Temple Shalom Pride Shabbat

Please join us for Shabbat celebrating PRIDE month where we will be joined in-person by Jewish educator, counselor & former Rabbi, Motti Salzberg. Motti Salzberg was born and raised in the New York “Black Hat” Orthodox Jewish community. After completing High School in Brooklyn, he went to Rabbinic College in Baltimore for five years, while simultaneously getting a B.A. in Accounting from the University of Maryland. In 1996, he got married to his now ex-wife, and spent the first year of their marriage in Jerusalem, where he received his Orthodox Rabbinic Ordination. The couple then spent five years in Columbus, Ohio, where then Rabbi Salzberg was a fellow in a Community Kollel focusing on bringing unaffiliated Jews closer to their heritage. During this time, he earned a MSW and began working part time at a community counseling center. In 2002, the family and their three children made Aliyah to Israel where their fourth child was born, and Motti continued to work both as a social worker and in Jewish education.
In 2004, Motti came out to his wife as gay and they got divorced shortly after, moving back to the New York area.
For the first ten years after his divorce, Motti maintained his affiliation both with the Orthodox community and the Rabbinate, working as a Judaic studies teacher in a Modern Orthodox elementary and middle school.
More recently, Motti has moved away from the traditional Orthodox community and no longer considers himself a Rabbi. He currently lives in Maplewood, NJ with his husband, dog and any number of his four, now adult, children at any given time. He is a therapist in private practice, specializing in sexual trauma and addiction, particularly in the Hasidic community.