Israel Zoberman

Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman is the Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Born in 1945 in Chu, Kazakhstan (USSR) to Polish Holocaust survivors who had met in Siberia, Rabbi Zoberman spent his early childhood in Poland, Austria and from 1947 to 1949 at Germany’s Wetzlar Displaced Persons Camp, American Zone. He grew up in Haifa, Israel and served in the IDF in the 1960s before emigrating to the United States in 1966. Rabbi Zoberman is the only rabbi to earn a doctorate in Pastoral Care and Counseling from Chicago’s McCormick Theological Seminary, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. A resident of Virginia since 1981, he served one year as Associate Rabbi at Ohef Sholom Temple in Norfolk before founding Congregation Beth Chaverim, the first Reform synagogue in Virginia Beach. In 1999, his alma mater, Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, awarded him the honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree.

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