“I became a rabbi, because I was the sixth generation of rabbis in my family,” says Rabbi Jerry Cutler, pointing to the “Rabbi Abraham I. Cutler” nameplate on his desk. “That was my father’s nameplate, and I keep it as a tribute to him.”
Raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, Cutler says that he also always felt “very drawn to show business. While I was studying for the rabbinate, and while I was teaching Jewish studies on the faculty at NYU, I couldn’t shake – I didn’t want to shake – the show business lure.”

At that point in his life, Cutler was offered the opportunity to edit a motion picture magazine and became the Associate Editor of the Independent Film Journal. From there he went on to become a publicist for American International Beach Party pictures, and then into personal management, representing comedians Stanley Myron Handelman, Slappy White,  Stiller and Meara, and Jackie Vernon.

“But I didn’t give up being a rabbi,” Cutler recalls, “and while I was working as a personal manager, I started the Synagogue for the Performing Arts in my living room. I envisioned it as creating a place for people in the performing arts to go and be rewarded in a house of worship for their accomplishments. You see,” he explains, “my love for Judaism is primarily ethnocentric. I love what we’ve done as a people, and I am proud of what we’ve given to the world at large despite our small numbers. Not just in show business, but, in medicine, the sciences, show business, finance, law, politics, and many other fields of endeavor. I want to share my strong feelings of love and pride.”That desire to share emerges in emotional ways, rather than the strictly educational ways many other rabbis choose. “Teaching,” says Cutler wryly, “is not my forte. I prefer to share, so if I teach, it’s informal, in my home. What I want to do is share the benefits I’ve had in the study of Judaism.