Congregation Beth Shalom welcomed its newest clergy member, Assistant Rabbi Talia Kaplan, this summer. A recent rabbinical school graduate, Rabbi Kaplan joins Senior Rabbi David Glickman and Hazzan Tahl Ben-Yehuda as a spiritual leader at Beth Shalom.
Though Rabbi Kaplan officially started this summer, her involvement with Beth Shalom stretches back to the summer of 2023, before she had completed rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. She said that Beth Shalom’s hiring model was innovative and allowed the incoming rabbi and the community to connect early on and set themselves up for success. Rabbi Kaplan was chosen by a search committee and officially accepted the job offer during Hanukkah last year.
“One of the qualities that most impressed the search committee, and which has been manifested in her time here, is Rabbi Kaplan’s commitment and ability to meet people where they are — geographically, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally,” said Victor Wishna, president of Beth Shalom. “She also brings a fresh perspective that is still firmly grounded in Jewish tradition and wisdom, and perfectly complements our clergy team.”
From her first visit, Rabbi Kaplan felt welcomed by Beth Shalom and the Kansas City Jewish community.
“It’s an incredibly special community, and I think our congregants are the best,” she said. “I was drawn to the idea of having Rabbi Glickman as a senior rabbi… and I found the congregants very genuine and warm and down-to-earth.”
“Rabbi Kaplan comes to us with a broad skill set that she honed at the Jewish Theological Seminary and many professional experiences,” Rabbi Glickman said. “She has a deep training in pastoral care and has had successful experiences in pulpits, hospitals and educational settings. But what comes across immediately is Rabbi Kaplan’s commitment to building authentic relationships with everyone she encounters as well as her own deep, personal spiritual and intellectual life.”
As assistant rabbi, Rabbi Kaplan often deals with education, spiritual/pastoral care and justice work. Her time in school, jobs, residencies and internships across the East Coast give her background and firsthand experience with these aspects of being a rabbi.
Rabbi Kaplan grew up in Pennsylvania, attending a Conservative synagogue and being engaged in the Jewish community. Judaism was an important part of her identity, but “it wasn’t until I was a young adult that I really figured out how to integrate a robust Jewish life with other parts of my life,” she said.
Rabbi Kaplan attended Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut, initially considering becoming a human rights lawyer. She became aware of the need for a new leadership structure for Wesleyan’s Jewish resources, which led to her becoming a coordinator liaising between the campus’ rabbi and other student leaders. Through this, she became more aware of her interest in Judaism.
“I was going to Shabbat every week, starting to keep kosher, and I realized that I wanted to integrate the questions about human dignity that I was encountering in what I thought might be my professional track with my desire to serve the Jewish community,” she said.
With this new perspective, Rabbi Kaplan spent time studying at the University of Haifa and Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Israel. After graduating from Wesleyan, she worked as a legislative assistant for the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, advocating at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. for refugees and immigration justice. Because the advocacy was coming from a faith-based perspective, Rabbi Kaplan said that members of Congress were often open to listening.
“One thing I love about doing justice work through the faith lens is that it helps you reach across lines of difference and really build a broad and diverse coalition trying to enact change,” she said. “It is not partisan, but rather something that good people of conscience everywhere can relate to, seeing how our faith speaks about issues that affect our lives every day — housing, mental health services, etc. Judaism has a lot to say not only about what happens in the synagogue, but also in our broader communities.”
Rabbi Kaplan entered the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2019, working toward her rabbinic ordination.
“I think one of the things that excited me early on about the possibility of being a rabbi was helping people figure out their own relationship to Judaism and how to fit their experiences into the larger Jewish story,” she said.
In addition to her ordination, she received a master’s degree in Jewish gender and women’s studies and a certificate in pastoral care and counseling. She developed a passion for Jewish law, both from feminist and disability justice perspectives.
During this time, she also served in a part-time rabbinic capacity at synagogues in Richmond, Virginia; Minnetonka, Minnesota; and Brooklyn, New York; Brown RISD Hillel in Providence, Rhode Island; and at both public and private hospitals in New York City, where she did two chaplaincy rotations.
During her chaplaincy rotations, Rabbi Kaplan served as spiritual support for a range of people, including people who had suffered miscarriages and incarcerated psychiatric patients. Working with a diverse group of patients helped prepare her for her pastoral role in a congregation.
“[There were] a lot of things that I might not deal with exactly in a congregational setting,” she said, “but it just prepares you to see the full range of life experiences, to try and not make assumptions, and to really listen to what people are saying and meet them in that moment.”
In addition to her chaplaincy experience, Rabbi Kaplan learned about Jewish teaching for diverse groups of Jews through work with organizations such as SVARA, a yeshiva for LGBTQ+ Jews.
“What I try to apply when I think about pedagogy is how to help people directly engage with the [Jewish] material and how to help them feel like they have ownership over their tradition,” she said.
Rabbi Kaplan said that the diversity of Beth Shalom’s congregation is exciting to her, and she wants congregants to know that she and the clergy are there for them.
“There’s a place for so many different types of people at Beth Shalom, and that’s something I really value about the community,” she said. “I feel privileged to get to serve in a community where my congregants are thinking about a variety of things.”
