Rabbi Bradd Boxman is kvelling: He is about to have another rabbi-daughter.
His oldest daughter, Ariel, is a rabbi in Naples, on the west coast of Florida. And his youngest, Ashira, will graduate from rabbinical school in May. Her first job post-seminary will be back in South Florida: She will join the clergy team at Temple Beth El in Boca Raton this summer. (There’s also a middle daughter, Talia Levy Hara, a registered nurse at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood.)
It’s not uncommon for the children of rabbis to become clergy members themselves. But three in one Reform Jewish family is quite unusual. Rabbi Lisa Grant, professor of Jewish education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform movement’s seminary in New York, said she has seen only four of these triplet or bigger combinations in her 25 years on the faculty.
She taught the Boxman daughters, she said, and has met the dad at least once. What they all have in common: a heartfelt commitment to “going the extra mile.”
“They’re not cookie-cutter by any means,” Grant said. “They are dedicated to learning and building community. I have such deep admiration and affection for them.”
Bradd, a rabbi at Congregation Kol Tikvah in Parkland since 2008, said he reiterated to his daughters, many times, that the rabbinic life is not easy.
“They went in with their eyes wide open,” said Bradd, 65, a Philadelphia native who was ordained in 1986. “When they told me they wanted to be rabbis, I said nothing would make me happier. But if they were doing it for the wrong reasons or for my sake, nothing would make me sadder.
“They made it clear they would be their own type of rabbis.”
He and his wife, Linda, raised their daughters with robust Jewish values and experiences they hoped would imprint for life. He worked at five congregations as they were growing up, and several went through unfathomable challenges: When he was at the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas (1990 to 1996), Hurricane Marilyn caused catastrophic damage throughout the Virgin Islands.
When he led United Jewish Center in Danbury, Connecticut (1996 to 2003), the Twin Tower collapses in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, closely affected many members of the congregation. And his current congregation, Kol Tikvah, was crushed by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings in 2018, when 17 students and staff were shot dead and others suffered devastating injuries. He conducted the funerals for slain students Meadow Pollack and Alex Schachter.
“We’ve seen the stress he went through firsthand and yet we still wanted to do it,” said Ashira, 30.
Bradd met his wife when she was working at Broward County’s Jewish Community Center, which was then in Sunrise, and she interviewed him for a summer travel camp job. After their marriage in 1983, they agreed that four experiences were essential to assuring their daughters retained their Jewish identities: positive experiences at Jewish camps; education at Jewish day schools; participation in Jewish youth groups; and multiple, immersive trips to Israel.
“I wanted my kids to fall in love with Israel the way I did,” said Bradd, who has visited the country 22 times.
The plan worked. Ariel went to Israel for four months as a high school junior, which she described as “transformative.” That’s when she told her dad she wanted to follow in his footsteps
“He said, ‘Go to college and study other things,’ ” Ariel, 39, recalled. “I studied international relations, but the calling was still there.”
Ariel attended the Reform seminary and graduated in 2012. She spent six years as a rabbi-educator in Dallas, married Asher Saida, who is Israeli-American, and had two children, Jacob and Matan. The couple decided they wanted to be closer to family, and Ariel found a job at Temple Shalom, a Reform congregation in Naples, where she is director of lifelong learning. She said she has grown the synagogue’s pre-school from 26 students to 180.
As their dad describes it, the life of a rabbi is all-encompassing, 24/7, and sometimes “rough,” as personalities clash at emotional times, insults can be hurled and relationships can easily fray. So much time is spent attending to the congregation that the family can suffer.
“I missed out on a lot of little things when the kids were growing up,” he said. “But it’s been extremely fulfilling. You can have such an impact.”
Bradd said his daughters watched as he officiated at weddings, agonized over sermons, advised distraught congregants, led trips to Israel and attended to the dying.
Ashira said she saw her family as “normal.”
“My dad is a very down-to-Earth, authentic guy,” she said. “My parents are very mainstream, relatable people.”
Ashira, who goes by @everydayrabbi on Instagram, decided to work for three years post-college at Hillel, the Jewish college student group, at the University of Texas at Austin, and then started classes at the seminary in New York. After living apart from her family for so long, she said she was experiencing “FOMO” (fear of missing out) and wanted to move home to South Florida.
“I felt like I was missing out on all these big life moments,” especially in the lives of her young nieces and nephews, she said.
Bradd plans to retire in 2026 and become rabbi emeritus at Kol Tikvah, still involved with the congregation but taking on a lighter workload. As her dad sunsets his career, Ashira’s is just beginning: She is scheduled to graduate rabbinical school on May 4 and start her new job in Boca Raton on July 1.
Both daughters love having a lot to talk about with their father.
“A lot of times rabbis’ kids run away from Judaism,” Ashira said. “But our dad never pushed it on us.”
As Ariel put it: “He was hesitant” about their career paths, she said, “but overjoyed and honored.”
Their dad is elated but sometimes finds the situation humorous. He likes to tell this joke: “Boxman, Boxman and Boxman. It’s either a bad law firm or a rabbinic dynasty.”
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