A part of his mission as the new Rabbi in Residence will be to expand the relationships with the broader Jewish community, in order to provide a rich wellspring for cultural and secular Jews. 

“Skirball is uniquely positioned to speak to and engage the overwhelming majority of Jews,” Shapiro said, “in Los Angeles, and in the world, who identify as cultural or secular Jews, who are largely not going to walk through the door of the synagogue, at least not anytime soon. And that doesn’t make those people any less Jewish. Which might sound odd for a Rabbi who spent his entire life in the synagogue world. And I think those people are still looking for ways to experience their Judaism and Jewish culture, Jewish identity, and Jewish traditions, and they don’t have a lot of places to turn.” 

In addition to reaching out to the broader Jewish community, Shapiro will also foster intercultural bridges with Skirball. For the past two decades, Shapiro served as the Rabbi for Wilshire Boulevard Temple, where he led the beloved institution through remarkable growth and change. During his tenure, he created and oversaw the founding of the Karsh Family Social Service Center, a non-profit, non-religious organization serving Koreatown, one of the most diverse communities in all of America, and an economically-challenged neighborhood, with a wide scope of critical needs, including Parent & Child Wellbeing; pro bono Legal Services; Food & Nutrition Security; and Health & Wellness. 

The Karsh Center is only one example of Shapiro’s myriad of organizational involvement. He currently sits on the Interreligious Council of Southern California, the Professional Development Committee of the Center Conference of American Rabbis, and the board of NECHAMA–Jewish Response to Disaster. 

Building a more just society is the hallmark of many great spiritual leaders, which is a value at the heart of the Skirball Center. Kornberg declared, “Pursuing justice is one of six essential Jewish values that the Skirball has named as its institutional values: Welcome the Stranger; Show Kindness; Seek Learning; Build Community; Honor Memory; and Pursue Justice.” 

Rabbi Shapiro counts the 20th-century civil rights icon Abraham Joshua Heschel and the 12th-century philosopher and scientist Maimonides as meaningful Jewish leaders, who continue to inspire him. In responding to what a ‘just society’ might like, Rabbi Shapiro extemporized: 

Elie Wiesel famously said that the mission of the Jews has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make the world more human. Certainly working toward a more just society, pursuing justice in the world—Judaism does not have a monopoly on that. Nor should it. We need everyone out there who cares and who is willing to engage in this work to do that. And it is, at the same time, a deeply rooted Jewish imperative to seek and pursue justice. And there are so many injustices in our world. It’s overwhelming. It’s frankly impossible, I think, to address all of it, to fix all of it as it were. And I think it’s very easy for that to lead to paralysis. The world is so broken and it needs so much fixing, that one person or one organization in Los Angeles, [might say], ‘what are we going to do? We can’t fix it all.’ And, interestingly Judaism’s answer to that has always been, ‘you’re right.’ [But] that doesn’t stop you from being obligated to do what you can. Just because the task seems great and overwhelming, that’s not an excuse to sit on the sidelines. Your obligation is to do what you can to work toward justice. A teacher of mine used to say that our job is to tend to the part of the garden we can reach. So the mission doesn’t say to achieve justice. It’s to work toward it. It’s a constant aspiration. And so what does that look like?