Clergy & Staff

Rabbi Yehoshua Ellis was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas. He earned a Bachelors of Art in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. After university, he worked as a Jewish environmental educator at the Teva Learning Center. His passion for Jewish education and connection took him to Poland in 2003, where he volunteered for the Jewish community of Poland under the auspices of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. After a year in Poland, Rabbi Ellis moved to Jerusalem to pursue smicha, a formal rabbinic ordination, to better serve the Jews of Poland. Rabbi Ellis earned smicha as a Rabbi and schochet, a specially trained individual in the Jewish community who is licensed and qualified to slaughter animals, from the Shehebar Sephardic Center in Jerusalem while training for practical rabbinic and diaspora relations at the Straus-Amiel Institute of Advanced Rabbinics.

After earning smicha, Rabbi Ellis and his wife Raissa moved to Katowice, Poland. He served for five years as the Chief Rabbi of Katowice and Silessia. While there, he created and led the Association of Polish Rabbis.