On Sept. 1, Rabbi Nisan Andrews, 33, began working as the spiritual leader of Lake Park Synagogue, the small Modern Orthodox congregation on Milwaukee’s East Side, founded in 1982.
He is a product of the Orthodox community in Canada. He was born in Halifax, and spent most of his childhood in Toronto and his teen years in Calgary. He comes to Milwaukee from Calgary, where he was assistant rabbi at Congregation House of Jacob for four years.
But he is no stranger to the U.S. He received his advanced Jewish training at, and rabbinical ordination through, Telshe Yeshiva in Chicago. Moreover, he has a Wisconsin connection; his wife, Hannah Abrams Andrews, was born in Milwaukee in 1985. They have three children, ages seven, five and three.
Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle editor Leon Cohen spoke with Andrews by telephone on Aug. 18. Selected and edited excerpts of that conversation follow.
I saw as I was growing up — and I saw this as a teenager, and it became really apparent to me as I became a young adult — that there hasn’t been enough time spent on the part of the rabbinate, and teachers in the Jewish day schools and in the yeshivas, to integrate Torah, its values, its principles, into the lives of every Jewish man, woman and child.
Very often people think when they’re conducting business, that business is business and Moshe is Moshe. What really needs to be emphasized and taught and brought to the fore is that Torah has eternal messages and meanings, and gives life a sense of value, and it should be something that a person is, something that a person aspires to, and not just something that they do.
One of the reasons I became a rabbi was because I just looked around and saw that there just wasn’t enough mind being paid to the fact that even after you’ve left yeshiva or even you’re a businessman, there’s still a requirement to be an honest, upright person. How you behave is a reflection of what your values are, and we should be more mindful of the values, the sense of justice and what is right that Judaism provides.
I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to come back to the Midwest where I can be near many of my friends and be near my wife’s family in Chicago, but also to take advantage of an incredible opportunity.
Lake Park Synagogue is a congregation that is welcoming. We’re open to anybody and everybody. And yet we’re also a Modern Orthodox congregation that represents a certain set of values. And it’s one of these wonderful places that is a lot like small town Jewry… It is a wonderful, welcoming community, where people regardless of their level of Torah observance feel comfortable. And that’s a real testament to the kind of atmosphere and environment that the membership has been able to foster.
The primary reason why I’m coming to Milwaukee is this incredible opportunity to take a role within LPS and hopefully leave an imprint; [to help the congregation] be in a much stronger position with a much larger membership, and yet at the same time to be able to maintain that small community atmosphere that really is pervasive.
Have you developed a philosophy of how to approach the tasks of being a rabbi?
I’ll get there, but by way of how I think about the role of the synagogue and what role the rabbi plays within the institution.
I think of the synagogue as frequently an underappreciated institution within many Jewish communities. For most people, the synagogue is just simply a place where you go to exercise your spiritual muscle. It’s like checking in your Jew card.
The synagogue should be a place where people go to learn, where they go to study, where they go to grow. Where the shul membership is viewed as not just people you pray with, but extensions of your family. The synagogue is an extension of your home.
And I think the role the rabbi has to play, at least within this context, is somebody who provides guidance in how the congregation should better meet the needs of the individual members. [The rabbi] guides the community to a greater appreciation of what the synagogue can offer, and what people can offer to each other.
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