Our Rabbis

Our rabbis are always available to help your family move through life transitions, whether welcoming new children and celebrating birthdays or coping with illness and loss in your immediate or extended family. Please contact Rabbi Zeff’s assistant, Iain Little, at 215-844-1507 ext. 16 or rabbinicassistant@germantownjewishcentre.org to schedule a time to talk.

RABBI ADAM ZEFF

Counseling, Lifecycle events, Study, Conflict resolution, Ritual questions, B’nei Mitzvah
215-844-1507 | rabbi@germantownjewishcentre.org
Ask the Rabbi, The Rabbi’s Blog, The Rabbi’s Page (Resources, Rabbi in Action)

Rabbi Adam Zeff has served as Rabbi at the Germantown Jewish Centre since 2010, after previously serving as Assistant Rabbi (2007-2010) and Student Rabbi (2002-2007). In his pre-rabbinic life, he was a cultural anthropologist who lived in South India for several years studying the connections between music, media, and society. Music has long been an important part of his life as a singer and instrumentalist in eastern and western musical traditions, and he has performed with many different ensembles in the U.S., Europe, India, and Israel. A native Californian, he spent a “gap year” in Israel before coming east for college, and he received a B.A. in Anthropology from Yale University in 1990, a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, and rabbinic ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in 2007. He has taught cultural anthropology at Penn and at Drexel University, and liturgy at RRC. At GJC, Rabbi Zeff loves telling stories, teaching Torah, singing and playing music, working for justice, and talking, laughing, and learning with the people around him. He is active in religious dialogue with Christian and Muslim clergy and is on the Executive Committee of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia. As someone who grew up Reform, experimented with Orthodoxy in college, studied at a Reconstructionist seminary, and is a member of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, Rabbi Zeff is comfortable in a wide variety of Jewish settings and modes of worship and practice. His core conviction is that diversity in Jewish life and in the wider world is the truest expression of the divine. He and his wife live in Mt. Airy and have three adult sons.

 

MARIA PULZETTI

Student Rabbi & Beit Midrash Director
215-844-1507 | studentrabbi@germantownjewishcentre.org

Maria is a student at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where she seeks to integrate her love of Torah into her work toward justice, dignity, and wholeness for all people.  She finds sacred connection in learning people’s stories and being present with them through times of challenge, transition, and joy.  During Maria’s legal career, she worked at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia and as a public defender.  Before that, she was the founding executive director of the Moscow-based Russian Justice Initiative, a human rights litigation project.  When she was 18, she co-founded the Day of Silence, a student-led day of action against the silencing and erasure of LGBTQ people in schools.  Maria lives in Philadelphia with her wife and two children.  She received her BA from the University of Virginia and her JD from Yale Law School.

 

RABBI LEONARD GORDON

Rabbi Emeritus

Leonard Gordon served as Rabbi at the Germantown Jewish Centre in Philadelphia from 1994 to 2010. Before taking this pulpit, he held teaching positions in Religion and Humanities at Kenyon College and the Ohio State University. He has also taught at The Jewish Theological Seminary, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Brown and Columbia Universities. He graduated Columbia College in 1976, studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1985 and has Masters degrees in Religious Studies from Brown and Columbia Universities.