Craig Taubman

Craig Taubman is an American musician and composer, Los Angeles County commissioner, and the founder and executive director of the Pico Union Project, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization and interfaith destination providing services to the Pico Union neighborhood. He currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.
==Early Life and Education==
Taubman began his musical career in high school at the Los Angeles Hebrew High School, where he created an album that sold 5,000 copies at the age of 17. He studied at California State University, Northridge, the University of Judaism (now American Jewish University), UCLA, and Hebrew University in Israel, where he lived for three years and performed in multiple musical groups.
==Musical Career==
Taubman is known for his original music and compositions in the Jewish, contemporary rock, and children’s music genres. Over the course of his musical career, he has written and recorded both solo and compilation albums, written music for children’s cartoons and movies, and performed at the White House, among other notable venues. 
Taubman's foray into the children's genre took off with Yad B’Yad, a troupe he founded for Jewish teenagers. A children’s album Morning N’ Night that he wrote with his group Craig N’ Co led to a contract with Disney in 1992.
From 1999 to 2014, Taubman and associate Rabbi David Wolpe created and led a monthly Shabbat musical service aimed at young Jewish congregants called Friday Night Live from the Sinai Temple in West LA. The concept became so popular it eventually landed in other congregations around the world.
==Nonprofit Work and The Pico Union Project==
In 2013, Taubman purchased the historical-cultural monument that was once home to the oldest synagogue building in Los Angeles and founded the nonprofit organization Pico Union Project within the space. Since its founding, Pico Union Project has provided religious services for people of diverse faiths and backgrounds, community services such as food distribution programs and professional development opportunities, and live events to the neighborhood of Pico Union, continuously evolving to meet the community’s needs.
In its initial years, the Pico Union Project provided worship space for different religious organizations including a Methodist Episcopal ministry, Korean Christian churches, an all-women’s mosque (the first of its kind in the country), Jewish groups, and an Evangelical and Pentecostal church. 
The Pico Union Project building originally housed LA’s Sinai Temple from 1905-1925 before becoming the home to the Welsh Presbyterian Church between 1926-2012. A Jewish congregation called Sanctuary@Pico Union began services in the space in 2015, restoring Jewish programming to the space for the first time in nearly a century.
Today, Pico Union Project offers a free weekly farmers’ market called Vida Sana for the neighborhood’s low-income residents, regularly scheduled musical performances and cultural events, and classes and professional development workshops—all offered with the goal of building community and caring for neighbors. Artists such as Courtney Barnett, Rhiannon Giddens, and Rex Orange County have performed at Pico Union Project.
==Jewels of Elul==
From 2005 to 2024, Taubman created and self-published Jewels of Elul, an annual compilation book featuring 29 essays from contributors corresponding to the 29 days of Elul, the period leading up to the Jewish Holy Days. Each year, Taubman prompted a diversity of contributors to write a short essay (a “jewel”) on a given subject or theme. The Jewels of Elul project was noteworthy in that it featured the writing of non-Jewish essayists in addition to Jewish essayists, encompassing 638 essays from eclectic contributors in total including Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, the Dalai Lama, Elie Wiesel, Sharon Brous, Maz Jobrani, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Quincy Jones, Sally Quinn, and Mayim Bialik, over the course of its 22 year run.
==Appointments==
On August 10, 2021, Taubman was appointed to the Los Angeles County Citizens’ Economy and Efficiency Commission by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
Category:American musicians
Category:American people
Category:Composers