Leo Baeck Temple

When the busy week comes to an end, join our Shabbat Evening Services on Fridays and experience the gifts of restoration, gratitude, and soulful self-exploration. With music that will open your heart, poetic words of prayer that will inspire your spirit, and insightful teachings that will engage and challenge your mind, these services are the perfect way to seek meaning, perspective, and vision that will carry through the week ahead!

HaMakom, holy space and energy, source of creation, wonder and kindness, the all powerful, all merciful, the one who breathed us into being...I have something to say to you. I am furious. I am terrified. I am fragile and struggling.... I know I am not alone. We the people are struggling. I am optimistic by nature but I feel like I am being tested, stretched to the edge of my soul’s spiritual boundary. I know I am not alone. We the people are on edge. I yearn to meet this moment with love, kindness and humility - but I watch the violence of words and deeds, the degradation of your holiest creations. I watch our fellow citizens amplifying fear to cement their precarious grip on white dominance. I seek your strength to counter hate with love. For those who seek to incite violence and preach hate we call on you to soften their hearts and make heavy their lips. We call on you to foil those who plot to toss out ballots like trash in the dead of night, to intimidate voters, to fray our democratic fabric. We call on you to let every vote, every voice count. Guide us to be stonecatchers - to soften the blows of hatred - to absorb the rascally rhetoric of distrust and discord. Stoke in our hearts the fires of freedom and nonviolent action, to rise to meet this moment, on the streets and in our communities. Make each of us courageous citizens, elevate our voices, bodies and spirits, so that in our own way, we collectively inch closer to making this a more perfect union. Brighten the divine spark embedded in each of us so that we may brighten the days and years ahead of this great nation. Make each of us honey bees. May we collaborate to create a divine nectar that sweetens life for all, reducing suffering for all, allowing us to reset, re-imagine, and re-encounter our brothers and sisters be they blue or red or purple. Remind us, we too are divine. Remind us, we too are loved and matter. Remind us, November 3rd is just one more day in the lifetime of this nation. May the one who blessed our ancestors, force of love and compassion, hold us close as we venture forth - arm in arm - as we secure the blessings of liberty for all. Amen.

Join Rabbi Ross in a Captivating Conversation with Scott Reed, who is a former organizer and a fine woodworker. For 40+ years Scott organized for and was the CEO of the PICO National Network, now known as the Faith in Action Network - America’s largest and most effective interfaith organizing network. (LBT is a member of LA Voice, the local FIA affiliate)

Shabbat Morning Minyan fills our Saturday mornings with a joyful service in song, Torah learning prepared and presented by fellow LBT worshipers, and interactive study with the community led by our rabbis.