Mission & History

The mission of Temple Sinai is to:

Create a welcoming, inclusive, diverse, and innovative Jewish community that will thrive, grow and strengthen from generation to generation;

Serve as a spiritual Reform congregation, a place of sanctuary and a kehillah k’doshah (a holy community), for all interested Jewish and Jewish adjacent individuals and families in the Sarasota-Manatee area; and

Promote tikkun olam (repairing the world), leaving our community, our city, our nation, and our world better than we found it.

In early 1991, five Jewish families with a common dream came together to
establish a new congregation in Sarasota. That March, over 180 people
attended the new congregation’s first function, a community Seder. The
following month, with a Sefer Torah graciously on loan from Temple Beth
Sholom, 55 families attended Temple Sinai’s “Service of Beginning” at the
Jewish Community Center. Membership quickly grew and the temple hired
Rabbi Aaron Koplin to serve as its first rabbi.

Without a permanent home, the growing congregation held services at
various locations around town. A dedicated group, nicknamed the “Sinai
Shleppers,” transported an ark, Torah and prayer books each week from
place to place. By 1992, Temple Sinai was ready to put down permanent
roots and acquired a former church complex on Kenilworth Street, our first home.

In December of 1993, Temple Sinai welcomed our Rabbi Geoffrey Huntting
and his family to Sarasota and in 1995 we officially joined the Reform
movement. The congregation continued to grow and expand our
programming. We embarked on a friendship with Church of the Palms
Presbyterian Church, a relationship that includes an annual Interfaith
Thanksgiving service that continues today. In September of 2005 we moved
into a space we designed and built on South Lockwood Ridge Road.

The next year was particularly exciting as we hired our Chazzan Cliff
Abramson and opened our early childhood educational program, The Gan at
Temple Sinai. In our new building we were able to develop our programming
even further, including new adult learning opportunities and cultural events.
We began hosting a Jewish Food Festival which has become a community
favorite. Our youth group strengthened and we hosted our first NFTY
regional youth event and one of our members was elected NFTY regional
president. In 2010, we instituted our monthly Rhythm & Jews Shabbat
Service featuring the Bruno Trio.

In 2016 we celebrated our 25th anniversary year with a series of concerts
that culminated in a weekend honoring Rabbi Huntting upon his retirement.
Though subsequently twice unlucky with our CCAR rabbinic searches to
retain a new rabbi, we kept evolving. We restructured our supplemental
school program to become a more student-centered JQuest program and
engaged our youth and their families in new and deeper ways. We
reinvigorated our volunteer pool. And we were particularly fortunate in                                                                                                                                                2022 when Chazzan Cliff Abramson was willing to step up to be our                                                                                                                                                      Senior Clergy, a position he still holds today.