Rabbi Moshe Grussgott, Senior Rabbi of Kehilath Israel Synagogue, was recently elected as President of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Kansas City.
Rabbi Grussgott succeeds Rabbi Javier Cattapan of Congregation Beth Torah.
Rabbi Mark Glass, Rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel Abraham and Voliner, accepted the position of Vice President, and Rabbi Stephanie Kramer, Senior Rabbi of The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah, is Secretary-Treasurer.
The Rabbinical Association of Greater Kansas City includes Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Reform and non-denominational rabbis and serves as the rabbinic voice for the Jewish community and Greater Kansas City. It guides the community in making religious decisions for community events, supports the rabbis in their personal and professional growth and develops and fosters collegial relationships within the Association.
“I’m honored to have been chosen to be president of the RA for the next two years,” Rabbi Grussgott said. “In my few short years in Kansas City so far, I’ve already been inspired by the workings of our Rabbinical Association and by how well we all get along. This is not to be taken for granted. It’s a special dynamic in Kansas City that the rabbis and shuls get along so well across denominational lines — a phenomenon which is sadly not as common as it ought to be.”
The Rabbinical Association was incorporated on June 17, 2002. The Association had existed previously as an unincorporated voluntary group for about 25 years. The first regular gatherings were in the mid-1970s. Over the years, the rabbis in Greater Kansas City have established a pattern of community-wide collaboration and have been called upon to provide information, guidance, and leadership on both Jewish and interfaith issues. Today, the rabbis meet monthly, functioning as a board of directors and dealing with issues brought to them by the community and issues and programs of their own initiative.
“Each year, our Association sponsors several community-wide religious and educational events, including holiday programs for Selichot, Tisha B’Av, Purim and a second night of Passover Seder,” Rabbi Grussgott said. “The Rabbinical Association offers [the] year-long, community-wide course “Judaism for Conversion Candidates,” a day-long program of Jewish learning, the community-wide Day of Discovery and a community Professional Development Day for our Jewish educators.”
Rabbi Grussgott highlighted the Rabbinical Association’s partnership with Jewish Family Services in creating the Community Mental Health Coalition and JFS Food Pantry. He also emphasized how the Rabbinical Association supports and participates in community programs for Yom HaShoah, Yom HaAtzmaut and the Jewish Arts Festival.
He spoke of how the Rabbinical Association’s curbside Shabbat meals-to-go served as a way to ensure that the community had access to homemade, prepared kosher meals during COVID, when shopping for kosher food was not often an option. Meals-to-go are now generally provided a few times during the year at the holidays.
“During the last two years at our RA meetings, it’s been so helpful to have the opportunity to compare notes and share ideas about how each of our communities has been navigating the ongoing pandemic,” Rabbi Grussgott said. “Our dialogue and our pooling of ideas has served to strengthen all of our shuls. I’m proud that at the very beginning of the pandemic, we all made the decisions to shut down our respective shuls mutually and at the same time. That’s a powerful show of unity. We’ve all since reopened in different ways and on different timelines, but we still remain united in dialogue and in genuine mutual concern, which has been so gratifying to see.”
Rabbi Grussgott aims to continue and grow the collaborations between synagogues and rabbis
“I hope to create more cross-shul events under the sponsorship of the RA,” he said. “What I envision is that not every shul in the RA needs to take part in a particular event for it to be considered an official RA sponsored event.”
According to Rabbi Grussgott, possible Rabbinical Association events that wouldn’t need to feature all synagogues could include having “two or three shuls get together every now and then for a Sunday night dinner and a speaker; a day of chessed; [or] a timely panel discussion.”
“I’d like to offer my thanks to Rabbi Cattapan for so adeptly steering the RA for the past two years during a time of great challenges and with great dignity,” Rabbi Grussgott said. “I look forward to being at the helm of continuing the long tradition of cooperation that we have had going in our community for so many years now.”
Before becoming Senior Rabbi of K.I. since August 1, 2018, Rabbi Grussgott was senior rabbi of Congregation Ramath Orah in New York City from 2011 to 2018, where he had previously served as associate rabbi from 2007 to 2011. Additionally, he served as a chaplain and captain in the U.S. Army Reserve from 2007-2013, pastoring and counseling troops at various Army bases across the U.S., including posts in South Carolina, New Jersey, and New York.
Rabbi Grussgott was the rabbi and senior educator of the Achva West summer traveling program for teens in the summers of 2008, 2009 and 2012. He became the rabbi and senior educator of the Aryeh Adventures summer traveling program from 2013 to 2015.
He is also a trained hospital chaplain and served as a chaplain at Mount Sinai Hospital and at NYU Langone, both in New York City.
Rabbi Grussgott trained for 8 years at Yeshiva University, where he earned his B.A. (Psychology) at Yeshiva College and his M.A. (Medieval Jewish History) at YU's Bernard Revel Graduate Program of Jewish Studies. After completing his first three years of rabbinic training at YU's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, he took time off to train as a U.S. Army chaplain and then completed his ordination through the Ayshel Avraham Rabbinical Seminary in Monsey, New York.
Rabbi Grussgott married his beloved wife Becca in 2015, and they have three boys: Ari, Ezra and Manny.
To learn more about the Rabbinical Association, visit www.kcrabbi.org. For questions or additional information about the Rabbinical Association, contact Annette Fish, Administrator/Program Director, at or 913-327-8226.
