Great Neck rabbis continue tradition of dialogue on May 5

Janelle Clausen
Five rabbis will be discussing Jewish issues on Sunday at Great Neck Synagogue. (Photos courtesy of respective synagogues; Dale Polakoff photo, center, courtesy of Rabbinical Council of America)
Five rabbis will be discussing Jewish issues on Sunday at Great Neck Synagogue. (Photos courtesy of respective synagogues; Dale Polakoff photo, center, courtesy of Rabbinical Council of America)

Five Great Neck rabbis from four different synagogues will discuss and debate Jewish issues on Sunday, continuing the tradition of the annual Rabbinic Dialogue.

This year’s dialogue, co-sponsored by Temple Israel Men’s Club, Great Neck Synagogue Men’s Club and Beth-El Brotherhood, will take place at Great Neck Synagogue at 10:30 a.m. There is also a complimentary breakfast at 9:30 a.m.

The panelists this year include Rabbis Dale Polakoff of Great Neck Synagogue, Tara and Meir Feldman of Temple Beth-El, Howard Stecker of Temple Israel and Yaacov Lerner of Young Israel. This year’s theme is, “Jewish Community: Boundaries and Opportunities.”

“We will discuss major issues including both political and religious divisions in the Jewish community as well as anti-Semitism,” Stecker said in Temple Israel of Great Neck’s newsletter. “Last year’s dialogue became rather lively and heated, and I am sure the controversial discussion will continue where we left off.”

Stecker also said that this will be the first time Lerner joins the discussion.

Lerner has served as the rabbi of Young Israel of Great Neck since 1975. In addition, he founded Project Identity, an outreach program in Judaism, in 1981 and served as vice president of the Rabbanical Council of America.

Stecker joined Temple Israel in December 2003 after serving as rabbi of the Jewish Community Center of West Hempstead and four years as the assistant rabbi of the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn.

Polokoff has served as the rabbi of Great Neck Synagogue since 1988 and is currently a faculty member of North Shore Hebrew Academy. He is also a past president of the Rabbinical Council of America.

Rabbis Meir and Tara Feldman came to Temple Beth-El in 2009, serving as the synagogue’s co-senior rabbis.

Meir Feldman was once an associate for a prestigious Wall Street law firm and then a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. He then attended Hebrew Union College, served as Marshall T. Meyer Rabbinic Fellow at the Upper West Side’s B’Nai Jeshurn and served as an associate rabbi at Temple Israel in Memphis until 2008.

Tara Feldman was previously a rabbi educator at Congregation Beth-Elohim in Brooklyn, associate rabbi at Temple Israel in Memphis, and a fellow at Hebrew University’s Melton Senior Educators program in Jerusalem.

Share this Article