Rabbi Katie
Rabbi Katie Mizrahi, Or Shalom’s spiritual leader from 2007 - 2022, guided our community in finding the joy at the heart of Judaism. Her wisdom and learning, and her singing and drumming, took us from the High Holy Day peaks to the rhythm of Shabbat and the sweet songs of Havdalah.
Rabbi Katie was ordained through the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2005. Previously, she studied for several years in Jerusalem, while devoting herself to human rights projects and peace education.
Rabbi Katie grew up in Boulder, Colorado, where the Rockies’ Front Range taught her to love mountains and vast untamed natural spaces. She came to the Bay Area as an undergraduate at Stanford, where she majored in philosophy and religious studies, and first felt the call of the rabbinate.
She has served as a Marshall T. Meyer Rabbinic Fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City, a visiting rabbi for Kehilat Kol HaNeshama in Jerusalem, and a sabbatical rabbi for West End Synagogue, also in New York City.
Rabbi Katie feels tremendous gratitude for the gift of being a rabbi—sharing life’s greatest joys and sorrows with congregants—and living and working to nurture justice, holiness and peace in our world and in ourselves. Her spiritual practice includes social justice work, Torah learning, gardening, yoga, music, kindness, and time in the natural world.