Rabbi Darryl Crystal is the Interim Rabbi of KAM Isaiah Israel. He served for eighteen years as the Senior Rabbi and Associate Rabbi of North Shore Synagogue, a congregation of over 900 families, in Syosset, New York. He has worked as an Interim Rabbi in small and medium congregations in Newburgh, New York, Madison, Wisconsin, Skokie, Illinois, and Chester, Connecticut.
An Interim Rabbi provides unique leadership for a synagogue. Rabbi Crystal helps congregations create a successful transition between the previous rabbi and their new spiritual leader. He is fully engaged in the life of the congregation, and provides pastoral care for congregants, teaches adults and children, officiates at life cycle events, leads worship, and represents the congregation in the community. He also helps congregations review its programs, engage new members, and affirm their relationship with the Union for Reform Judaism.
Rabbi Crystal was ordained at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was one of the first rabbis to be trained by the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, which teaches rabbi, cantors, and educators about spirituality through study of classic texts of mysticism and Jewish meditation. He also recently studied for a year in Jerusalem at the Pardes Institute which explores classic texts through based on tradition Jewish law and at the Conservative Yeshiva. He has also studied with HebrewCollege, in Boston, with Chabad and Breslav Hasidic Rabbis, and with teachers of the Jewish Renewal movement at the Elat Chayyim Spiritual Retreat Center.
Working with children and teenagers is a joy for Rabbi Crystal. He brings an assortment of Beanie Babies, boxes of 96 Crayola Crayons (with the sharpener in the back), and costumes for stories with him to each congregation he serves. He served as the Chairman of the Committee on Youth for the Central Conference of American Rabbis and has worked at Union for Reform Judaism Camps in New York, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania. During his tenure at North Shore Synagogue, in New York, the youth groups grew from twenty participants to a high of over 400 members. Much more than the number of participants, he believes a Reform youth program is successful when it touches each child with the ideal, “synagogue is the place where you are accepted for being you!” Rabbi Crystal has worked at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism which is the voice for social justice of the movement in Washington, DC as well as a hospital chaplain at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in Chicago. Rabbi Crystal believes that we are each called to affirm the Divinity in every person and to reach out to others with kindness. He is inspired by the words of the Torah, “Serve Eternal with joy, come before God with thanksgiving.”
The education of young children, and particularly the Jewish education of the children in our community has been my focus for so long I can barely remember when it began. I have been a member of KAMII for 25 years now and have taught in our school for many of those years. There is almost nothing that makes me happier than watching our students learn, sing, play, and pray together, knowing that I am helping to facilitate that process. My goal as Director of Education is to send our students out into the world knowing who they are, being comfortable in their “Jewish skins”, and able to participate in our worship services wherever they may end up in their lives. My hope is to pass on to them my love of being Jewish so that they, too, will pass it on to their children.
"Knowing isn't everything; it is, profoundly, the only thing," wrote Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf. To that end, he has devoted his life to helping children and adults to learn about Judaism and to practice what it teaches us. He has been called "our generation's incomparable instance of the prophet become rabbi." Rabbi Wolf has taught at Yale, HUC-JIR, the University of Chicago, and Loyola Marymount University. Unfinished Rabbi, a selection of his writings, was published in 1998.
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Rabbi Darryl Crystal is the Interim Rabbi of KAM Isaiah Israel. He served for eighteen years as the Senior Rabbi and Associate Rabbi of North Shore Synagogue, a congregation of over 900 families, in Syosset, New York. He has worked as an Interim Rabbi in small and medium congregations in Newburgh, New York, Madison, Wisconsin, Skokie, Illinois, and Chester, Connecticut. 
"Knowing isn't everything; it is, profoundly, the only thing," wrote Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf. To that end, he has devoted his life to helping children and adults to learn about Judaism and to practice what it teaches us. He has been called "our generation's incomparable instance of the prophet become rabbi." Rabbi Wolf has taught at Yale, HUC-JIR, the University of Chicago, and Loyola Marymount University. Unfinished Rabbi, a selection of his writings, was published in 1998.
