Matthew Berman (he/him) is an incoming rabbinical student at Hebrew Union
College, expecting to graduate in 2027. Born and raised in Cincinnati, OH,
Matthew attended The Ohio State University with a major in Political Science and
double minors in Music and Jewish Studies. After graduating during the COVID-19
pandemic in 2021, he took a gap year to spend ten months teaching in Israel as a
Masa Israel Teaching Fellow; the program, coordinated by BINA: The Jewish
Movement for Social Change, allowed Matthew to teach at lower-income
elementary schools in Tel Aviv, where he taught first- and second-generation
Israeli students from former Soviet countries, and in Nazareth, where he taught
Arab students in a mixed Christian and Muslim school. When not teaching,
Matthew enjoys improving his Hebrew and Arabic with locals, hiking in Israel’s
national parks, and engaging in thoughtful Torah study with his fellow students.
