Congregation Beth Tefillah
A warm, traditional community in the Valley where several of our editors first learned to daven. Its come-as-you-are Shabbat table shaped how this guide thinks about welcome.
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Congregations and causes that make Jewish life possible — give to them first.
The New Shul
An independent, unaffiliated congregation that rebuilds Jewish life from first principles each year — proof that a community can be both serious and improvised.
Chabad of Mesa
A Chabad-Lubavitch center whose emissaries meet returning Jews exactly where they are — no prerequisites, no judgment, and an open door on any given Friday.
Congregation Beth Israel
A large Reform congregation with deep roots in adult education and social justice across the desert Southwest, and a lifelong-learning ethos this project admires.
Romemu
A Jewish Renewal community on the Upper West Side known for embodied, musical, spiritually intense prayer — where many people first felt that liturgy could actually move them.
Sinai Temple
One of L.A.'s oldest and largest Conservative congregations, a center of Torah learning whose clergy and classes have guided countless adults back into the text.
Sefaria
The free digital library of Jewish texts — Tanakh, Talmud, Midrash, and commentary, interlinked and translated. Quietly, it is the single most useful tool a returning Jew can own, and it costs nothing to use.
The Steinsaltz Center
Continues Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz's life's work of making the Talmud reachable — in Hebrew and translation. No single project did more to make Jewish text feel possible for beginners.
Birthright Israel
Sends young Jewish adults on a first, free trip to Israel — for many, the beginning of exactly the story this guide picks up and continues.
Our Jewish Children
Supports Jewish children's education and care, so that the tradition an adult returns to is still living, still taught, and still waiting for the generation after.