A meaningful service, shaped around the person who lived it.
Rabbi Ben Newman and Rabbi Shoshana Leis officiate funerals, graveside services, and shiva — for families of every background. We travel.
Officiating with presence, creativity, and care
Rabbi Ben Newman and Rabbi Shoshana Leis serve as celebrants — guiding families through the most important passages of life with warmth, presence, and care.
We create services that hold the traditional, the spiritual, and the deeply personal in the same breath. While we are comfortable officiating Conservative, Reform, or Renewal services, we consider ourselves primarily spiritualists. We are equally at home leading a secular ceremony or one that draws from a wide range of faith traditions.
We embrace singing, dancing, meditation, poetry, and any element that feels authentic to the person being honored and the family doing the honoring. Music and cross-tradition wisdom can have a place when it serves the family — always offered naturally, always with respect.
- Celebrants Non-religious, non-denominational. We meet families where they are.
- Interfaith Sensitive and skilled with mixed-tradition families and ceremonies.
- Presence A warm, grounded presence before, during, and after the service.
- Ritual Comfort with music, song, and creative ritual when it serves the family.
Two voices, one practice
Rabbi Shoshana Leis
Co-Rabbi · Pleasantville Community Synagogue
Rabbi Shosh entered rabbinical school with the conviction that a rabbi is a Jewish spiritual midwife. She has been living that vision for 25 years — guiding congregants and families through the most tender thresholds of life.
A graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Dartmouth College, she has served communities in Westchester and Colorado, and has built collaborative relationships with the interfaith communities of Northern Westchester since 2019. She co-hosts the podcast Four Worlds Torah with Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz. She lives in Dobbs Ferry with her family.
Rabbi Ben Newman
Co-Rabbi · Pleasantville Community Synagogue
Rabbi Ben is a rabbi, writer, and musician who helps people build lives rooted in meaning and connection. Ordained in 2006 by the Academy for Jewish Religion, he has served congregations in Hastings-on-Hudson, Fort Collins, and Tarrytown.
He is the author of AI for Clergy, 52 Gates: Reflections on Living, and several other books on Jewish spirituality. He brings music, contemplative practice, and creative ritual to his pastoral work. He lives in Dobbs Ferry with his family.
From the first call to the final night
Funeral & Graveside Officiation
A service shaped around the person who died — their life, their relationships, what mattered to them. Drawing on Jewish tradition, secular ritual, or whatever combination serves the family.
Pastoral Meetings Before the Service
We sit with families to listen, gather memories, and help them feel held in an impossible moment. The service grows from those conversations.
Shiva Guidance & Support
We help families understand the mourning period, lead shiva minyans, and stay available as grief settles in after the service ends.
In their own words
Rabbi Newman officiated my mother's funeral and shiva. I can't imagine wanting anyone else to guide us through moments like these. His strong, deeply present, grounding guidance made us feel connected to my mother's soul. He took time to understand what made her special and what we loved about her, incorporating this into the services. We sang, we danced. It was gorgeous!— Eugenie Rosenthal
— Dorothy S.Rabbi Leis guided us through both the practical and spiritual aspects of the process with patience, sensitivity, and careful attention at every stage. What touched us especially was the care she showed to the deceased's young children, his son and daughter, ages 9 and 7. She was gentle and attentive in including them, helping them feel safe and supported while offering them a gentle way to be part of remembering their father.
She even took the extra step of giving them books about grief and inviting their Hebrew school teacher to join us on the final night of the shiva minyan, a thoughtful gesture that meant a great deal to our family.
In all of this, Rabbi Leis embodied the compassion and humanity that matter so much in a moment of loss. Our family will always be grateful for the wisdom, kindness, and care Rabbi Leis brought to these difficult days and for the meaningful way she helped us begin to find our way forward.
It was incredible to me how focused, attentive and present you were during the service in which you beautifully paid respect to the deceased. It was the most impressive officiation of a funeral in my experience. Thank you for setting such a beautiful example of humanity. It will always be remembered.— Jan S.
For funeral homes and families
We respond promptly. We travel throughout the Westchester, New York, the New York metro area, and beyond.