Rabbi Sharon Brous is the founder of IKAR, a Los Angeles-based progressive Jewish community focused sharply on social justice.

Rabbi Morris Allen heads Beth Jacob Congregation, a Conservative congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn. Allen is behind a push to make kosher food meet certain ethical standards, such as paying workers a fair wage. The result, Magen Tzedek, or “justice certification,” is gaining ground in many Conservative synagogues and households. He blogs about keeping ethically kosher.

Rabbi Stephen Pearce leads Congregation Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue and San Francisco’s largest Jewish congregation.

Rabbi Mendel Lifshitz and his wife, Esther, direct Chabad Jewish Center of Idaho in Boise. The center is part of Chabad Lubavitch, a New York community of Hasidim.

Yechiel Shalom Goldberg teaches in the Jewish studies program at California State University, Long Beach, where he specializes in the study of Jewish mysticism.

Rabbi Daniel Fink leads Congregation Ahavath Beth Israel, a Reform congregation in Boise, Idaho. He is an expert on Jewish environmentalism.

Rabbi Harold Loss leads the 12,000 members of Temple Israel, a Reform congregation in Bloomfield, Mich.

Read a June 26, 2006, story from WLOX television about how First Baptist Church of Pass Christian, Miss., is managing to hold Vacation Bible School this summer in a trailer with help from a Baptist church in Florida.

Read the transcript of an April 19, 2006, Online NewsHour show from PBS about how New Orleans’ pastors were preaching Easter sermons about resurrection and new life. The program also describes the financial difficulties of many parishes in the area, the pain it causes when a congregation closes, and how the decision of a parish to hold on and […]