Rabbi Steven Gotlib of Mekor Habracha in Center City grew up in what he called an “old school, traditional Conservative” family, and he knew from a young age that becoming a rabbi was something he might like to pursue. However, it wasn’t until he was a bit older that he realized that what would pull him even closer to the profession and his religion was stricter observance.
“I started to actually experiment with my own practices. Through Camp Ramah and USY and USY on Wheels, I decided to start keeping Shabbat,” he said. “When I got back from that summer, I decided to start going to shul more. Fair Lawn, New Jersey, has a very large modern Orthodox community. I fell in with that, and it gave me a real opportunity to be able to explore and develop myself, and it showed me that I like traditional Jewish observance.”
Mekor Habracha is glad that Gotlib realized this. Since he started in September 2024, Gotlib has cemented himself as a part of a community that shares his vision for a Modern Orthodox life.
“We’re a shul that is not only open to Orthodox Jews but also non-Orthodox Jews. We’re a community that is very friendly to the LGBTQIA+ community, and [one] where women have an active role,” he said.
That being said, the shul is still one thing, definitively: Modern Orthodox.
“I am committed to helping build the most robust, open Jewish communities that I possibly can while still being deeply committed to traditional halachic observance,” Gotlib said.
While Gotlib was in discussion with several synagogues, Mekor Habracha stood out, largely because he found out about the opportunity through a family friend, before another family friend endorsed the synagogue as a member. Quickly, he said, Gotlib and his wife, Ruth, realized that this would be a place for them to grow as a couple and as parents.
Their daughter, Zeirza, is almost nine months old. While her father is native to North Jersey, Gotlib is confident that his daughter will love Philadelphia. Another reason that he and his wife chose Mekor Habracha and Philly was that the synagogue seemed to have a lot of babies running around.
“We’re committed to making sure that not only our daughter, but those her age in the community, are able to all grow up together in a community that we can all be proud of,” Gotlib said.
For Gotlib, an essential element to his journey was being able to discover numerous avenues of Jewish life as a young man. While at Rutgers University, Gotlib was a member of AEPi and a board member of the Conservative community, the Orthodox community and the Hillel. He lived at Chabad.
“It was an opportunity to explore Judaism in a way that didn’t have the peer pressure from my friends and family,” he said. “It was a way for me to explore myself and figure out what I want my Judaism to look like in my own life.”
At a large state school like Rutgers that also had a sizable Jewish community, Gotlib had the best of both worlds.
“It gave me a wonderful opportunity to explore and experiment,” he said. “I don’t think I would have had that opportunity had I gone somewhere that was either less robust Jewishly or that was so monotone in its Judaism that I wouldn’t be able to have that variance.”
Gotlib gravitated toward being a rabbi as a young man, but he was interested in many things. He thought about pursuing a legal career, a career in business or working as a psychologist. In this position, he said, he has the best of all worlds.
“‘Rabbi’ is a catch-all title,” he said. “Those [jobs] all together, you get a rabbi anyway!”
As he stands at the halfway point of his first year at Mekor Habracha, Gotlib is pleased with the start to his time at the synagogue and the roots he is digging for his family. Here, he gets to be observant and feel the warmth of a community that wants the same.
“I like traditional Jewish observance. I like being able to turn my phone off for 25 hours. I like being able to have meals that are specifically with my family. I love being able to have friends over for a day on Shabbos and not have to worry about what is happening next or what is on TV,” he said. “For me, it was the robust connection to Jewish traditionalism and textual study that ended up kind of shifting my gears out of the Conservative movement.”
He said he still appreciates Conservative Judaism — it’s just not the right choice for his immediate family.
“There was never any animosity. It just became very obvious very quickly that I wasn’t going to find the halachic observance and commitments that I wanted in my personal life [there],” he said.