Rabbi Ira Stone

Adjunct Instructor of Modern Jewish Thought

215.576.0800

Rabbi Ira F. Stone has been spiritual leader of Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Center City Philadelphia since 1988. Before coming to Philadelphia, Stone served as rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom in Seattle for nine years. Before attending rabbinical school, Stone worked for the Jewish Family Service of Long Island as an outreach worker in crisis intervention with drug-abusing Jewish youth. He also developed and implemented a pioneer project for brain-injured children, which emphasized integrating them into a total day camp and winter recreational program at the YM-YWHA.

He is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in religious studies. He attended the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1979 with a Master’s of Hebrew Literature; he was ordained as a rabbi at that time.

In addition to his work in the pulpit, Stone has written articles on theology and rabbinics for various journals, including Conservative Judaism, Judaism, Wellspring Journal, Middlebury College Magazine and Kerem. His books include Seeking the Path to Life (Jewish Lights, 1992),Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud (Jewish Publication Society, 1997), The Really Perfect Poem Has an Infinitely Small Vocabulary (Mellon Poetry Press, 1999) and Sketches for a Book of Psalms (Xlibris, 2000). Stone serves as visiting lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary.