Temple Beit Torah

Your Reform Jewish home in Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak Region


Temple Beit Torah enriches the lives of our members by providing a safe, inclusive, and welcoming Reform Jewish Community. Our vision is to support each member on our journey of personal and spiritual growth, by providing a home for Reform Jewish values and creating sustained connections to the greater community.

Our Interim Spiritual Leader:

Rabbi Eliot J Baskin, DMin, DD, will be helping to lead our community while Rabbi Pillsbury is on family leave. Rabbi Baskin is a spiritual leader and Jewish globetrotter in Denver, Colorado who helps build meaning through learning, counseling, and ritual both in the land of elk and honey and volunteering for the holidays internationally in such places as Taiwan, Guatemala, Myanmar, Bali and Suriname. He currently serves as part of the Shalom Park Nursing Home and Elder Community Spiritual Care team. He recently served as the Associate Rabbi of Temple Emanuel Denver and previously for twenty years, as Denver's Jewish Community Chaplain and the Rabbinic Director of Rafael Spiritual Healing Center of Jewish Family Service of Colorado. He enjoys volunteering as a chaplain for the Denver Police Department and the United States Secret Service, and leading Jewish holiday services for cruises on the chai seas. He has completed the Clergy Leadership Program of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, is a Global Justice Fellow of American Jewish World Service, participated in the first international interfaith delegation of 1000 Abrahamic Circles in Indonesia and New Zealand and presented at the last two Parliament of World Religions.

After completing his undergraduate degree in Jewish studies, Psychology and Occupational Therapy at the University of Toronto, he was ordained and received his doctorate from Hebrew Union College. He wrote his thesis on "The Development of Progressive Judaism in Australia" after serving liberal congregations in New Zealand and Australia as a student rabbi. Following ordination he served as the Jewish chaplain at the Mayo Clinic where he completed a residency in Clinical Pastoral education. He previously served congregations in Rochester, Minnesota; Fort Collins, Colorado; Glastonbury, Connecticut; Evergreen, Colorado; and Durango, Colorado. Originally from Toronto, he lives with his orthodontist wife, Hilary (a Colorado College alumna), where they practice berachas (blessings) and braces, and enjoy the outdoors, magic, theater, travel, and of course, everything Jewish!