Everyone has events in their lives that become signposts \u2014 moments where one\u2019s destiny or life\u2019s work becomes clear. In the second part of his profile, Rabbi Joel Simonds, the founder of the Jewish Center for Justice and a member of Wilshire Boulevard Temple\u2019s clergy, tells The Journal the moments that have impacted his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While he can\u2019t pinpoint one moment, watching the news reports from the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 helped to focus his Zionism. He was 11 years old, and remembers \u201cCNN being on in my house,\u201d and being in synagogue when Iraqi SCUD missiles were hitting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. \u201cJust seeing images of Israelis with gas masks\u201d made him realize that \u201cthis was something different. \u2026 Americans are glued to the TV because of this war. But Jews are glued to the TV because of this war and \u2026 my synagogue is glued to the TV because of this war.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The second was going to Jewish summer camp and meeting Israelis. The third thing came when he was a little older, about 15 years old. He was attending Jewish summer camp and building his own Jewish identity. Then (Israeli Prime Minister) Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. \u201cAfter that, I remember going to synagogue for an evening of memorial prayer gathering.\u201d The prime minister had been assassinated, and he \u201cwas going to synagogue. That for me was a moment of Zionism, connection to Israel, to Judaism \u2013 all one and the same.\u201d These were moments he understood Zionism, his \u201cconnection to Israel and to Judaism.\u201d To him, they\u2019re \u201call one and the same.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Asked why these moments made such a strong impression, he said \u201cmaybe it was just inherent. It might have been the community in which I was living, where the Jewish population was very small but very active.\u201d Regardless, he said, \u201cthose moments were so powerful,\u201d said Rabbi Simonds, \u201cand maybe that is why I still remember them.\u201d He doesn\u2019t remember the words that were said from the pulpit; \u201cI just remember the reaction. The prime minister was assassinated, we go to synagogue.\u201d He can\u2019t say if that moment \u201cturned something inside me, but it definitely was a moment that my Jewish life here in California was not isolated to California. It wasn\u2019t even isolated to America. It was something larger.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were other moments \u2013 including spending his junior year in Israel \u2013 but those things came later. If you are looking for the genesis of his Zionism, it is \u201cgoing to synagogue and feeling connected to my Jewish community at the age of 11 when Israel was under attack. And going to my synagogue and feeling connection to the Jewish community when the Israeli prime minister was assassinated.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He sees echoes of those times today. Jews \u201chave been persecuted from generation to generation. In 2026 it\u2019s OK to say bad Israeli policies should not bring about global condemnation to the point that it is. There has to be something more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those experiences, he said, \u201ctaught me something.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
His dedication to social justice, he said, had always been there. \u201cIt was there in rabbinical school, always there at University Synagogue. I was a fulltime rabbi [at university] from 2009 to 2015.\u201d He stepped back from his fulltime position from 2015 to 2017. \u201cI was half the time here and working halftime for the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism [which advocates for justice], setting up their West Coast office.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0It was during that time he realized that he had spent his entire life solely within the lens of the organized Reform Jewish community. \u201cAt that point,\u201d he said, \u201cI have to go beyond this.\u201d It was then that he \u201cdecided to start the Jewish Center for Justice.\u201d\u00a0 He wanted to \u201creally leave the beauty and the safety and the confines of the organized Reform Jewish movement and go to a kind of larger Jewish community.\u201d He was inspired by looking around and reading studies when he saw \u201cthere really is a larger Jewish community that is not involved, and I want to connect with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t going to leave the Reform movement. \u201cThis is an amazing movement, and I want to take everything I have learned in this movement and go out to the larger community that is not being served.\u201d<\/p>\n
His decision was easier because he and his wife \u201chave a strong Jewish connection.\u201d But it was more than family. \u201cIt was my observations, friends and connections. At that point, I left the Religious Action Center, took a further step back at University Synagogue, to about 15%, and I started the Jewish Center for Justice,\u201d which is entering its 10th anniversary year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had wonderful mentors and advisers along the way who always said, \u2018Never fully leave pulpit life. Always keep the connection.\u2019\u201d There were multiple reasons, mainly \u201cto remain connected to the community, to remain connected to a sense of pulpit.\u201d When he was at University Synagogue, \u201cI always was on for the High Holy Days and some lifecycles. Also during COVID, when University and Wilshire merged,\u201d and he remained after the merger.<\/p>\n
\u201cPulpit life,\u201d he said, \u201cis still the backbone of the American Jewish community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone has events in their lives that become signposts \u2014 moments where one\u2019s destiny or life\u2019s work becomes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-446671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}