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Once during a bus ride in his native London, England, Stephen Boroda was talking to an older Jewish man and mentioned that he was active in the British equivalent of Reform Judaism. The older man said he was not active or observant, “but at least I go to a proper [Orthodox] shul.”
“That’s very much what I grew up with in England,” Boroda explained in a telephone interview. Even though Boroda has become much more observant since then, that and other experiences have made him “very much a pluralist” in his view of how the different Jewish movements should relate to each other — to “recognize that everybody has something to offer.”
This outlook is a powerful factor that both attracted him to Milwaukee and attracted Mequon-based Congregation Anshai Lebowitz to him. Last month, Boroda began work as assistant to Rabbi Bernard Reichman, Anshai Lebowitz’s spiritual leader, and he is likely to become assistant rabbi once he earns ordination.
As congregation president Joel Guthmann put it, Anshai Lebowitz has a distinctive view of itself in the Milwaukee-area community, symbolized by its location on Mequon Road between Congregation Agudas Achim Chabad (Hasidic Orthodox) and Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue (Conservative).
“Everybody else is to our right or our left,” said Guthmann.
Finding staff and especially a rabbi who understand that “is not easy to do,” Guthmann said. But Boroda gave every sign of being “very comfortable with our approach.”
Moreover, with his first project for the synagogue, Boroda has arranged for the Jewish a cappella singing group “The Shabbatones” to perform for and participate in Anshai Lebowitz’s Simchat Torah celebration on Saturday, 6:30 p.m.
“This is the sort of thing I want to do,” Boroda said, to bring to the synagogue kinds of people and activities that it hasn’t had before and thereby show the Milwaukee-area Jewish community that “we are actually out there and doing things,” and that Anshai Lebowitz — “a gem that’s a little hidden away” in the area Jewish community — might be “a home” for local Jews who never before realized what it offers.
And Boroda — whom Guthmann described as “very energetic and enthusiastic” — has a track record of being able to do this, said Guthmann. In his previous position as ritual and programming director of Beth Jacob Congregation in Dayton, Ohio, which he held for two years, Boroda “helped build up that membership,” Guthmann said.
Boroda has extensive knowledge and experience that began with leading services in his London synagogue when he was in his teens. “It was always a part of my life that I enjoyed.”
He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Judaism in Los Angeles — where he met his wife, Robin — and has studied in Israel at the Pardes Institute and Machon Greenberg. He served synagogues in Australia between 1995 and 2000 before going to Dayton.
In addition to working for Anshai Lebowitz, Boroda will also be studying for rabbinical ordination through Pirchei Shoshanim, an Orthodox educational network based in Jerusalem with offices in Lakewood, N.J.
This network offers a course toward ordination that is mostly done by e-mail, but that does require trips to Jerusalem to be tested by a beit din of three, including one representative of the office of Israel’s Chief Rabbis, Boroda said.
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