Rabbi Noah Diamondstein joined the Temple Sinai, Washington D.C. clergy team in the summer of 2020. He has had wide ranging experiences as a scholar of Judaism — from handling primary source documents from early 20th Century rabbis who wrote about the Mourners’ Kaddish, to teaching the leadership of Jerusalem’s Women of the Wall movement to blow shofar, to serving as a rabbinic intern at a Jewish Social Justice non-profit organization. His rabbinic thesis is entitled “A Tale of Two Liturgies: Placing Liturgical Development in the Reform and Conservative Movements in Conversation,” and focused on the differences and similarities between the ways these two Liberal Jewish movements approach the work of creating new prayer books. This project was meaningful for him, given that he was raised simultaneously in both the Conservative and Reform Movements.
Noah is also a published Jewish musician. His first album, entitled “Ashira L’Adonai,” was released in January 2019 and produced by none other than Dan Nichols. His second album, “My Whole Heart,” was released in four “chambers” in 2022, again with engineering by Mark Niemec. He is a Featured Artist on Jewish Rock Radio, and spent much of his final year before coming to Temple Sinai as a guest service leader or artist-in-residence in Jewish communities across the country. His musical work has helped him to fine-tune his skills as a service leader, and has taught him the power of leaving your ego at the door for the sake of holding space for the group.
Noah is a multi-instrumentalist who plays almost every instrument on his records, from guitar, to bass, to drums, to mandolin, to trumpet to vocals and more! His music crosses genres from folk to pop to hard rock, and his textual influences span liturgy, TaNaKh, and rabbinic texts. He works to create intentional prayer practice with communities he gets to serve and with whom he gets to sing, and is constantly searching for new ways to inspire people to think and feel deeply about life and how Jewish tradition, stories and thought can imbue it with meaning.