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ALUMNI UPDATESRenewing American Judaism at the RootBy J. Shawn Landres ’94Rabbi Sharon Brous ’95, ’01 GSAS likes to close her services with a passage from Psalm 36: “Ki imcha makor chayim; be-orcha nireh or.” It never occurred to her that the verse’s Latin translation is “In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen,” the Columbia motto. No matter: there are at least 19 Columbians in her family to remind her.
Brous, 31, is the founder of IKAR, a spiritual community on Los Angeles’ west side that includes a synagogue and a religious school. Since its founding in April 2004, IKAR — the Hebrew word for “essence,” “core” or “root” — has become a popular Friday-night destination for 20- and 30-somethings in America’s second largest Jewish community. Born and raised in New Jersey, Brous is the granddaughter (Leonard Brous ’17) and daughter (F. Rick Brous ’58, ’60 Business) of College alumni; other close relatives include her brother, Michael ’98, and her husband, David Light ’95, ’02 AR, whose sister, Paulette Light ’90, is married to Jeff Rake ’90. Few doubt where 2-year-old Eva Brous-Light will matriculate. A self-described cultural, but not religious, “super-Jew” in high school, Brous began Columbia intending to become a civil rights attorney. She honed her politics as a St. Luke’s rape crisis advocate, Big Brothers/ Big Sisters mentor, Women’s History Month organizer and “Take Back the Night” coordinator.
During a junior-year semester in Israel, Brous decided to become a rabbi as a way to combine her feminism and Jewishness with “immediate practical application in the world.” Beginning in 1995, she spent two years at the University of Judaism’s rabbinical school in Los Angeles before continuing at New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary, where she was ordained in 2001. While at JTS, Brous became the first student to register and enroll in GSAS’ master’s program in religion and human rights; for a year or so, she was the only student enrolled. Her thesis explored the applicability of Jewish ideas about forgiveness to international conflicts. Along with Jessica Zimmerman ’95, assistant rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in Scottsdale, Ariz., Brous is one of only two College alumni who have held the Marshall T. Meyer Rabbinic Fellowship as apprentice rabbi at Manhattan’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. For Brous, who served from 2000–02, B’nai Jeshurun provided a model for the spiritual and liturgical renewal that she hopes IKAR will bring to Los Angeles. IKAR attracts approximately 250 people to its biweekly Friday night services and about 100 on Saturday mornings. David Kaufman ’82, who teaches Jewish history at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, finds IKAR a microcosm of non-orthodox Judaism in Southern California, “mixing young and old, single and married, straight and gay, spiritual seekers and political activists.” There’s a considerable Columbia presence, too. In addition to Brous’ family, Columbians at IKAR have included Kaufman, actor Dan Futterman ’89 and L.A. City Councilmember Eric Garcetti ’92, ’95 SIPA, who calls Brous “L.A.’s best paradox: feminist and orthodox, wise yet young.” Also attending IKAR events are Sarah Bunin Benor ’97, assistant professor of contemporary Jewish studies at HUC and adjunct assistant professor in linguistics department at USC; her husband, Mark Bunin Benor ’97, who is doing his residency in family medicine at UCLA Harbor Hospital; and their 2-year-old daughter, Aliza. Futterman describes IKAR members as “people engaged in the world” and notes that Brous “seems to have moral and intellectual expectations of people who come to services.” The IKAR website (www.ikar-la.org) asks attendees to bring a can of food for a local food pantry to every event. At “house parties,” held during the week to encourage closer connections among IKAR attendees, Brous combines Torah with politics in intense study sessions. Of her congregants, she says, “I would much rather have them walk away angry than bored.” Forward, a New York Jewish weekly, recently named Brous to its annual “Forward 50” list, calling her “one of the most dynamic religious leaders to be ordained in recent years by the Jewish Theological Seminary” and IKAR a “compelling model for helping to reinvigorate” the Conservative movement. A board member of the Progressive Jewish Alliance and of Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility, Brous co-organized a Christian-Jewish-Muslim vigil for victims of the Darfur genocide. On Yom Kippur, she told fasting IKAR congregants to carry around a blank check made out to an anti-hunger organization and then to fill it out just before breaking the fast. Rabbi Daniel Gordis ’81, former dean of the University of Judaism’s rabbinical school, calls Brous’ approach to Judaism, “not a version of universalism with Judaic veneer, but rather, an authentic engagement with the world through a genuinely and thoroughly Jewish soul and lens. It is rare to see those commitments in a traditional Jewish leader.” J. Shawn Landres ’94 is completing his doctorate in religious studies at UC Santa Barbara, writing about the religious practices of Generation Xers, including those at IKAR.
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