Editor’s Note: Congregation B’nai Yisrael is hoping members and prospective members will take the time to “get to know” their new Rabbi–Rabbi Joshua Strom–who just recently joined this vibrant North Castle congregation. Rabbi Strom joins B’nai Israel with not only an impressive Rabbinical background, but with a strong love for musical theater and hockey too!
Here are some highlights B’nai Israel provided about Rabbi Strom:
Rabbi Strom was born in northeast Philadelphia and raised in the suburb of Yardley, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He is the younger of two sons born to Rabbi Elliot and Susan Strom, brother to Adam. He grew up spending summers at URJ Camp Harlam in the Poconos, through which he made many lifelong friends and met his wife, Tali, and many weekends throughout the school year with NFTY-PAR.
He graduated Pennsbury High School in 1998 and went on to attend Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, where he received a BA in English, graduating magna cum laude in 2002.
While matriculating at Colgate, Rabbi Strom became very involved in the men’s a cappella group, the Colgate 13, as well as musical and dramatic theater, appearing in half a dozen productions of various genres. Colgate is also the place where Rabbi Strom discovered his aspirations for a career in the congregational rabbinate, as well as where he learned to tolerate the cold and love the beautiful game of hockey.
In the year following his graduation, while applying to the rabbinical school of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, he worked at Congregation Beth Chaim in Princeton Junction, New Jersey as the assistant director of the religious school and youth group advisor.
Rabbi Strom began his rabbinical studies in the summer of 2003 in Jerusalem, and returned the following spring to begin studying at the New York campus. He served Temple Beth El in Chappaqua as a rabbinic intern for that year, and also began to teach at Temple Shaaray Tefila of New York City, where he would eventually become a rabbinic intern. Upon his ordination from HUC-JIR in 2008, Rabbi Strom went on to serve Shaaray Tefila as their assistant and then associate rabbi until the spring of 2015.
Rabbi Strom and Tali were married just weeks after his rabbinic ordination in 2008, and are now blessed with sons Jonah, born in May 2010, and Gabriel, born in December 2013.
