Perhaps it was accidental that Joel Nickerson was selected as the new senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple (WBT) on Oct. 6, 2023, the day, he noted, before the world changed forever.
“A new level of access was open. I was empowered to ask questions that wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to ask previously. Even though I had been at Wilshire since 2019, for the first time every door was open for me to peek in, to understand the inner workings of every aspect of the institution.
“As a clergy member, I had collaborated with a lot of people and gone to board meetings. Now a new level of access was open. I also was empowered to ask questions that wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to ask previously.”
A year and a half after the Oakland native was announced as the retiring Rabbi Steve Leder’s successor, Nickerson was formally installed this month at Wilshire in the presence of his wife Julia and their three school-age daughters.
Being the rabbinic leader of the first, the most storied and most sprawling synagogue in Los Angeles, his promotion sparked questions he needed answered: How do we go through the budgeting process? How do we think about the projects we have underway? What are ways we are measuring success? What are the challenge areas? What’s going on in staffing and management on the HR side?
“There are advantages with having been here,” Nickerson said, “such as knowing the people, the culture, being able to delve into things before I officially started. I also wanted to take advantage of that runway to start building deeper connections with congregants whom I didn’t know as well.”
Like a proud father, Rabbi Nickerson glows when he speaks of WBT’s “complexity,” its multiple campuses, multiple business units within, the camps, the Karsh Center, social service center, religious schools and day schools. “There’s a complexity to the organization, which is what I love about it,” the rabbi said. “This makes it very different than being a synagogue with one location that focuses on the traditional elements of a synagogue.”
Nickerson loves that WBT has expanded beyond what typically is expected of a synagogue, to span “the ideal elements of a Jewish community under one umbrella. Wilshire is in every corner of members’ lives.”
He believes WBT targets the essential values Jews are looking for in their lives. “You have education,” he says, “both in a traditional manner, but also experiential education with our camps. We have the concept of tikkun olam and our responsibility to the greater world with our social service center.”
WBT has all the pieces that make it special to be a part of the synagogue because “people can walk through a variety of doors. They can zoom in and out, choose one door, and if it is not right for them, they can choose another.”
While Nickerson graduated from Emory University in Georgia before he had decided on a career, he had a strong Jewish identity growing up in the Bay Area with a single mother. “When I was 12, my house burnt down in the Oakland fire, right before my bar mitzvah,” he said. “For me, the Jewish community was an essential part of rebuilding my life. It was important for my mother and me to have the support of the rabbi, Steve Chester, who officiated at my bar mitzvah, to have a built-in community that would support us.”
In the wake of January’s destructive Palisades and Altadena fires, Nickerson said “I have my own connection to empathize and know about how long recovery is going to be.”
In the wake of January’s destructive Palisades and Altadena fires, Nickerson said “I have my own connection to empathize and know about how long recovery is going to be.”
Given the proximity of WBT’s Resnick Family Campus on Sunset to the Palisades fires, 50 WBT families lost their homes and another 30 have been displaced.
Nickerson calculates that besides Kehillat Israel in the Palisades and the Pasadena Jewish Center, the WBT community probably has been affected the most.
Nickerson reflected on his path to the rabbinate “I remember going to Israel in high school on a Federation trip from the Bay Area,” he said. “It helped me understand the breadth of the Jewish world. It connected me to the land and to the people.” His experiences with his peers in Israel were “transformative.”
But looking back, he guessed his path to the bimah probably began at Emory University. “I was a neuro-science major. I went there primarily so I could work at the Centers for Disease Control in the labs. I was fascinated by human nature from a science perspective.”
An Introduction to Judaism class he took with the renowned historian and diplomat Deborah Lipstadt started him on the path to a religious career. He is quick to note that he would have laughed at the notion of becoming a rabbi then. “But it launched me into the intellectual, spiritual, historical connection to Judaism.”
After Emory, he pondered grad school for psychology. Instead, he chose Hillel at Stanford. “Through that job, I got to come to LA, to BCI (Brandeis Camp Institute),” Rabbi Nickerson said. “Not only did I meet my wife there, we studied [Rabbi Abraham Joshua] Heschel together. I also was exposed to this utopian Jewish experience, Jews from around the world, learning with excellent scholars, exploring Judaism through the arts, working the land in the morning, celebrating Shabbat in a beautiful way.” That, he said, “piqued my psyche. I said ‘I want to work for the Jews.’”
He was 23 when he became youth director at Temple Judea, Tarzana, under Rabbi Don Goor, and taught religious school, which led him to Hebrew Union College. “There’s so much beauty and complexity to this work,” he said.
Jewish Journal: What is your favorite book?
Rabbi Nickerson: To honor my wife and our time together, “The Sabbath” by Heschel. My connection with Julia reading that and how it opened my mind.
JJ: Your favorite family vacation?
JN: The Russian River in Sonoma County. My family has had a small cabin on the river for 120 years. Every winter break, my children, my wife and I go there for a week.
JJ: Your favorite moment at home?
JN: Sitting at the dinner table with my wife and my kids.
