There is a new rabbi in town, but he isn’t new to the community.
Stephen Boroda, who received his smicha (rabbinic ordination) on Aug. 21, said when he began his work as assistant to Rabbi Bernard Reichman at Congregation Anshai Lebowitz in Mequon three years ago, it was with the understanding that he would be “doing some learning at the same time,” he said.
So Boroda — who is from London, England, but has worked at several congregations there as well as in Australia and Dayton, Ohio — figured out “the easiest way of doing it,” via the Internet.
And as a result, he is now the assistant rabbi at Anshai Lebowitz. The synagogue said a special Kiddush for Boroda on Friday, Sept. 16, in honor of his new position.
Boroda enrolled in the Shulchan Aruch Learning Project and Semicha Program through the Jerusalem-based Pirchei Shoshanim, part of the Shema Yisrael Torah Network — one of the first Jewish groups “to get up and running on the Internet,” Boroda said.
Its program allowed him to receive his rabbinical ordination through home study of materials that were e-mailed to him twice weekly.
Boroda began work in May 2002. Last month, he traveled to Jerusalem, where he participated in a review session and passed an exam that took him 10 hours to complete.
The program, Boroda said, is made up of three separate sections, each containing about 30 different lessons.
The first part consists of regular learning, which is also suitable for those students who aren’t necessarily pursuing the rabbinate and just participating in the program “for their own knowledge,” Boroda said.
The second section works on preparing the student for the simicha program and the third for the rabbinate exam. Though the actual lessons are in English, Boroda said the program is also offered in Hebrew, French and Spanish.
Each lesson concluded with a “multiple choice test of a very strange variety,” Boroda said, where the student is presented with “any number of answers that could be correct.” The student is required to cite the source where each correct answer is found.
Boroda said he was impressed with the quality of the program and materials. He noted that “a lot of yeshivas are reluctant to do things from a distance,” while this whole program “was designed to be this way,” he said.
In addition, Boroda studied with the same group of more than 20 students from all over the world for the duration of the program. They all met for the first time in Jerusalem for the final exam.
The program did require a fair amount of self-discipline, Boroda said. He estimated that he spent eight to 10 hours a week studying his lessons, and “towards the end a lot more.”
Boroda admitted that at some points “when other things come up” it was easy to get behind. But he was happy to be able to complete his studies at “my own pace and my own way.”
Now that he is a rabbi, Boroda said he has no new plans “in the short term,” and is “continuing on in the moment” with his work at Anshai Lebowitz.
Boroda has also studied in Israel at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and Machon Greenberg. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.
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