Project Description
Beth Chayim Chadashim
Beth Chayim Chadashim is a progressive and diverse community of people who come together to celebrate Jewish faith and culture. Started in 1972, we are the world’s first synagogue founded by, and with an outreach to, lesbians and gay men. Today our community is an established and essential part of the religious life of Los Angeles. Our name means “House of New Life,” and our services, social gatherings and broader activism work in concert to make our community unique and live up to its name. LA is a vibrant but often disjointed big city; BCC is an intimate, welcoming synagogue that brings warmth and perspective to its members and friends.
BCC was the first ever LGBTQ Synagogue!
People from BCC
Rabbi Lisa Edwards, Ph.D., has been a Jewish lesbian activist from the pulpit, on the page and on the Web, in the classroom, and in the streets of Los Angeles for over two decades. Since 1994 she has been rabbi of Los Angeles congregation Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC), “House of New Life,” the first synagogue in the world founded by gays and lesbians [1972], and today an LGBTQS inclusive, progressive, diverse community celebrating Jewish faith and culture.
While in school, Juval Porat served as a cantorial soloist at several congregations. The passion for singing and service leadership bred by those experiences led him to pursue cantorial studies at the newly established Institute of Cantorial Arts in Berlin, part of the Abraham Geiger College. He spent his final academic year at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, where he wrote a thesis on the development of the Friday evening liturgy in Germany, and in June 2009, was invested as the first cantor to be trained in Germany since World War II.