Rabbi Matanky

Rabbi Leonard A. Matanky has served as the Rabbi of Congregation K.I.N.S. of West Rogers Park since 1994, and Dean of Ida Crown Jewish Academy since 1995. A native Chicagoan, he was ordained and received a Masters degree in Religious Education in 1981 from the Hebrew Theological College, a Masters degree in Educational Administration from Loyola University in 1982, and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, New York University, in 1989. 

Currently serving as co-president of the Religious Zionists of America, co-Chair of JUF’s Rabbinic Action Committee, and member of the Vaad HaPoel of the World Zionist Organization. Rabbi Matanky is also a past president of the Rabbinical Council of America and the Chicago Rabbinical Council. Rabbi Matanky is the associate editor of the new RCA siddur, “Avodat HaLev,” (2018), the editor of a forthcoming Koren Siddur for the House of Mourning, and the author of numerous articles including his most recent “To Represent and to Inspire: The Role of a Sheliach Tzibbur,” in Ennoble and Enable: Essays in Honor of Richard M. Joel (2018).

Rabbi Matanky is married to Margaret (Novick), and the father of seven children, Yaakov, z”l, Chani (Rabbi Yehuda) Isenberg, Raanana (Reuven) Stein, Shoshana (Benjamin) Neikrug, Yitzchak (Aviva), Avi (Sarah) and Elisheva (Sammy) Gershon; and the grandfather of twenty-three.