We are pleased that you have shown interest in our community and we welcome you! We invite you to our Shabbat services, our classes, programs and the many other opportunities for involvement that TBZ offers.
TBZ is an independent, inclusive Jewish congregation with members of all ages who are committed to each other; to joyful participatory worship; to meaningful Jewish learning, spiritual growth, and acts of social justice. We draw upon tradition while freely exploring how that tradition most fully engages today’s world. Here you will find searchers of all ages and backgrounds participating in joyful worship, spiritual growth and acts of social justice.
TBZ is a place we come to nurture a love for Judaism; for Jewish learning, ritual, and prayer; where we come to deepen our commitment to justice and compassion; and a place we come to help each other live lives of meaning and purpose. We are and will be a community of seekers, where meaningful experiences of prayer, justice, activism, loving kindness and learning are rooted in Jewish values and where meaningful education for all ages is part of our daily experience.
Unaffiliated with any one denomination, we steep ourselves in many Jewish traditions, weaving together a deeply coherent, radiantly alive Judaism enriched by borrowings from the Orthodox, Hasidic, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal movements.
We practice an engaged Judaism. For us, that means caring for tradition while being mindful that tradition must change, thoughtfully, in response to changing times. Our Judaism is in motion, informed by our own ever-evolving community and remaining alert to how we can both serve and learn from the wider world.
We are a relaxed place. We laugh a lot. We ask questions, argue, sing, tell jokes. We cry when we need to. Sometimes we make room for silence, for just breathing together. We are a community of seekers and activists, of learners and teachers, of people who do not comfortably fit into neat categories of Judaism, of people who have long experience with other spiritual paths and find, to their delight, that they can achieve fulfillment within their own Jewish tradition without denigrating or negating the experiences they bring with them. TBZ is a place to find oneself. Alongside our commitment to passing on traditional forms of Judaism, we are constantly introducing innovative and creative means of expression. TBZ is an energy we carry within us and out into the world.
TBZ is populated by an extraordinary mix of passionate people. We are families, solo parents, singles and those on single-life paths, newlyweds and longtime couples, college students, members of the LGBTQ community, newcomers to this land, people of all different ability types, interfaith and multicultural couples and families, Jews by choice, Jews of color, seekers of all kinds.
Our members come from a wide variety of spiritual and life paths. Some of us were raised in observant families. For others, TBZ is the first shul we have ever joined. Our weekly services are populated by former twice-a-year-Jews – those who, after b’nai mitzvah, would attend services only on the High Holy Days. Others among us had attended synagogues regularly, dutifully (if passively) following along in the prayer books, reading responsively and standing when asked, only to discover that something – anything; everything! – was missing. Many of us came to TBZ out of a longing we could barely begin to articulate, even to ourselves.
Here you will encounter a great mixture of human beings and a multitude of stories, each distinct – and all received with curiosity, compassion, dignity and warmth.
Come as you are, bring your whole self. TBZ is open to you.