Rabbi Aaron Benson

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Rabbi Aaron Benson, his wife Isabel Smith, and sons Montgomery, Redford, and Pierce are happy to be a part of the NSJC family.

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Rabbi Benson has fostered a great love for NSJC in the years since 2013 when he arrived.  He has enjoyed teaching the synagogue’s Bar and Bat Mitzvah class, numerous adult education and youth offerings, working with the professional staff and lay people on programming, fundraising and building strong communal bonds. He is also learning to cultivate a connection to his wife’s family heritage as Mets fans.

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In our larger community, Rabbi Benson was recently appointed to serve as a chaplain for the Suffolk County Police Department.  Additionally, he is president of the Suffolk County Board of Rabbis, a position he has held for the past three years.  

Rabbi Benson is a member of the Three Village Clergy Council, and has been appointed to serve as the New York Board of Rabbis’ chaplain to Mather and St. Charles Hospitals in Port Jefferson.

Rabbi Benson is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was ordained by the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in 2003.

Rabbi Benson has served congregations in Los Angeles and New Jersey.  He was an instructor for the Miller Introduction to Judaism program in LA and for the Interfaith & Conversion Outreach Education Program of the New Jersey Rabbinical Assembly, both programs for conversion to Judaism.  

 

In both of his previous positions he took an active role in the larger Jewish and non-Jewish communities, serving on the board of the Pacific Southwest Region of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Rabbinic Advisory Cabinet of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Raritan Valley, serving as a trustee for the New Jersey Region of the Rabbinical Assembly, on the East Brunswick Interfaith Clergy Council and as a chaplain for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.   

 

In addition to numerous newspaper articles, a story of his, "The Blankets," was published in Jewish Stories from Heaven and Earth, an anthology compiled by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins.  

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