Samuel Egal Karff was Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel from 1975 to 1999 when he became Rabbi Emeritus. He spent several years as an Air Force Chaplain and has also served congregations in Boston, Massachusetts, Montgomery, Alabama, Hartford, Connecticut; Flint, Michigan; and Chicago, Illinois.

An honor graduate of Harvard University, he was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion where he earned a Doctor of Hebrew Letters degree in Rabbinic Theology.

Rabbi Karff is the author of Agada: The Language of Jewish Faith, The Soul of the Rav, Permission to Believe: Finding Faith in Troubled Times, and wrote the chapters on Judaism for Religions of the World, a text that has gone through three editions and been used in 200 colleges. He has taught at Notre Dame, the University of Chicago Divinity School, and Rice University, and is a Visiting Professor in Society and Health at The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.

He has served as editor of the Journal of Reform Judaism, has lectured widely in this country and abroad, and is a former President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Rabbi Karff and his wife Joan are the parents of three lovely daughters, Rachel Karff Weissenstein, Amy Karff Halevy and Elizabeth Karff Kampf, who in turn have given them seven beautiful grandchildren.