Rabbi Richard M. Steinberg
The Rona Perley Memorial Senior Rabbinic Chair
Rabbi Richard Steinberg is the dynamic and transformative leader of Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot, since 2001. At that time, the congregation consisted of less than 300 member families. Today, it is a thriving Congregation of over 625 families with Orange County’s largest Religious School. He works diligently at providing a warm, caring, and educational environment for people to grow in all ways. Through creating an interactive partnership with the laity, Rabbi Steinberg is literally fashioning a place that people call home.
It has been said of CSHM, “This is the place where children bring their parents.” Teaching our children the values and virtues of Judaism is the number one priority to Rabbi Steinberg. Everyone is welcome at every service. He is very serious when he speaks of the Temple’s motto “A Lifetime of Belonging.” Temple is not a one stop shop to Rabbi Steinberg, but rather the place where one can come to feel rooted and part of something bigger than themselves. He believes that when one comes to Temple, they ought to feel better when they leave than when they walked in. He believes that Temples ought to meet people where they are and then take them on the journey of the spirit, and that Judaism ought to be compelling and relevant in one’s life, otherwise there is no purpose in practicing.
Born and raised in Northern California, Rabbi Steinberg has a varied and accomplished past. Graduating from the California State University system with a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice and minor in Sociology. After working for a police department for a year, he decided to focus on a different kind of law – the law of the soul. As a graduate of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, he became the assistant rabbi at the historic congregation in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Isaac M. Wise Temple – the place where Reform Judaism was founded.
- Member, Central Conference of American Rabbis Board of Trustees
- Member, Children’s Hospital of Orange County Mental Health Advisory Board
- Member, CCAR/URJ Placement Commission
- Commissioner, Chair Orange County Human Relations Commission
- Chaplain of the Irvine Police Department
- Executive Board, Orange County Sheriff’s Interfaith Religious Council
- Executive Board, Aipac Orange County
- Past-president, Jewish Association of Special Needs
- Past-president, Orange County Board of Rabbis
He holds an MAHL; A Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters - and – Ordination as a Rabbi – and – an MFT; Master of Arts in Marital Family Therapy and is a licensed psychotherapist. He is married to Abby Rozenberg and together they have five adult children.
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Rabbi Sarah DePaolo
The Sherman Family Rabbinic Chair
Rabbi Sarah DePaolo is honored to be a part of the clergy team at Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot. Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, Rabbi DePaolo was active in her childhood temple’s youth programs. These early experiences sparked Rabbi DePaolo’s love of Judaism and inspired her to want to build strong and vibrant Jewish communities in the future. She now serves the SHM community as the B’nai Mitzvah Program Coordinator, overseeing the education and preparation of all of our B’nai Mitzvah students each year. Rabbi DePaolo also works closely with our sisterhood, NaSHiM, our Tikkun Olam Committee: SHeMesh, and our Adult Education groups including Chai Society, and Shabbat Edition.
A graduate of Vassar College with BA in Political Science, Rabbi DePaolo also received a Master of Arts in Hebrew Literature from Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York City, and was ordained by the College-Institute in May 2017. While in rabbinical school, Rabbi DePaolo served as the Reform Rabbinic Intern at the Columbia University/Barnard College Hillel, worked as an intern for ARZA: The Association of Reform Zionists of America, and served as the student rabbi at several Reform congregations in the NY Metro area. She also completed a chaplaincy internship at Greenwich Hospital.
With her rabbinic colleagues, Rabbi DePaolo was the recipient of the entrepreneurial BeWise fellowship at HUC-JIR, organizing an intensive day of learning for faculty, staff, and students focused on the use of technology in congregational life. She was also a participant in the Wiener Educational Center Fellowship, and was honored to receive the faculty prize in homiletics from HUC-JIR as well as commendations for her work in Jewish communal organizations and synagogue management. As a lover of young adult engagement, she now sits on the board for Hillels of Orange County.
Rabbi DePaolo is driven in her rabbinic work by a commitment to joyful exploration of Jewish learning and spirituality, building a community full of deep relationships, and the pursuit of social justice. In her free time, Rabbi DePaolo enjoys cooking, reading, exploring, and discussing Pop Culture. Though native New Yorkers, Rabbi DePaolo and her husband, David Bernstein, happily relocated to beautiful Orange County, and now make their home in Lake Forest, CA with their dog, Glenda.
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Cantor Iris Karlin
Cantor Karlin was born and raised in Israel and has lived in the United States for 16 years. She is a highly accomplished musician. When she learned that her love of music was not enough, she realized her desire to express her spirituality and the richness of Judaism in her music, and so she turned to the cantorate. Having completed her undergraduate and master’s degree in education in the early 2000s, she was ordained as a cantor after five years of full-time graduate education at the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in May of 2024.
Cantor Karlin's musical tastes and abilities truly span the spectrum. From pop to classic, from opera to camp music, from traditional Jewish melodies to jazz, Cantor Karlin cannot only sing in such genres, she writes in them, composes in them, and performs them. She leads both the Adult Choir and the Youth Choir and is engaged with many programs, concerts and educational events, including Shabbat and High Holy Day Services.
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Arië Shikler, Cantor Emeritus
The Hollander Family Cantorial Chair
Arië Shikler was the Cantor of Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot from 1968 to 2018. A multi-talented artist, Arië is also an accomplished painter and designer with many products and exhibitions to his credit. Cantor Shikler is a composer and arranger of music. He has released five CDs. He loves to give to the community through benefit concerts to various organizations. Arië is also an innovator. At the beginning of his career, he introduced the guitar as accompaniment during Shabbat Services, the first to do so in Orange County. The Temple Music Program is vibrant thanks to the foundation set by Cantor Shikler's talented ear with adult and children's choirs, adult musicians as well as a youth band which brought a wide range of music to our Shabbat Services each week. Whether it is singing in one of many languages he either speaks or has researched, or playing an interesting instrument, he always puts his all into it.
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Rabbi Bernie King, z'L
Rabbi Bernie King was the founding rabbi at Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot in Irvine, which started in Newport Beach as Harbor Reform Temple. He led the congregation for 32 years before he retired in 2001.
From the beginning, he set a tone of religious harmony.
The temple rented space from Newport Beach churches St. James Episcopal Church and Christ Church by the Sea, United Methodist for nearly 10 years. In 1978, the temple joined with St. Mark Presbyterian Church in the same building and sanctuary, a partnership that sprang out of both congregations’ need for more space to grow. King had met the church’s pastor at an interfaith gathering.
"It shows that we’re not working artificially to make brotherhood happen,” King told The Times in 1986. “They took a vote on this shared relationship when it was proposed, and it was virtually unanimous."
The arrangement lasted till 1994, when Shir Ha-Ma’alot moved into a former health club in Irvine for more space. But the move didn’t dampen King’s interfaith work, which friends and family say was motivated by his view of seeing the holiness in everyone. The license plate on his SUV read U2RHOLY.
Born April 21, 1938, in Arizona and raised in San Francisco, King was a submariner in the Navy before earning his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from UCLA.
During his studies to be a rabbi in 1965, King was prompted to join the last of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Selma-to-Montgomery marches by the screams of Bloody Sunday protesters he heard on radio news reports. He graduated from rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles in 1969.
After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, King decided his congregation should reach out to the poorer communities in Orange County and began an adopt-a-family program. Through the Santa Ana school where his wife taught, they matched up needy families with members of the congregation to provide meals during Thanksgiving and toys and gifts during Christmas. More than 1,000 people receive help during both holidays.
