Eli Kavon

I just completed ten years serving as a pulpit rabbi, 6 ½ years at Anshei Sholom in Century Village in West Palm Beach. Most of my congregants have been over 65 and I visited many in hospital, rehab, hospice and home. For 26 years in South Florida I have taught adults in different programs for universities, organizations, and communities. I also am an essay writer who has produced more than 200 columns and blogs for the Jerusalem Post in Israel. Before my rabbinic ordination, I prepared 150 students at Congregation B'nai Aviv in Weston for their bar- or bat-mitzvah. It required tremendous patience and good relationships with students and their parents. I am a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Columbia University, where I studied Comparative Religion and History.

For 26 years in South Florida--I am a transplant from New York--I taught in adult education programs at Broward College, Nova Southeastern University and for communities such as Wynmoor and organizations (e.g. Brandeis). I worked for eight years as a bar/bat mitzvah instructor at B'nai Aviv, a Conservative synagogue in Weston. I was ordained as a rabbi in 2011 and have served two pulpits in Palm Beach County since then. I visited hundreds of congregants in hospital, hospice, rehab, and at home. I worked with family members whose loved ones were dying and officiated at many funerals for those in mourning who did not have the rabbi to conduct the service. They were total strangers but I treated them like congregants and provided respectful and dignified services.

I am a yeshiva-educated Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Columbia, where I studied for a B.A. in Comparative Religion and History. In the summer of 1987, I completed the Hebrew courses at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Sixteen years after finishing at Columbia, I received an M.S. in Jewish Studies at Spertus in Chicago (2009). I was ordained as a rabbi in South Florida by Rabbi Charles Agin two years later. He was based in Mesifta Adas Wilkowisk Academy in Woodmere, NY but lived down here.