Rabbi Seth M. Limmer

Rabbi Seth M. Limmer has entered into his career as a congregational rabbi to help build, foster and participate in a sacred community which is as dedicated to strengthening its connections to its Jewish tradition as it is to reaching a hand out to help the larger world around it.

Rabbi Limmer loves to teach; whether working with kindergartners, high school students or adults, he believes that a strong sense of Jewish identity is best created when an individual is allowed to interact freely with the texts and textures of our tradition. Rabbi Limmer cherishes opportunities to help people make Judaism their own.

Rabbi Limmer believes that a temple should be a second home, and a congregation an extended family. Just as a home should always be welcoming, and a family always there to help you laugh or to lend a shoulder when you cry, Rabbi Limmer strives to make B'nai Yisrael a spiritual center which is as inviting as it is nurturing. He deeply shares the congregation's commitment to a family approach in the development of Jewish identity, but always has time to sit down and discuss a person's individual needs.

Rabbi Limmer believes it to be the obligation of the congregational family to reach out and improve the larger community in which we find ourselves. Towards that end, he has dedicated his time to help end the racial and economic injustice which plagues our country; he has spent a summer of his life building houses for the working poor in urban Chicago. He continues to visit both the economically disenfranchised and the Jewishly isolated communities of rural Mississippi. His commitment to tzedekah, the balancing of the scales of justice, has led him to be appointed not only to the Justice and Peace Commission of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, but also to the policy-setting body of the Union for Reform Judaism, its Commission on Social Action.

Rabbi Limmer was born in Rochester, New York on June 3, 1973. He was raised in Great Neck, Long Island where he attended public schools and was graduated in 1991. Rabbi Limmer went on to study at Cornell University. There he majored in philosophy and Near Eastern studies, the latter of which took him to Israel for an eight month period of study.

Rabbi Limmer spent his summers at the Reform Movement’s Eisner Camp in Great Barrington, MA: as camper, C.I.T., counselor and beyond. Currently, he spends two weeks every summer serving on the rabbinic faculty of Eisner Camp, helping run its daily education program for over 500 campers. In recognition of his dedication to Reform Jewish Camping, Rabbi Limmer now sits on the camp’s board of directors as Commissioner.

In 1995, Rabbi Limmer entered rabbinic school and moved to Jerusalem, Israel, where he spent his first year of rabbinic study at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. In 1996, Rabbi Limmer returned to New York City and continued his rabbinic studies. During these years, Rabbi Limmer was the rabbinic intern at Congregation Rodeph Sholom on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where he was engaged in a wide array of duties: from song leading at Tot Shabbat, to running the high school youth group, to teaching adult education courses, including basic Judaism.

In 1999, Rabbi Limmer received a Master of Arts in Hebrew Literature from the Hebrew Union College. In May of 2000 he was ordained a rabbi in New York. Currently he is working on a dissertation towards his Doctorate in Hebrew Literature.

Rabbi Limmer serves as Rabbi of Congregation B'nai Yisrael. He and his wife Molly have been part of the B’nai Yisrael family for over five years now, and live in Pleasantville, New York. Molly has an undergraduate degree in Classics and Art History from Brown University as well as a Masters in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She is a Vice President at Christie's Auction House in New York City, where she is both an auctioneer and a specialist in antiquities: Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Near Eastern Art. Their daughters Rosy Esther and Lily Benjamin complete the Limmer family.