About me

Rabbi Greg Marcus

“The Jewish tradition is here to serve you; you are not here to serve it. I can help you find the right parts of the tradition to bring out the best in you.”
- Rabbi Greg Marcus -

Hi, I’m Rabbi Greg Marcus (he/him)

I'm an independent community rabbi serving the San Francisco Bay Area. I am passionate about helping people feel more connected to their Jewishness. In our area, the vast majority of Jewish people are not members of a synagogue. If you are one of them, I’m here to serve you.

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Chesed Organization

I didn't want a rabbi for my husband's funeral, but my sister-in-law insisted. I'm so glad we found Rabbi Greg Marcus. His eulogy and the service he led perfectly captured Larry in all his complexity and it was a great comfort to me.

– Susie Bluestone –

Rabbi Bay Area

I was ordained as a rabbi in my 50s after successful careers in academia, a marketer in the corporate world, a best-selling author of 2 Jewish books, a Mussar teacher, and almost ten years as a stay-at-home dad.

I live in San Carlos with my wife of over 25 years, and our two cats. We have two daughters in their early twenties.

As a rabbi, I specialize in Torah education, Jewish funerals & grief counselling, officiating weddings, and Jewish baby welcoming ceremonies.

Seven things to know about me

  • Favicon Rabbi Greg Marcus

    I have no agenda beyond helping you better connect with our heritage. There is no right or wrong way to be Jewish.

  • Favicon Rabbi Greg Marcus

    My life experience helps me connect with people and help them navigate this crazy yet wonderful place to live. I became a rabbi in my 50s, after a successful career in the corporate world and then years as a stay-at-home dad.

  • Favicon Rabbi Greg Marcus

    I am knowledgeable and love learning. I have a Ph.D. in Biology from MIT and managed to more or less learn Hebrew in my fifties. We are all lifelong learners, and wherever you are starting from I can guide you on your Jewish journey.

  • Favicon Rabbi Greg Marcus

    I believe the tradition is here to serve you; you are not here to serve it. There is so much depth and richness in our Jewish wisdom that you would never know if you don’t know where to look. I can help you find the right parts to add meaning and fulfilment to your life.

  • Favicon Rabbi Greg Marcus

    I listen with an open heart. I am a trained grief counselor and understand that so much of our pain is due to loss, not only of people but of expectations, relationships, or employment. I am here to be with you through the dark times, and help you appreciate the joy of the light ones.

  • Favicon Rabbi Greg Marcus

    I approach our rituals with creativity and respect. It is both normal and appropriate to adapt our traditions to the needs of today’s world and to closely follow the traditional rituals at other times. I will empower you to choose what works best for you.

  • Favicon Rabbi Greg Marcus

    You won’t need to wait weeks to meet with me because I don’t have a synagogue to run or other people to answer to. I am 100% focused on the community.

  • Favicon Rabbi Greg Marcus

    I am a total Torah nerd, and truly believe the Torah has relevant guidance on how to live a good life. I love helping people see that for themselves. For example, I picked seven things about me because there are seven days in the creation story.

Did I always want to be a rabbi?

No! If you told me when I was 20, 30 or even 40 that in my mid-fifties I would be ordained a rabbi, I would have thought you were crazy. Yet here I am.

I grew up in an East-Coast Reform household, where we went to synagogue twice a year, lit Hanukkah candles and went to or hosted a Passover Seder. I thought I was destined to be a scientist, doing research at a university. I have a Ph.D. in Biology from MIT and moved to the Bay Area in 1996 to do a post-doc at Stanford studying bone and joint development in mice. I still love genetics and the X-men.

I left my post doc after three years to take a job in the nascent genomics industry, where I worked for ten years, mostly as a marketer and product manager. I was so convinced that we would revolutionize medicine that I became a workaholic. Actually, it was a self-esteem issue. I was trying to find validation through work. But no matter how many hours I worked, it could not fill the void inside.

How and why did I become a rabbi?

When I was working 90 hours a week, I became a scapegoat for a product launch that went bad. I became depressed, and then on Yom Kippur, I had a moment of insight that changed my life. I realized that I had turned my employer into a false idol, doing “what is best for the company” instead of “what is best.” I decided that day to start putting people first in my life, and within a year I’d cut my hours by a third without changing jobs.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the start of my spiritual journey. I was forty, the same age Rabbi Akiva was when he started his spiritual journey.

I eventually left the corporate world to become a stay-at-home dad, writer, and Mussar teacher. Mussar is a Jewish spiritual practice that guides us on a journey of personal transformation by mindful living. I helped a lot of people live less stressful and more meaningful lives. (My second book, The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar grew out of these classes.)

But after five years I couldn’t come close to making a living. I hired a coach, and when he asked me what niche I wanted to go after (e.g. parents) I said “I want to help people become more excited about and connected to their Jewishness.” I realized that the best way to do that was as a rabbi.

At the same time, someone told me about AJRCA, which offered classes over Zoom, supplemented with in-person internships and in-person retreats a few times a year. Six months later I was enrolled.

My rabbinic training

I was ordained by the Academy of Jewish Religion in California, a trans-denominational Jewish seminary in Los Angeles. The classes were via Zoom, and we got together in person three times a year, except during Covid.

Trans-denominational means there was no affiliation with any particular denomination, which means that we had students who were Humanist, Reform, Conservative, Renewal, Modern Orthodox, and Sephardic among other flavors.

It was an incredible experience. I was in classes with cantorial, chaplaincy and masters students, and their ages ranged from the 20s to the 70s. And there was an awesome range of Jewishness.

We had Israelis, people of Persian and Sephardi descent, as well as people of Ashkenazi descent like me. The professors were academics, rabbis, chaplains and cantors, and ranged in their personal views from Humanist atheists to Orthodox Rabbis. All of this adds up to an experience that showed me more ways to be Jewish than I can possibly list.

If you are not part of the synagogue world, and/or do not identify with one of the movements, I’d love to meet with you.

Maybe you consider yourself a spiritual but not religious Jew, Jew-ish, just Jewish, Jewish adjacent or Jewish curious. Whoever you are, I’d love to meet with you.

Rabbi Greg Marcus and his family
Greg and his family
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Jewish Weddings, Funerals and Baby Naming Ceremony
About Rabbi Greg Marcus

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