Teaneck—After an exhaustive search, in­teracting with roughly 40 rabbinical candi­dates for the job, the Young Israel of Teaneck has announced that Rabbi Beni Krohn will join its community after Tisha B’Av. A member of the Judaic Studies faculty at the Torah Acad­emy of Bergen County, Rabbi Krohn is leaving his post as a popular assistant rabbi at Congre­gation Rinat Yisrael and moving with his wife Chani and their three children across town to southern Teaneck, in order to take up the post.

Rabbi Krohn replaces Rabbi Pinchas Wein­berger, who has served the YIOT community since 1994. Weinberger is set to take up the role of executive vice president in charge of kashruth for the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County (RCBC).

During the past 20 years, the YIOT commu­nity has grown from 25 to 165 families. “The community’s population is now having an up­tick, and this is one of the reasons why Rabbi Krohn will be a good fit,” said YIOT’s president, Michael Wimpfheimer. “The area is skewing younger in terms of new families moving in,” he told JLBC.

Rabbi Krohn received smicha from Yeshiva University’s RIETS in 2010. While he grew up in Boston, he is already well known to the south­ern Teaneck community, as he served as a rab­binic intern at Congregation Beth Aaron.

“While Rabbi Krohn is still younger than our average member, he is very much in tune with the needs and wants of young families,” said Wimpfheimer. “With the more recent smi­cha candidates, they come with a different set of arrows in their quivers, so to speak. While all rabbeim must be adept at managing life-cycle events, there are issues that come up in this day and age that the new crop of rabbeim are able help families with,” he said.

Wimpfheimer said that Rabbi Krohn and his wife Chani believe in building re­lationships with congregants, and “that all these things are easier to deal with given the quality of the relationship the rabbi has with members,” he said.

Rabbi Krohn gained a wide breadth of experience during his time at Rinat Yisrael. “He developed wonderful relationships, was able to step in when needed. He was consist­ent and accessible. It was a pleasure work­ing with him for the last two years,” said Rab­bi Yosef Adler, mara d’asra of Congregation Rinat Yisrael. Over the past two years, I also had the pleasure of witnessing real, substan­tial growth from him,” said Adler.

“Chani and I feel that we have had the bracha of learning, davening, and forging connections with a community of people who have become our friends. It was a true privilege to work for and with Rabbi Adler. I gained not only from his vast knowledge but from the model rav that he is for the Rinat community,” said Krohn.

“The Rinat community has offered me and Chani the opportunity to grow both professionally and personally, and for that we will be forever grateful,” he added.

Rabbi Krohn said his family is looking for­ward to sharing in the passion and joy for spir­itual advancement that fills the Young Israel of Teaneck. “We are looking forward to continu­ing to build on that which Rabbi Weinberger and the current leadership at YIOT have built over the last 20 years. YIOT is a place where everyone feels welcome and where people of all ages and backgrounds create a cohe­sive community. We ourselves have been met with such a warm welcome and we have yet to move in,” he said.

“The passion for continued spiritu­al growth that exists in YIOT became ap­parent immediately, and we look forward to harnessing that energy. We have a lot planned in terms of programming, which includes not only exciting and relevant learning opportunities, but also initiatives which will mobilize our youth, increase our Israel advocacy, and strengthen our commitment to chesed within the com­munity and beyond.

“Chani and I feel truly blessed to be able to move from one dynamic commu­nity to another and to have been given this incredible opportunity,” Krohn said.

By Elizabeth Kratz