Former emissary from Israel to Milwaukee Rabbi Nir Barkin was featured in a Dec. 11 article in the Ha’aretz Israeli newspaper about Jewish religious pluralism in Israel.
“It was during his four-year tenure as Jewish Agency envoy in Milwaukee that Barkin, until then a self-proclaimed secular Jew, first set foot into a non-Orthodox synagogue,” states the article by Judy Maltz.
“So blown away was he by the experience that upon returning to Israel in 2004, he enrolled in Jerusalem’s Hebrew Union College to study to become a Reform rabbi,” the article states.
Today, Barkin, 47, is the rabbi of YOZMA, a Reform congregation in Modi’in, Israel, according to the article. This synagogue serves 700 families, of which Barkin said that more than 90 percent are native-born Israelis, according to the article.
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