Becoming spiritual leader of Lake Park Synagogue, the small (60 to 75 memberships) modern Orthodox shul on Milwaukee’s east side, brings Rabbi Shlomo Levin (pronounced Le-vin´) to a familiar milieu.
Though born and raised in Chicago, Levin, 32, has relatives in Milwaukee and has many fond childhood memories of visiting them, including watching many televised Green Bay Packers games together.
Nevertheless, that moving to Milwaukee promises an “easy transition” was only one reason Levin chose to take the position at LPS, which he officially did on Sept. 2.
“Lake Park Synagogue is such a vibrant and active place,” Levin said during an interview in his office. It also has abundant “resources available” in its environment — it is located near the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study — and in the diversity of its congregants, he said.
That Levin appears to be thoroughly at home with diversity is a main reason the synagogue chose him, according to its president, Lorraine Hoffmann.
LPS members include modern Orthodox people, yeshiva teachers and “many who are not Orthodox or shomer Shabbat,” she said. So the synagogue needs a spiritual leader “who can work with everyone.”
And Levin is not only “extremely bright,” has “a nice sense of humor” and “relates wonderfully to children” and “to individuals on a personal level,” according to Eliot Bernstein, chair of the LPS rabbi search committee.
He also, said Bernstein, “has a broad perspective on Jewish multiculturalism…. We think that he’s going to be an excellent model for the community as a modern or centrist Orthodox Jew.”
Just how broad his perspective is can be seen in his education. Levin participated in several different Jewish educational endeavors in Israel, including the Pardes and Shalom Hartmann Institutes, before earning ordination at Yeshivat HaMivtar.
Levin also earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Bar-Ilan University. “I wanted a secular education as well,” he said. “I do believe that we need to incorporate secular education into learning Torah.”
“I live in an open society that is intellectually curious; and I don’t think it serves a purpose to isolate ourselves socially or intellectually,” he continued. “We only gain by exploring and looking at whatever universities have to offer.”
In fact, before coming to LPS, one of his activities was operating a small business called Science, Torah and Fun: Birthday Parties and Special Events, which helped pre-school and elementary school-age children develop science projects. “I think it was nice for kids to see a rabbi doing science-type programming,” he said.
Levin intends to take full advantage of the opportunities for development that he sees in LPS and the Milwaukee Jewish community. He wants to help develop the congregation’s membership and the synagogue’s offerings in learning and “hesed opportunities.”
He also “in a general sense would like Lake Park to take a leadership position in terms of community-wide programming” and in “reaching out to unaffiliated people.” And he particularly wants to enhance local opportunities for Jewish education for high school-age kids, he said.
Levin said it was “kind of apparent” even when he was a high school student at the Ida Crown Jewish Academy that he was headed for the rabbinate. “The study of Talmud motivated me more than any other subject,” he said. But he also “liked working with people more than … being sequestered in a study hall.”
After receiving in 1997 his ordination at the Yeshivat HaMivtar — where, incidentally, one of his classmates was Rabbi David Fine, the previous spiritual leader of LPS — he worked for two years at the Omaha Center for Torah Learning in Nebraska. He then became spiritual leader of Congregation Beth El in Rutherford, N.J., and taught in the New York City-based Ramaz School’s high school program, before coming to Milwaukee.
Levin’s wife, Noa, moved from France to Israel when she was 15. She is a trained Montessori teacher seeking work here. They have three children: Talia, 6, Yaakov, 5, and Aviva, 2.
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