About Us

Congregation Beth Elohim, founded in 1861, is one of the fastest growing and most vibrant synagogues in New York City. CBE, also known as Garfield Temple, was recently named “one of America’s 25 most vibrant congregations” by Newsweek, which hailed CBE for “quickly adapting to Brooklyn’s exciting, young population.” Open to people from a variety of backgrounds who honor our traditions and values, CBE serves as a hub for members and for the surrounding community as well. It is a place of worship, dedicated to honoring Jewish traditions, and also a place of learning, a place to socialize, to celebrate and to actively engage with the world, a synagogue center energizing and enriching our Jewish community through study, ritual and acts of loving-kindness.

Mission Statement: Congregation Beth Elohim is a welcoming and inclusive synagogue, proudly rooted in Jewish history and identity, profoundly open to different backgrounds and divergent points of view. We come together to learn, celebrate and worship, honoring each individual’s search for an authentic relationship to the divine. We are a preeminent Brooklyn institution, a spiritual, cultural and intellectual center for Jewish revitalization, fostering community and extending our congregational values of justice, education and inspiration throughout the neighborhoods where we live and beyond.

Our Vision – 5 Fundamentals

Education: We offer exciting and innovative Jewish education, as well as secular educational programming of the highest quality.

Ritual and Spirituality: We provide a sacred space for meaningful reflection, joyful song and enriching Torah study; we seek to maintain and renew the practices and customs of our tradition.

Community: We furnish our members with a web of connections and a sense of home,a place to celebrate our joys together and to help one another in times of need.

Culture: We are a cultural and intellectual hub, a showcase for creativity and a welcoming Brooklyn destination for bold debate about books, faith, current events and ideas.

One People: We reach out to disparate elements of the Jewish world in order that we may come together as one people, emphasizing our shared language, mission, history and tradition and our connection to the Land of Israel; we embrace our responsibility as Jews to be careful stewards of our cultural inheritance, our natural resources and our collective heritage.

Click here to view CBE's full Strategic Plan.