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Rabbi Michal Loving
Community rabbi
Reform
California

About

I am passionate about creating meaningful, personal, authentic and inclusive life-cycle experiences for individuals, couples, and families comprised of all genders, sexual orientations, and religious backgrounds. Welcoming your infant, officiating a B'nai Mitzvah, creating your wedding ceremony, and shaping a memorial service for your loved one, is my honor and privilege. Growing up with two mothers taught me the value of inclusion, and with two sons and a nonbinary teen of my own, being an an LGBTQIA+ ally is the most important value in my rabbinate.

I serve on the Rabbinic Advisory Council of Bruchim, an organization that advocates for the open inclusion of those who feel differently about the circumcision tradition. I am an approved officiant with 18 Doors (formerly Interfaith Family), Unorthodox Celebrations, and Great Officiants, and am certified in premarital counseling through Prepare-Enrich. As a rabbi on call at Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary, I create funeral and memorial ceremonies for loved ones of those in the Los Angeles area who are not connected to a synagogue.

Listing Details

Clergy answered "Yes" to the following

  • Trained on LGBTQ+ identities within past five years
  • Experience officiating conversions for transgender and nonbinary individuals with a sensitivity to the wide range of relationships to gender and embodiment that transgender and nonbinary individuals may have
  • Experience officiating gender-expansive b-mitzvah
  • Familiar with gender-expansive Hebrew liturgical and linguistic options
  • Approaches the presence of LGBTQ+ people as the norm rather than an exception in Jewish communal life
  • Experience celebrating LGBTQ+ specific life-cycle rituals such as coming out and renaming
  • Person-centered and LGBTQ+ positive approach to Jewish law and tradition
  • Comfortable consistently using they/them pronouns and neopronouns
  • Speaks or writes regularly on LGBTQ+ themes
  • Experience in pastoral/spiritual care of LGBTQ+ individuals
  • Experience officiating LGBTQ+ weddings

Clergy answered "I'm Still Learning" to the following

  • Experience in end-of-life care for LGBTQ+ individuals