Dear Friends,

I am pleased to announce that the Board of Directors has approved the appointment of Rabbi Dr. Avidan Milevsky to serve as Kesher Israel's part-time interim rabbi, starting Monday, July 27. Rabbi Milevsky's first Shabbat at Kesher will be next week, July 31-August 1.

A meet-and-greet brunch is scheduled for Sunday August 2 at 9:30am at the shul. Rabbi Milevsky will be joined by his wife, Ilana, who is an adjunct professor of psychology at the Community College of Baltimore County, and their children, Liora (15), Tamar (13), Uzi (9), Mati (7), and Moriah (1). The entire Milevsky clan is looking forward to getting to know our community in the weeks ahead and we are very excited to welcome them into the Kesher family. Please join me next weekend to welcome Rabbi Milevsky and his family to the Kesher community!

Rabbi Milevsky brings to this position a background in both the rabbinate and mental health. He is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and a psychotherapist at Wellspring Counseling in Baltimore. He is the former interim Rabbi of Ner Tamid Greenspring Valley Congregation in Baltimore and was a visiting professor at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His research on families, well-being, and spirituality in psychotherapy has produced an impressive body of work including 5 books. He studied at yeshivot in Israel, at Telz Yeshiva in Chicago, and at Yeshiva Ve'kollel Ramach in Miami where he received rabbinic ordination from the Rosh Yeshiva HaRav Yochanan Zweig. This unique combination of rabbinical and psychological work will serve our community well as we move forward.

Rabbi Milevsky will be at Kesher on Sundays and Wednesdays to meet with congregants, attend minyan, and teach weekly classes. In addition, he and his family will spend Shabbat with us approximately every other week and will be at Kesher for the chagim. And of course, Rabbi Milevsky will be available to talk and answer questions at any time during the week, regardless of when he is at Kesher or home in Baltimore.

Our hiring of Rabbi Milevsky as our part-time interim rabbi means that we no longer require the volunteer services of two individuals who helped serve our community during the past 10 months. We extend our tremendous hakarat hatov to both Rabbi Kenneth Brander and Yoetzet Halakha Nechama Price for the time and effort they have dedicated to our shul and our community. Rabbi Brander made himself available to answer all types of questions, big and small, simple and complex, day and night, and always did it with a smile. He reached out to members in distress and did his best to ensure everyone received the time and the care they needed. Yoetzet Halakha Nechama Price has been a tremendous resource for the women of our community, answering questions related to taharat hamishpacha. Both Rabbi Brander and Nechama Price provided much needed counseling in the wake of the crisis we faced.

As we turn the page to Kesher's next chapter, we know that despite our best efforts to move forward, many of our community members are still in pain and in need of healing. The Board hopes that the hiring of Rabbi Milevsky as our part-time interim rabbi will provide our community with the spiritual guidance that we need as an Orthodox shul, while leaving open the space needed for us to explore what it is that we would seek in a new permanent Rabbi. Our efforts to do just that, led by our Rabbinic Research Committee, have not ceased, and we look forward to communicating more with our membership as this process progresses.