Rabbi Mark Shapiro will be leading our 5770 (2009) High Holiday services.Mark Shapiro is a Chicago-born Reform rabbi who served Congregation BJBE in Glenview, Illinois, a congregation of 1,000 families, for 38 years until his retirement in 2000.He is a graduate of the University of Chicago, to which he has returned as an adult student for the past six years. He was ordained at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1960.Rabbi Shapiro continues to mentor rabbinic students and has inspired some 25 young people from his congregation to become rabbis,
cantors, and Jewish educators. He has created “Searcher’s Groups,” an approach to study and community building within synagogues.He and his wife Hanna have led many groups to Israel and also to Eastern Europe, Turkey and Spain They also visited and brought Jewish supplies to refuseniks in the Soviet Union in ’82.Rabbi Shapiro loves teaching adults(and believes it is vice-versa too) and has served as faculty on Elder Hostels.He served as a part time hospice chaplain 2005-2008Rabbi Shapiro has served Congregation Kona Beth Shalom as their High Holyday rabbi on three occasions , and once returned for Purim. He also served the congregation in Juneau Alaska for two High Holydays . This makes him especially expert in states which have more recently joined the Union.The Shapiros have three sons, two daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren whose skills and good looks cannot be described in such a short document.