Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, PhD, is the senior rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue and a leading voice of American Jewry. Under his leadership, Park Avenue Synagogue seeks to inspire, educate, and support its membership toward living passion-filled Jewish lives. As a beit tefillah, a beit midrash, and a beit knesset – a house of prayer, learning, and gathering – Park Avenue Synagogue aspires to be a kehillah kedoshah, a holy congregation, where national Jewish conversations are lived.
Rabbi Cosgrove also serves the Conservative Movement, the Jewish community beyond PAS, and the larger public. He is a member of the Chancellor’s Cabinet of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he is an adjunct assistant professor, and a Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Rabbi Cosgrove is an officer of the New York Board of Rabbis and serves on the boards of UJA-Federation of New York and the American Joint Distribution Committee. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1999, Rabbi Cosgrove earned his PhD at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today, a frequent contributor to periodicals, the editor of Jewish Theology in Our Time, and the author of seventeen previous volumes of sermons. He is the host of Common Faith, a podcast on Sirius XM, and the publisher of Off the Pulpit, a Substack exploring the issues of our day through the lens of Jewish tradition.
Rabbi Cosgrove’s sermons reflect his commitment to guiding congregants through the challenges facing the Jewish people, while nurturing a vibrant and joyful Jewish identity – one grounded not only in defense against adversity, but in the enduring promise of Torah, community, and holy living.
Selected Sermons
In the Beginning, 2009
An Everlasting Covenant, 2010
Go Forth!, 2011
Hineni, 2012
A Place to Lodge, 2013
Living Waters, 2014
Stairway to Heaven, 2015
Rise Up!, 2016
A Coat of Many Colors, 2017
Provisions for the Way, 2018
Tree of Life, 2019
Bring Them Close, 2020
And the Bush Was Not Consumed, 2021
An Outstretched Arm, 2022
A Mixed Multitude, 2023
At the Edge of the Wilderness, 2024