Howard A. Berman helped establish The Shalom Collaborative coming out of retirement in 2021. He retired from TSC in June of 2023. Rabbi Berman is also the founding rabbi of Central Reform Temple of Boston, and rabbi emeritus of Chicago Sinai Congregation, Chicago’s historic center of liberal Reform Judaism, having served as senior rabbi since 1982.
Rabbi Berman was born in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where he received his early religious and general education. After attaining his undergraduate degree in European History from the Universities of Cincinnati and London, England, he studied for the Rabbinate at the Leo Baeck College in London, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and HUC-JIR in Cincinnati, where he received the degree of Master of Hebrew Letters and was ordained in 1974. He has also pursued graduate studies in American Religious History at the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Chicago Theological Seminary, and studied Architectural History at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. In 1999 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity by the HUC-JIR . Rabbi Berman is the editor of several books, among them The New Union Haggadah, Revised Edition, published by CCAR Press in 2014.