Rabbi Aaron Marsh is a new face at the East Meadow Beth-El Jewish Center

For four decades, the Jewish community of East Meadow thrived under the leadership of Rabbi Ronald Androphy, who began his role at the East Meadow Jewish Center on Sept. 1, 1983. Starting this month, congregants will be served by a new spiritual leader, Rabbi Aaron Marsh, of the East Meadow Beth-El Jewish Center.

The East Meadow Jewish Center was founded 70 years ago, and consolidated with Temple Beth-El of Bellmore in 2020. Rabbi Israel Noble was East Meadow’s first spiritual leader, from its founding through 1983. After 40 years, Rabbi Androphy announced his intentions to retire in June 2022, and on Aug. 16, Rabbi Marsh was officially voted to be the new rabbi by the congregation.

Androphy — who will assume the title rabbi emeritus — will lead his last Shabbat services on Aug. 26.

Rabbi Marsh comes to East Meadow Beth-El, having most recently served as the leader of the Oceanside Jewish Center. Marsh became a rabbi in 2018, after deciding to pursue rabbinic studies as a second career.

Marsh hails from the Boston area. His family moved to a suburb of Chicago when he was 6, and then to upstate New York when he was just shy of 13.

Living in Rochester, he was a software engineer, he said, a profession he never set out to achieve. “I got a degree in applied math — I thought I was going to become a math teacher,” he said. “After college, I got a call from someone asking me if I knew how to do something software related, and you know the rest is history. But I didn’t really enjoy what I was doing.”

Marsh said he was always an active member at his synagogue and taught religious school, and often asked by people visiting the synagogue if he was a rabbi.

“I didn’t like that on principle — just because somebody knows about Judaism, doesn’t mean that they should have to be a rabbi,” he explained. “I kind of rejected it, on that basis. But I was eventually persuaded that I should at least explore the possibility because I loved the Jewish community and teaching things.”

In 2013, he began his rabbinic studies at the Academy for Jewish Religion in Yonkers, which he’d commute to by airplane from Rochester. The school, he said, is a pluralistic rabbinical school, meaning that it is not affiliated with a particular movement of Judaism.

The search for a new rabbi at East Meadow Beth-El began almost immediately after Rabbi Androphy announced his plans to retire. A 30-person rabbinical search committee was formed last July, with representation from people who were from the original and merged congregation.

“We tried to have representation from both synagogues, which was one of the reasons why it was large,” Nancy Kaplan, co-chair of the committee said. “The other reason is that there are many factions of perspectives and experiences within a synagogue. The attempt was to try to make sure that the voices of each of those factions was included in this committee.”

The committee worked diligently through last December, completing an 18-page application which was submitted to The Rabbinical Assembly, where conservative synagogues can post openings for jobs and rabbis can apply to them.

The congregation at East Meadow-Beth El is made up of 300 family units.

“It was a long application, with a lot of questions about ourselves which really helped us to kind of decide who we were,” rabbinical search co-chair Audra Mauner said. “It was a lot of questions about who we are as a community, who are as a synagogue, and then also what we were looking for.”

David Wayne, co-president of East Meadow Beth-El, said the search committee did a great job defining just that. “Everybody’s got a different view as to what a perfect rabbi would be,” Wayne said. “But at the end of the day, it’s somebody who is sincere, knowledgeable, personable, willing to teach, willing to learn — somebody with a good soul.”

Once the application was complete, resumes starting coming in and then vetted by Kaplan, Mauner and the committee. Eventually, there were some standout candidates — including Rabbi Marsh, who was invited for a visiting weekend in May.

The weekend was a blur,  but in a good way, Marsh said. “Practices in a conservative synagogue vary wildly,” he said. “Ahead of time, I had to talk to people to find out, what exactly does this congregation do? I had to decide for myself how much I wanted to do what they already do, and how much I wanted to just put in myself, and do some things a little bit different.”

“It was an extensive process,” the synagogue’s co-president Carey Welt said. “It wasn’t just you know — come in for an interview and you’re hired. There was a lot of consideration by different members.

“It was unanimous by the rabbi search committee to move forward with Rabbi Marsh,” Welt added. “When it came to the administration, it was unanimous. When it came to the board, it was unanimous. I’ve been on the board since approximately 1990 — I have never seen that board vote unanimously for anything.”

There are a lot of people to listen to and learn from, Rabbi Marsh said, but he’s ready for what the future holds at East Meadow Beth-El. He said he doesn’t intend to make any big changes just yet, as he gets to know the community, and they get to know him.

“I want to learn — it’s going to be a big enough change, just me being here,” he said. “There’s a lot that I need to do, not just this year. But going forward, this is going to be about getting to know the community and its needs and its interests.”