By Cindy Mindell

Every summer, Jewish congregations throughout Connecticut welcome new clergy to their staff. Since the Ledger introduced the first cohort in our July 1 issue, four additional congregations have announced new spiritual leaders.

Rabbi Marc E. Ekstrand
Temple Emanu-El, Waterford

Rabbi Marc Ekstrand succeeds Rabbi Aaron Rosenberg, who retired in 2015, and Interim Rabbi Scott Saulson, who served during the transition year.

A native of Pittsburgh and son of Hartford native Edith (Greenberg), Ekstrand earned an undergraduate degree in materials engineering at Virginia Tech and began his professional career in the steel industry as an engineer, researcher, and manager. In 1998, he relocated to Cincinnati to work for AK Steel Corporation. He became active in the Jewish community, first as a member of Rockdale Temple, where he taught Sunday school and Hebrew school. He was also a founding member of Congregation Beit Chaverim, a Reform synagogue where he served on the board of directors and chaired the education committee. The partnership between Beit Chaverim and Conservative congregations in Cincinnati offered Ekstrand first-hand knowledge of how Reform and Conservative communities can collaborate in meaningful, respectful, and mutually beneficial ways.

After developing a deep love of Jewish learning and teaching, Ekstrand decided to make a career change and pursue the rabbinate. He was ordained in May at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati. While there, he was a member and chair of the Student Ministrations Committee, which oversees the college’s student pulpit program, and as rabbinic fellow and chaplain at the Jewish Family Service Cincinnati Barbash Vital Support Center. He served student pulpits in Parkersburg and Bluefield, West Virginia and in Portsmouth, Ohio.

“I always envisioned myself in a congregation like Temple Emanu-El,” says Ekstrand. “I’ve had a lifelong love of the sea, as I vacationed yearly as both a child and adult along the Atlantic Ocean, so coastal Eastern Connecticut is a natural fit. But geography was only a minor consideration in coming to Temple Emanu-El: I was drawn to the congregation because of the strong and healthy relationship the congregation has had with its spiritual leadership, particularly Rabbi Emeritus Aaron Rosenberg. Also, the congregation worked hard to confront both the difficulties and opportunities in changing rabbinical leadership. The congregation is vibrant, engaged in the community, and continually looking for ways to address each new challenge that the future presents.”

His partner, Pauline Berg, will be ordained in 2017 at HUC-JIR, Cincinnati. They are parents of preschooler twins Nava and Ilan. Ekstrand is also the father of Aaron, 11, and Michael, 17, who is completing his welding studies at the Scarlet Oaks Career Center in Cincinnati.

Interim Rabbi Gary Karlin
Beth Hillel Synagogue, Bloomfield

As Beth Hillel Synagogue engages in a process to determine what its next step will be, Rabbi Gary Karlin has arrived to serve as the congregation’s spiritual leader for one year, following the retirement of Rabbi Gary Atkins in June.

Karlin was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised on Long Island in “a pretty typical suburban Jewish family.”

“We were members of a synagogue and went a few times a year and I was a Hebrew school kid, and my parents were active in the synagogue socially,” he says. “I’m from a background where Judaism is mostly about social connections.”

Still, Karlin caught the Jewish bug from an early age. “I decided that this was something I wanted to pursue: not only Jewish observance and learning, but eventually, the rabbinate as well,” he says.

He chose to attend the University of Pennsylvania because of its strong Hillel. While there, “I realized that what really excited me was teaching and learning Judaism and being part of a Jewish community,” he says.

Karlin received ordination in 1987 from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), where he also earned an MA. He has served congregations in New York, New Jersey, and Canada.

“From rabbinical school on, I was constantly teaching – adults and kids, Hebrew schools, day schools – so education became a big love of mine,” he says. “When I married, my wife suggested that I look into a career in the educational rabbinate.”

In 2001, he was the rabbi-in-residence at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Milford, New Jersey. In 2007, he was offered a doctoral fellowship at the Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at JTS, where he is currently starting work on his thesis.

A curriculum writer, translator, and editor, Karlin’s educational publications include Who Wrote the Bible? (Institute for Informal Jewish Education at Brandeis University, 2008), and a forthcoming curriculum on the book of Jonah (MaToK). He previously served as interim rabbi and religious school director in 2006 at Marlboro Jewish Center in New Jersey (alongside Rabbi Gerald Zelermeyer, rabbi emeritus of The Emanuel Synagogue in West Hartford).

“The situation at Beth Hillel is rather straightforward: what people need here is a little time to figure out where they’re going,” he says. “I think that I can provide the space and the perspective to try to map out the next steps of what Beth Hillel will look like in the future.”

Karlin praises the warm welcome he has received in Connecticut from both congregants and fellow rabbis.

“Beth Hillel is a very welcoming place in the sense that I’m a guest and I feel very much the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim [honoring guests] here,” he says.

Karlin and his wife, Carol, are the parents of Michal, a sophomore at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and Moshe, a rising junior at the Schechter Regional High School in Teaneck. Carol and Moshe remain in Teaneck, where the family has lived for 15 years.

Assistant Rabbi Yoni Nadiv
Temple Sholom, Greenwich

Yoni Nadiv grew up in Huntington Woods, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit and the state’s major Jewish community, where his family belonged to Shaarey Zedek, a Conservative synagogue. He attended the Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit through eighth grade and the then-newly opened Frankel Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit high school.

“My parents placed great emphasis on our Jewish education, sacrificing to send us to day schools, Jewish summer camps, and annual family trips to Israel,” says Nadiv, who holds Israeli citizenship from his father’s side. “I connected with the land of Israel from a young age, most recently in my year of study in Jerusalem during rabbinical school. Growing up, my family prioritized practices like Shabbat dinner, holidays with family, and study. This upbringing has developed in me an appreciation for Judaism and a thirst for study. My favorite expressions of Jewish living are when I am enjoying Shabbat dinner with friends after a day of cooking, followed by a late night of games together.”

Nadiv attended List College, a dual-degree program between Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, majoring in Religious Studies at Columbia and Talmud at JTS.

“I felt drawn to rabbinical studies as an outgrowth of my desire to teach as a way to strengthen Jewish identification and community, as well as to be a model of a modern, egalitarian, and observant Jew,” says Nadiv, who entered rabbinical school at JTS and was ordained in May with an MA in Talmud and an MA in Jewish Education.

As a rabbinic intern for the past two years at Temple Sholom in Greenwich, and now as assistant rabbi, much of Nadiv’s work in the community has focused on youth programming, including the growing community BBYO chapters and teaching in the synagogue’s Learning Center. He also teaches regular adult education classes during the week and on Shabbat.

“I believe that Temple Sholom is a place for people to connect in many different ways, and I look forward to helping grow opportunities for connection including youth programs, educational opportunities, services, speakers, and more,” he says.

In addition to his new professional position, Nadiv is also pursuing a PhD at Yale in the Religious Studies department, focusing on the Talmud.

In June 2015, Nadiv married Naomi Scheinerman, a PhD student at Yale studying political theory. The couple live in New Haven.

Cantor Brian Shamash
Congregation Beth El, Fairfield

At 41, Cantor Brian Shamash has already amassed 19 years of professional cantorial experience. His path began in Baltimore, where he grew up as a member of Chizuk Amuno Congregation.

“From an early age, I loved listening to our chazzan, Farid Dardashti, an Iranian native who would mix some Middle Eastern-sounding vocals in his beautiful, operatic sound, with the Ashkenazi melodies,” Shamash recalls. “That made an important impact in my consciousness.”

On the day of his bar mitzvah, the choir director asked Shamash to join the synagogue choir, which would eventually lead him to the cantorate.

Shamash received a full scholarship to the University of Maryland, where he enrolled in the voice performance program and directed several student productions. He was also invited to sing with the choir at Beth El Congregation, a modern Orthodox synagogue outside Baltimore. He went on to a full scholarship as a graduate student in opera performance at the University of Miami, working as a religious school music educator at Temple Judea across the street from campus, and cast in a production of the Israeli opera, Dan HaShomer, at Temple Israel of Greater Miami, both Reform congregations.

Shamash experienced an aha moment while on a Jewish student delegation to Germany with a German government-sponsored program, Bridge of Understanding: The Jewish Experience of Modern Germany.

“Everywhere we would go, I was the only singer in the group with a Jewish repertoire,” he recalls. “So we would come to an empty sanctuary during the week or a hidden synagogue that hadn’t been destroyed or a synagogue that was still being fixed up and people would say, ‘Brian, sing’ and I would sing a prayer or a Jewish song. I realized, while singing into that emptiness but also noticing the incredible Soviet Jewish population that was dynamic and growing in Germany, that there was a need for clergy-people in Europe. I could see that there was a need for leadership and inspiration in the Jewish community in general, so I felt that it was important in my life to be part of the re-growing of the Jewish people with a joyful and energetic and rhythmic component.”

After earning a Master of Music in 1999, Shamash left the fulltime opera-performance path for chazzanut. He returned to Temple Israel of Greater Miami, where he served as fulltime cantor for three years and gradually became more observant. He spent the next two years as cantor at the Conservative B’nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton before joining the clergy of South Huntington Jewish Center, a Conservative congregation on Long Island, where he developed the religious school music curriculum and ran the large b’nai mitzvah program.

Shamash holds a certificate of Hazzan-Minister with the Cantors Assembly and is a member of the Jewish Ministers Cantors Association. Passionate about preserving and creating Jewish music, he has arranged and collaborated on more than 1,000 pieces and scores. Most recently, Shamash dedicated himself to the proliferation and performance of melodies from his father’s homeland of Baghdad, Iraq.

His YouTube channel, “Jewish Follow and Sing-Along Video Learning,” has thousands of followers. His 2012 CD, Shalom Aleichem, explores the musical styles of Jewish prayer. He is also featured on The Spirit of Jewish World Music, The Spirit of Shalom, and The Spirit of Celebration.

Shamash is married to Emily, a lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University. The couple has three children: Ella, 9; Maya, 6; and Ethan, 1.