Pride Shabbat 2024

“We have to have an imagination of what will create the world of justice, and of beauty, of art, and of love, and have compassion for each other. Please pray for me. I will be praying for each of you.” – Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum 

This Pride Shabbat, in her final Drashah as CBST’s Senior Rabbi, Rabbi Kleinbaum shared worlds of thinking and decades of history with us. We heard messages from her mentor’s remarks at her installation at CBST in 1992, stories about her early experiences as an LGBTQ clergy member at a time when this was not accepted, to the way CBST was founded and the dreams for CBST that she shared at CBST’s 25th anniversary service in her seventh year as Senior Rabbi. Rabbi Kleinbaum reminded us that our successes are all communal and therefore so are our fears, our music, and the solutions to so many of our hardships, which lie in our community. She encouraged us to not be daunted, to prioritize each other and our intergenerational, musical, LGBTQ, deeply Jewish, and to hold each other through the difficulties. Rabbi Kleinbaum encouraged us to have imagination for the future.