The Community of Or Atid Stands with Israel…
Prescott, Oct. 7, 2022
Contact Rabbi Julie Kozlow by phone, 928-220-5020 or email.
Rabbi Kozlow is available…
In addition to serving The Community, Rabbi Kozlow is available for any lifecycle moment and for counseling during difficult times, including
The Community: A new home of spiritually uplifting Judaism for Arizona’s unaffiliated Jews.
After 15 years of pulpit work, Rabbi Kozlow is now fullfilling a dream to create a new way of living Jewishly, one that honors the very heart and soul of this great heritage. In creating The Community in the Greater Prescott area, she is developing a new approach to building and sustaining vibrant, loving and relevant Judaism, something that she felt she was unable to actualize from the environment of synagogue life. She is committed to creating true community, a Judaism that goes deeper into the soul, deeper into the heart and deeper into human connections.
If organized synagogue life doesn’t meet your needs and dreams as a Jew, please contact Rabbi Julie to discuss how The Community might be for you.
In the News - The Daily Courier July 20, 2023
Path to Peace event Aug. 23 will highlight ‘expanded patterns of faith’ among local religions
Throughout my career as a rabbi, I have often searched for colleagues among clergy who have what I call expanded patterns of faith. What do I mean by expanded patterns of faith? I mean that it is very common that clergy, as representatives of their own religions, to tolerate in public those of other faiths but to carry in their hearts a stern judgment for their being the “wrong” faith. The world of religion is still heavily tribal, and less than humble when it comes to accepting the common plight and diversity of all searching souls.
I have been in search of clergy who understand that the path that all seekers search for is the very same path as all other seekers. What is different is our cultural markings, our expressions and our manifestations that culminate in the formation of a “religion.” Yet the search for answers that whispers to the mind and hearts of every human is the same impulse, it is the One God calling. Here’s the key, the path is the same, the call is from the one creator, yet our hearts hear the waves of that divine frequency differently. We are different, God is not.
In the News - The Daily Courier Dec. 14, 2022
The Miracle of Hanukkah
Hanukkah is a beautiful Jewish winter holiday that comes during the darkest days of the year and it brings with it abundant light. We remember a battle waged long ago in another time where our ways, our traditions were being stripped away by the command of King Antiochus. He had decided that the Jews should no longer worship their own God. He wanted the Jews to worship him. By pain of death we were no longer allowed to keep kosher, to observe the Sabbath or to pray as we had always prayed. A brave band of freedom fighters named the Maccabees stood up and led the charge, knowing that if they were afraid to stand for who they were, then the future of our great heritage would be lost to the children yet to come.
And so we fought for three long years to secure our freedom of religion and our way of life and by the miracle of God’s grace, we won. Hanukkah celebrates the power of light, of faith and of loyalty. Hanukkah celebrates the courage to be different and unafraid to stand in that difference.
The story goes that once the Temple had been rescued, and the war won, we returned to clean the devastation that war had left behind. Only one vile of oil could be found enough to give light for just one day. Yet, this one vile of oil burned for eight nights, enough to get the job done of rededicating the Temple back to God. Our ritual celebration of Hanukkah was born from that day onward, to light a candle every night for the eight days that the oil burned. The miracle was both in the oil as well as in the courage of those who believed in the power of passionate faith.
This ancient story took place over 2,100 years ago but it remains a relevant story in our world today. The Hanukkah story is a reminder to all of us that the human race, in all of it’s diversity, is one family and Gods goal for all of us is PEACE. Being different is a blessing and it is also a right. Not by power and not by might but by God’s Spirit alone will humanity, one day, learn to live in peace.
In the News - The Forward, July 15, 2022
This new congregation offers holy hikes with llamas. Will it last?
ulie Kozlow realized she wanted to be a rabbi after giving birth to her first child when she was 27. But it took decades to get there: After receiving both Reform and Conservative training, Kozlow was finally ordained at 50.
Three months after starting her first job as a rabbi in 2007, she realized that her dream career wasn’t what she’d hoped it would be.
She enjoyed connecting with congregants at her small Reform shul outside New Orleans. But at night she would cry herself to sleep. As a woman, she said, she found she faced persistent disrespect — that her community judged her not for her love of God and knowledge of Judaism, but for her clothes and hair. And needing to please the board of the synagogue, unable to speak or act freely, she said, made her feel suffocated.
In the News - Jewish News, Feb. 15, 2021
Prescott rabbi launches a new way to ‘do Jewish’ for non-affiliated area Jews
Rabbi Julie Kozlow said she’s broken out of the traditional rabbinical box and is creating a more spiritually productive Jewish congregation. She said the new group, called “The Community,” founded in Prescott, is liberating for herself as a rabbi and her 25-families strong congregation.
She said she knows she’s not alone in this and appears to be part of a movement away from the more traditional ways of “doing Jewish.”
“There are a handful of rabbis right now creating alternative ways of doing Jewish, and I’m one of them,” she said.
“It’s my belief that the construct we have for normative synagogue life is not built for the future,” the 65-year-old mother of two grown children said. “This is more about living in the rhythm of Jewish life and being part of it.”
Questions? I’m easy to reach and I’d love to hear from you. Please email or call me at 928 220-5020. Rabbi Julie Kozlow