Meet Rabbi Steve Lowenstein: A Community Builder & Healer

Rabbi Steve and his wife at Burning Man

My first real introduction to Rabbi Steve Lowenstein came at a funeral.

It was an incredibly sad one, and I remember watching Rabbi Steve lead it and wondering how someone could bring so much warmth and comfort into a room filled with so much grief. Somehow, he was even uplifting.

Even though that funeral was more than 10 years ago, he remembers it vividly.

When I recently asked him how he does that, he shared something another rabbi taught him years ago:

“People want to know that you care more than they care what you know.”

That philosophy has stayed with him. And the more I learned about his journey, from a kid who wanted little to do with organized Judaism to spending decades as a rabbi, the more I realized there has been a consistent thread throughout his life.

Rabbi Steve loves bringing people together.

An Unexpected Path to the Rabbinate

Rabbi Steve grew up in Cleveland in a family deeply involved in Jewish life. His brother was a youth group president, his father taught Sunday school, and his mother served on the synagogue board.

Rabbi Steve, on the other hand, wasn't interested.

With honesty, “I was into girls and sports and everything else.”

Then his father became sick. When he died during Rabbi Steve's sophomore year of college, he had to call the rabbi to arrange the funeral. Despite how disconnected he had become from Judaism, when he needed the rabbi, the rabbi was there.

“I will never forget that.”

That experience began to change the direction of his life.

Rabbi Steve went to Israel during his junior year and fell in love with the country, the people, and being Jewish. When he came home, he knew he wanted to give something back to the Jewish community, although he wasn't sure what that meant. Maybe he would work at a Federation or Hillel. He said with his face lighting up, “Maybe I would work at a Jewish summer camp.”

Michael Brooks, the longtime Hillel director at the University of Michigan, suggested another option: go to rabbinical school. With “Rabbi” before his name, Brooks told him, he could pursue any of those paths.

Rabbi Steve took the advice, still not expecting to become a congregational rabbi.

Then he started serving student pulpits and discovered he loved it.

Finding His Place

After rabbinical school, Rabbi Steve came to Chicago as an assistant rabbi at Temple Sholom. He deliberately chose the biggest congregation where he could get a job because he viewed those early years almost like a medical residency: the bigger and busier the place, the more he could learn.

He stayed for seven years before an opportunity opened at Am Shalom. In a profession were moving often means relocating across the country, Rabbi Steve moved about 20 miles north.

Twenty-five years later, he's still there.

What struck me as Rabbi Steve told me his story was how little of it seemed mapped out in advance. He didn't grow up dreaming of becoming a rabbi. Even when he entered rabbinical school, he imagined several different careers. He kept moving toward the work he enjoyed and the places where he felt he could make a difference.

Over time, the pattern became clear.

Whether he was counseling a family, leading a congregation, teaching, or raising money for something he believed in, Rabbi Steve was at his best when he was connecting people to one another and to something larger than themselves.

That extends to philanthropy, an area where Rabbi Steve has been remarkably active. He has raised money for Am Shalom while also championing causes and organizations that matter personally to him.

His philosophy is straightforward:

“People give to people.”

“Fundraising is about relationships and trust,” Rabbi Steve told me. “It's about telling someone why a cause matters to you and giving them an opportunity to be part of it. If it feels good to me, then I have no problem asking others.”

As he talked about the various causes that matter to him, I could feel his passion.

He is also careful about what he champions because he never wants every interaction to become an ask. The relationship has to come first, and the cause has to be something he genuinely cares about.

The more we talked about philanthropy, the more it sounded like another extension of the work he has been doing throughout his career: building a community around something people care about.

What a Rabbi Found at Burning Man

And then there is Burning Man.

When I was sitting at High Holiday services and Rabbi Steve started talking about Burning Man, I was very curious where his sermon was going.

His son and future daughter-in-law had gone several times and invited the rabbi, his wife, and their future in-laws to experience it with them.

They decided to go.

What fascinated Rabbi Steve most wasn't simply the art, music, or spectacle.

It was the community.

For one week, tens of thousands of people come together in the Nevada desert and create a city that didn't exist before they arrived and essentially disappears after they leave. Rabbi Steve was struck by the hospitality, the sharing, and the idea that status and money mattered far less than what each person was willing to contribute.

“I've spent my life trying to build community,” he told me. “Here was a community that hadn't existed a week earlier and wouldn't exist a week later, yet for that brief period, tens of thousands of people had created something together.”

As Rabbi Steve described being able to show up as his authentic self, meet people he never would have encountered, and experience this temporary community with his family, I understood why it resonated with him so deeply.

Burning Man was happening again when we spoke, and Rabbi Steve admitted he had serious FOMO. Friends were sending pictures and videos, and he told me, “I genuinely miss being there.”

At first glance, a longtime suburban Chicago rabbi falling in love with Burning Man might seem like an unexpected part of his story.

In reality, it fits perfectly.

Rabbi Steve has spent his career thinking about what makes people feel connected and what turns a collection of individuals into a community. Burning Man gave him a radically different place to explore and experience those same questions.

Finding Jewish Lessons Everywhere

That same curiosity also helps explain Rabbi Steve's approach to teaching.

His sermons aren't always what you might expect from the bimah. He draws from popular culture, personal experiences, and the world around him, then connects those experiences back to Jewish values.

I remember when he gave a sermon on Barbie. The temple was impressively quiet. It was fun, relatable, and inspiring.

Rabbi Steve sees Judaism as a living source of wisdom, not something confined to the synagogue. He described Jewish tradition as a repository of thousands of years of history and experience that can help people navigate marriage, parenting, loss, relationships, and the countless other challenges that come with being human.

He doesn't believe his job is simply to provide answers. He sees himself as a conduit, helping people examine their values and figure out what rings true for them.

And he has a wonderful analogy for that role.

Long before becoming a rabbi, Rabbi Steve and his best friend had a window-washing business. More than 40 years later, Rabbi Steve thinks he's still doing a version of the same work.

As a rabbi, he gets to help people clear some of the “schmutz” from their inner window so they can see themselves and the world a little more clearly.

I love that description because it captures something about Rabbi Steve that is easy to miss if you focus only on the title “Rabbi.”

Even back then, his creativity shined. The name and tagline for the window-washing business?

“Your Pane Is Our Pleasure.”

Following What Matters

After 25 years at Am Shalom, Rabbi Steve is still thinking about what's next.

He told me he believes success means never being satisfied, not because what you've built isn't good enough, but because communities change, and leaders need to keep asking what people need now and what they will need in the future.

Rabbi Steve has consistently followed the things that matter to him: relationships, Jewish life, curiosity, helping people, and creating places where people feel connected to one another.

When I asked how he continues to do that work in such a polarized world, he answered candidly.

“From politics to the war in Israel to COVID, it’s been hard on rabbis and synagogues in general. I’ve been accused of being too pro-Israel and, at other times, not pro-Israel enough. Some people have left the temple. I understand people have different perspectives. I respect them, and I stay true to mine.”

And maybe that's part of what has allowed Rabbi Steve to keep building community for so long.

He isn't trying to make everyone think the same way. He's trying to create a place where people can still belong.

When I think back to that funeral more than a decade ago, I understand a little better what I was watching.

Rabbi Steve wasn't trying to find the perfect words to make an awful moment better. He was doing what he has spent much of his life doing: showing people that he cared and reminding them they weren't alone.

From a funeral filled with grief, to a synagogue filled with families, to 80,000 people gathering in the Nevada desert, the setting may change.

The instinct doesn't.

Rabbi Steve builds community.

And 25 years into his time at Am Shalom, he's still finding new ways to bring people together.

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I help nonprofits raise more money through education, coaching, and strategic planning. I also lead high-impact professional development, coaching programs, and retreats for companies of all sizes. If you're ready to strengthen your fundraising strategy, turn board members into advocates, or build a comprehensive legacy giving program, let's talk.