Staff photo by Krista Husa

Spirituality

."N
St

33"

3af,

iv

At s

Is

a 41 EON&
NOW.NEks .

Temple Israel welcomes

the sixth rabbi in
the congregation's
59-year history.

SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer

T

emple Israel's newest rabbi
won't be found in the West
Bloomfield synagogue any
time this month. Instead,
she's journeying with 92 temple
youth on Detroit's third teen mission
to Israel.
Rabbi Marla Hornsten began her
first official rabbinical duty for the
synagogue by co-leading the June 28
to July 31 journey with her col-
league, Rabbi Joshua Bennett. In all,
282 teenagers are participating on

the Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit-sponsored trip.
From her earliest interaction with
the Temple Israel leaders, Rabbi
Hornsten, 31, says, "I knew it was
the right match."
The rabbi is no stranger to travel.
Her education and rabbinical train-
ing have taken her far from her
Seattle roots. A graduate of Scripps
College and Claremont Graduate
School, both in Claremont, Calif.,
she later divided her time between
Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion's Los Angeles
and New York campuses. She was
ordained in May.
Her travels have taken her as far as
Juneau, Alaska, as a student rabbi,
and the University of Seville in Spain
for a semester of undergraduate stud-
ies. In Jerusalem, she organized and
participated in social and academic
programming for the Interfaith
Dialogue Group, comprised of _
Christian and Jewish theology stu-
dents.

Rabbinic, Communal Training

During her last two years at HUC-JIR,
Rabbi Hornsten was a rabbinic intern
and family educator at the 1,400-family
Central Synagogue in the Manhattan
borough of New York City. There, she
led Shabbat and High Holiday services
and preschool Shabbat and festival pro-
grams. On the bima, she chanted Torah
and delivered d'vrei Torah and sermons.
She officiated at lifecycle events —
including baby namings, funerals, inter-
ments, unveilings and memorial services
— and sat on b'tai din (religious court)
for conversion.
As an educator, Rabbi Hornsten has
taught parent and child education pro-
grams for kindergarten through seventh
graders, and religious school classes for
all school-age levels. In adult education,
she is a teacher of women's issues. She
also has directed a sisterhood Rosh
Chodesh group.
Co-leading the temple's teen mission
contingent is not the first time the rabbi
has traveled with youth. She has coordi-
nated confirmation trips, and a family

bar and bat mitzvah retreat. With teens
and pre-teens, she has served as a youth
group supervisor and a camp staff mem-
ber. At Central Synagogue, she was a
junior congregation adviser and b'nai
mitzvah tutor.
Diverse in her studies and interests,
Rabbi Hornsten has degrees in
European studies and humanities and
modem European history. Last year, she
was a representative at the Non-
Governmental Organizations' Religious
Prayer Service for Religious Freedom at
the United Nations in New York.
She spent the summer of 1996 in an
independent learning program studying
cantillation, Jewish music and b'nai
mitzvah curriculum with Cantors David
Serkin-Poole and Joseph Frankel on
Mercer Island, Wash. She spent a sum-
mer as a chaplain in the cancer unit and
rehabilitation ward at Swedish Hospital
Medical Center in Seattle.
Rabbi Hornsten's interfaith work
includes serving in 1997 on the planning
committee of the National Council for
Christians and Jews' interseminary

7/7

2000

61

