Mauricio Balter

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Rabbi Mauricio Balter

Rabbi Mauricio Balter

Rabbi Mauricio Balter (born 1957) is the Executive Director of Masorti Olami, the international umbrella organization of the Masorti/Conservative Judaism Movement and MERCAZ Olami, the Movement's Zionist arm. As a representative of the Masorti/Conservative Movement, Rabbi Balter is one of the 37 Directors of the Jewish National Fund and sits on the Education and Community Committee, as well as the Resource Development Committee.

Biography

Rabbi Balter was born in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, in 1957 to a Zionist family. From a young age, he was involved in community life and Zionist and Jewish activities. He completed a bachelor's degree in psychology and education, and obtained another in Jewish studies. He later served as general director of the Sephardi community in Bogota, Colombia and director of religious affairs of the Salta and Tucuman communities in Argentina. In 1991, he was ordained a rabbi at the Seminario Rabinico Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires, and then served at the Or Hadash community in the capital. During this period he was responsible for supporting the many families of those killed in the AMIA Bombing, an attack on the building of the Jewish community in Argentina, taking care of spiritual services. He was the first director of the Masorti Movement in Argentina. In total, Rabbi Balter was involved in public activity in South America for fourteen years.

Rabbi Balter is a graduate of exclusive educational programs, such as the Melton Center for Jewish Education's Senior Educators Programs at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the JDC- Argentina's "LeAtid" Training Center for the training of professional and lay leaders, and was a Rich Foundation Fellow (France), and a Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Fellow (USA).

In the summer of 1995, he immigrated to Israel with his wife Bilha and their two daughters, where he settled in Kiryat Bialik and was appointed rabbi of the Kiryat Bialik Masorti community. He held the position for fifteen years. Since 1997, he has coordinated with the Jewish Agency on the topic of Aliyah of Masorti/Conservative Jews from around the world, bringing five hundred families from Argentina between 1997 and 2007, around the years of the severe economic crisis of 1998-2002. Mainly due to this, the number of households in the community increased from 20 to 300 during his tenure. During the Second Lebanon War, Rabbi Balter coordinated his congregation's state of Emergency and provided spiritual support to residents of Kiryat Bialik. In 1999, Rabbi Balter was one of the first six non-Orthodox representatives to join a religious council in Israel, and took a seat in Kiryat Bialik. In early 2003, he was elected president of the Rabbinical Assembly in Israel , a role he held for six terms. That same year, he completed a master's degree in Jewish thought at the University of Haifa. In addition, Rabbi Balter served as the Movement's deputy chairman and director of the Bureau of Religious Services. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the World Rabbinical Assembly. He was elected to the Zionist General Council in 2006 and was replaced in 2012. In 2020, Rabbi Balter received an honorary doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in New York City.

By virtue of his position as chairman of the Liturgy Committee of the Traditional Movement in Israel, he headed the team that prepared and conducted I and my prayers: an Israeli arrangement that was published in 2009. In 2010, he left Kiryat Bialik and moved to Be'er Sheva, where he was appointed rabbi of K. Eshel Avraham, the largest conservative community in southern Israel, serving the community until 2017. Since 2017, he has served as Executive Director of Masorti Olami and MERCAZ Olami.[4]

Opinions

Rabbi Balter has consistently supported declared LGBT ordination to the rabbinate, an issue that divided the movement throughout the 1990s and early 2000s: In 2006, when the move was made possible in the United States, no decision was made in Israel and the Schechter Institute continued to reject such candidates. After further voting, the issue was confirmed.

In his view, he belongs to the liberal wing of Masorti/Conservative Judaism, which advocates an existentialist theology of perpetual relations between the Creator and the authors of the Scriptures.

Publications

Rabbi Balter has written a number of articles for the public and has appeared on a variety of podcasts, for example on the Spanish version of Can, an Israeli TV station.[5] Furthermore, he has been interviewed for his opinions on a variety of topics, such as on pluralism and tradition.[6]

References

Category:1957 births Category:Living people Category:People from Montevideo Category:Uruguayan Jews Category:Conservative Jews Category:Uruguayan emigrants to Israel Category:Uruguayan rabbis Category:Israeli Conservative rabbis Category:Zionists Category:University of Haifa alumni

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