On a warm Friday afternoon in Palm Beach Gardens, something quietly remarkable is happening. Families are streaming through a set of open doors, children racing ahead, parents catching up, grandparents beaming. Some are in suits. Some are in jeans. Many haven’t set foot inside a synagogue in years. All of them are welcome.
Rooted in a philosophy of positive Judaism, Tamid Palm Beach represents something refreshing in the landscape of contemporary Jewish life: a synagogue that meets you exactly where you are and helps carry you gently into the beauty of what it means to be Jewish.
“Come as you are” is not merely a slogan at Tamid. It is the organizing principle of the entire enterprise. Whether you light Shabbat candles every Friday or haven’t thought about them since your Bar or Bat Mitzvah, whether your children know a word of Hebrew or couldn’t pick out an aleph from a bet, Tamid Palm Beach asks only that you show up.
Part of Something Larger
What makes Tamid Palm Beach especially compelling is that it does not arrive as a new experiment. It is the newest home in an established and thriving network of communities that has already proven its model with remarkable success in the Northeast.
Tamid NYC was launched by Rabbi Darren Levine as a congregation for young Jewish professionals and families who found that the synagogue of their parents’ generation no longer spoke to their lives. Tamid Westchester followed, bringing the same spirit to the suburbs, where young families putting down roots found the community they had been craving. As Palm Beach’s Jewish population swells, the timing of Tamid Palm Beach could not feel more right.
For the many families who have made the move south, Tamid Palm Beach offers continuity.
A Rabbi and Cantor Who Lead with Love
At the heart of Tamid Palm Beach is its founding rabbi, Rabbi Feivel Strauss, who sees Judaism not as a set of demands but as an invitation to ask better questions, to live more fully, to love more deeply.
“We don’t need more Jews who are afraid of getting it wrong. We need Jews who are in love with being Jewish. When someone walks through our doors, whether for the first time in 20 years or the first time ever, I want them to feel that Judaism is reaching toward them, not judging them,” said Strauss.
Together with his wife, Cantor Abbie Strauss, an accomplished singer-songwriter and member of the Grammys Recording Academy, Rabbi Strauss has found in music a partner as powerful as Torah itself. “Every soul has a voice,” said Cantor Abbie. “Not everyone has been given permission to use it yet. That’s what a singing community does: It gives you permission. When a room full of people lifts their voices together, something ancient and something brand new happen at exactly the same moment.”
In an era that speaks of Jewish identity largely in terms of what is slipping away, Rabbi Strauss and Tamid Palm Beach turn the question around entirely. Tamid offers an alternative: Love of Torah. Love of Israel. Love of one another.
Built for Families, Built for All
If there is one word that Tamid Palm Beach’s founding members reach for again and again, it is family. Children are not shuffled off to a side room or shushed from the bima. They are woven into the life of the community, given roles, given presence, given the experience. It is an approach to Jewish education that parents in the Tamid network have praised consistently: When children grow up loving their Judaism, they carry that love with them.
Israel at the Center
Tamid Palm Beach’s deep and unhesitating love of Israel is another point of profound connection for many local Jews. Israel is not a political position at Tamid, it is a source of pride, of memory, of aching longing and radiant hope. Rabbi Strauss lived in Israel for 15 years, served in the IDF, and met his wife Cantor Abbie in Jerusalem. For South Florida families whose hearts are with Israel and lifted by Israel’s story over the past years, Tamid Palm Beach offers a sacred space to feel all of that, together.
A New Chapter for Palm Beach Jewry
Tamid arrives with a clear sense of what a synagogue is for: not to lecture, not to divide, not to wade into the political currents that already saturate every corner of daily life, but to offer something the world outside cannot. Shabbat. Community. Torah. The ancient, renewable experience of being Jewish together. At Tamid, Rabbi Feivel will tell you that you are loved, that your presence matters, and that there is a seat waiting for you. The rest, as they say, is commentary.
