Temple Kol Tikvah of Davidson Welcomes Rabbi Tracy Klirs

Charlotte Jewish News September 2021

Tracy Guren Klirs was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1984 in Cincinnati. She has held pulpits in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Odessa, Texas; San Bernardino, California; Potomac, Maryland; Cumberland, Maryland, Warrenton, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina. She has also enjoyed an extensive career as a Jewish educator, in a Jewish day school and synagogue schools from California to New York, as well as at the helm of a nonprofit Israeli educational organization, Melitz America. She has served as a teacher, lecturer, writer, educational consultant, rabbi and chaplain for a number of synagogues and Jewish institutions throughout the U.S. and Canada.

After completing six years of full-time work as director of education and then associate rabbi at Temple Israel in Charlotte, Rabbi Klirs served as part-time rabbi of Temple Beth Sholom in Danville, Virginia and as a freelance rabbi in the Greater Charlotte area. Rabbi Klirs’ recent work has focused on senior care and outreach, pastoral work, adult education, individual tutoring, and creative life cycle events.

Rabbi Klirs is the primary author of “The Merit of Our Mothers: A Bilingual Anthology of Jewish Women’s Prayers” and has published a number of articles, primarily on Yiddish literature, including a chapter entitled “Tkhines for Rosh Chodesh: Women’s Prayers of Devotion in Celebrating the New Moon: A Rosh Chodesh Anthology.”

She is a member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Women’s Rabbinic Network, serves in the Professional Advisory Group for the Clinical Pastoral Education program at Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center, and is involved in numerous community projects and initiatives. She is excited about her new position as the transitional rabbi, and Temple Kol Tikvah is excited to welcome her to their community.