Rabbi Marc Margolius

Rabbi Marc Margolius is Senior Program Director at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, a center for the cultivation of Jewish contemplative practices among rabbis, cantors, educators and lay leaders. As spiritual leader at West End Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side from 2010-17, he developed a systemic congregational model integrating mindfulness practice with middot (spiritual/ethical values). At Congregation Beth Am Israel in Penn Valley PA from 1989-2002, he helped develop a national model of the synagogue as a Shabbat-centered community constructed around intergenerational learning.

Rabbi Margolius previously conceived and directed the Legacy Heritage Innovation Project, an initiative supporting systemic educational transformation in congregations. He has served as Director of Jewish Life and Identity for the JCCs of Philadelphia, and taught at the Center for Organizational Dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania. Rabbi Margolius was ordained in 1989 at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School. He lives in New York with his wife, Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, and is the proud father of five.