Rabbi Ilana Berenbaum Grinblat serves as the rabbi of Ahavat Torah in Los Angeles and Temple Har Shalom in Idyllwild, CA. Previously, for six years, she served as the Vice President of Community Engagement for the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. She is the author of four books: What Pain Teaches Us: Spiritual Lessons from Two Years of Anguish (published in August 2024), The Viral Spread of Hope: Finding Inspiration in Tough Times (September 2022), Castles and Catch: Spiritual Lessons Children Teach Us published by Author House (July 2015) and Blessings and Baby Steps: The Spiritual Path of Parenting published by Behrman House in 2011. She is a regular contributor to the Jewish Journal. She holds an honorary doctorate of divinity from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. For sixteen years years, she taught Midrash (biblical interpretation) at the American Jewish University's, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, where she was ordained in 2001. She and her husband Tal are blessed to be the parents of two adult children, Jeremy (age 21) and Hannah (age 18).
Raised in Washington, D.C., Ilana grew up in a traditional Jewish home. For college, she attended Brown University in Providence, RI, where she studied world religions. Her love of travel led her to spend two semesters abroad -- teaching in a rural Ecuadorian Schoolhouse and studying African art and culture in Ghana. During this time, she discovered her desire to become a rabbi -- integrating her interests in writing, teaching, counseling, and community building. After college, she worked at the American Jewish Committee in Washington, strengthening intercultural relations between the Jewish, Latino, African-American and Polish-American communities on a national level.
Her passion for community building then brought her to Los Angeles where she attended the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and was ordained as a rabbi in 2001. During rabbinical school, she interned at Beit T'shuvah, a center for Jews recovering from drug and alcohol addiction. After ordination, she taught at the Milken Community High School and served as the rabbi at B'nai Ami synagogue in Chatsworth. She soon found herself increasingly drawn to the pulpit rabbinate and then served as the rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom in Long Beach, CA for five years. During this time, she had her two children and began writing and teaching about the spiritual changes of parenting.
Subsequently, she earned an M.A. focused in Midrash from UCLA and published her two books on Torah and parenting (in 2011 and 2015). In 2016, she began her role leading the Board of Rabbis. In this capacity, she enjoyed assisting her colleagues on their rabbinic journeys and joining our voices together to strengthen the Jewish community of Southern California. She served on the Interreligious Council of Southern California -- forging relationships and collaboration between clergy and community-leaders of all faiths in Southern California.
In recent years, she has written two books on finding strength in the difficult times. In 2022, she published her third book, The Viral Spread of Hope: Finding Inspiration in Tough Times and in 2024, she published her fourth book, What Pain Teaches Us: Spiritual Lessons from Two Years of Healing which focus on spiritual lessons from illness and healing.