Our Rabbi

RABBI DR. WAYNE DOSICK, Ph.D., D.D. is the founder and spiritual guide of The Elijah Minyan — bringing Spiritual Judaism and Jewish Renewal to San Diego.  

Rabbi Dosick is a dynamic, inspiring, and loving educator,  writer, spiritual guide and healer, who teaches and counsels about faith  and spirit, ethical values, life transformations, and evolving human consciousness.  

He is well-known for quality scholarship and sacred spirit, his  reading of traditional texts for their sense of prophetic social  justice, his abiding commitment to utmost dignity and decency for every  human being, and his lifetime of guiding people to a deep, personal,  intimate relationship with the Divine.  

He has been described as a “rational intellect with the soul of a  mystic,” and  he has been called “one of the most gifted teachers of our generation, who understands the mindset, needs, and yearnings of  people, and responds to this intellectual and inner searching in  peerless fashion. ”Recently, he has been called, "a spiritual master of  our time."   

Rabbi Dosick has served San Diego Jewry for the past forty-four years — notably at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla;  as the founder of Congregation Beth Am, now in Carmel Valley; and for these past  twenty-seven years, The Elijah Minyan.  He is the longest serving Rabbi  in San Diego county.   

For more than seventeen years (1988 - 2005),  he served as an Adjunct Professor and Visiting Associate Professor at the University of  San Diego, teaching the only courses in Jewish Studies at this Catholic  university.  

Rabbi Dosick is the best-selling,  award-winning author of nine critically acclaimed books.  

For a complete bibliography of his books, please see the Rabbi’s Books section of this website.     

His articles and essays have appeared in a number of periodicals and  anthologies, and he contributed more than fifty entries to An  Introductory Dictionary of Theology and Religious Studies (Liturgical   Press, 2007.)  
For almost twenty years — until its much lamented demise because  of the financial failure of its publishers —   he was a Contributing  Editor of The San Diego Jewish Times, which published more than 400 of his bi-weekly columns, “Rabbinic Insights,” his religious, political, and social commentary.  

Currently, he is the host of SpiritTalk Live!:  Journeys into  Mind, Heart, and Soul, a monthly Internet radio program, heard on  HealthyLife.net. SpirtTalk Live! is a worldwide conversation for  exploring the great questions of existence, for joining in the quest to  find meaning and worth in life though intellectual inquiry  and sacred  spirit.  

Rabbi Dosick’s commitment to quality Jewish education was  manifest in the San Diego community where he was a founder of the San  Diego Jewish Academy (now a K-12 community day school) and a founder of  the Community Hebrew High School.  

Articles about Rabbi Dosick and his books have appeared in more  than 100 newspapers and periodicals, and he has appeared on more than 300 radio and television shows, including “Good Morning America,” the Larry King Show, CNN, and NPR.  He has spoken and conducted seminars,  workshops, and has been scholar-in-residence at more than 200  bookstores, synagogues, churches, schools, universities, and seminaries,  hospitals and health care facilities, businesses and corporations, and community organizations throughout the country. He was an early pioneer  in Jewish video, creating  The Video Synagogue  (1982) which brought religious services by means of videotape to those confined to home or  health care facility.  He is a master teacher who has taught in  settings as diverse as:  The Aleph Kallah, Elat Chayyim, Ruach HaAretz,  the (West Coast) National Chavurah Institute, and the Wexner Foundation.  He was once dubbed “America’s favorite Rabbi.”  

Rabbi Dosick’s trans-denominationalism in the Jewish world is  evidenced by his full memberships in the Rabbinical Assembly  (Conservative), the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform), and Ohalah (the Association of Jewish Renewal Rabbis.)   He is a past  president of the San Diego Rabbinical Association, and throughout the years, he served on numerous community boards and committees in San  Diego, including the United Jewish Federation, the Jewish Family  Service, and the Agency for Jewish Education.  For six years, he served  on the national Board of Directors of Mazon:  A Jewish Response to Hunger, where he chaired The Rabbinic Table, and now serves on its  prestigious Advisory Council. As Dean of Development (1999 - 2000), he was instrumental in bringing a  branch of the pluralistic rabbinical and cantorial seminary, the Academy  for Jewish Religion, to California, and still serves on its Academic  Advisory Council.  

In 1998, his alma mater, the Hebrew Union College, awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in recognition of his  twenty-five years of innovative and sacred service to the American  Jewish community.   In 2005, the Jewish Theological Seminary also  awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree, making him one of the  few rabbis to be  recognized by both America’s Reform and Conservative  seminaries with an honorary degree.  

Rabbi Wayne Dosick brings the message that God — both the  transcendent, supernatural God of creation, revelation, and ultimate redemption, and the God of breath, heart, and soul, the God Within — is  at the absolute center of our lives.  And, he teaches that when we recognize and embrace God’s pathways of goodness, righteousness, and  love, then, through the work of our hands, we can transform the world  and bring Eden to Earth once again.