Rabbi David Dunn Bauer completed his studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical
College (RRC) in June of 2003. He comes to the rabbinate after a 15-year career as a stage
manager and stage director of theater and opera productions in the U.S., Europe, and Israel.
Prior to his ordination, Rabbi Bauer served for two years as the student rabbi and
spiritual leader for Congregation Ahavath Shalom, a sixty-family Reconstructionist
congregation in Great Barrington, MA. He also completed a yearlong, intensive weekly
internship at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in NYC, the world's largest gay and lesbian
synagogue. While studying in Israel in 1999, he led regular Torah study at the Jerusalem
Open House, the gay and lesbian community center, and served as cantor for Yom Kippur
services at Hebrew Union College's Jerusalem campus. Rabbi Bauer received his training in
pastoral counseling as a rabbinical intern at the Philadelphia Geriatric Center in 1998
and 1999. He has taught sixth and fifth grades in religious schools in New Jersey and
Philadelphia.
Rabbi Bauer studied Talmud at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem in 1999 - 2000. He
earned a BA in Theater Studies and English literature at Yale University in 1981, and
received music training with Nadia Boulanger at the L'Ecole Americaine in Fountainebleau,
France, in 1976. He has taught and directed at the University of Illinois, the Juilliard
School, and privately in the United States and Germany.
His article in The Reconstructionist, entitled In the Deep End: Immersion and
Affirmation of Jewish Identity - A Personal Account, was published in the fall of 1998.
