Rabbi Kalev has always carried two inheritances at once. His father's family, Yemenite Jews airlifted to Israel during Operation Magic Carpet, gave him a love of tradition and text. His mother's family, Holocaust survivors from Germany and Poland, gave him a love of Judaism as something lived, not just studied. Born and raised in the Bay Area, he's been blending the two ever since, which may be the best training a rabbi can get.

He earned his B.A., M.B.A., M.A. in Jewish Studies, and Rabbinic Ordination at the University of Judaism (now American Jewish University), where he also met his Rabbinic School study partner, Rabbi Selilah Kalev, proof that the best study partnerships sometimes turn into marriages. The two even worked together at CTJ from 1994 to 2003, long before either imagined he'd come back to lead it.

In between, there was a decade-plus out east: five years at Temple Beth Shalom in Mahopac, NY: chaplain to the local fire departments, mashgiach, board member, monthly newspaper columnist ("Rap with the Rabbi”), followed by eight years at Tiferet Bet Israel in Blue Bell, PA, where he stayed busy with hospital ethics boards, regional rabbinic leadership, and enough committees to fill a second bio.

Rabbi Kalev came home to California, and to CTJ, as senior rabbi in the summer of 2016. Ten-plus years in, he serves on the Ziegler School Admissions Committee, the Sandra Kaplan Beit Din, the Steering Committee of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, and the South Bay Community Coalition Against Hate, and he's built a genuine friendship with the clergy at Manhattan Beach Community Church, swapping pulpits and teaching side by side. Ask him his proudest achievement of the past year, though, and he'll skip all of that; it was bringing the CTJ Maccabiah trophy home to the Blue Team.