Our Rabbis

Rabbi Hernán Rustein

Hernán was born in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1988. He received his smicha (rabbinic ordination) in 2022 at the Iberoamerican institute for reform rabbinical training. He is part of the first cohort of reform rabbis trained in iberoamerica. His final investigation project was titled “The participation of reform rabbis in interfaith weddings”. He is TBS’s first permanen Rabbi in over twenty years, and performs his duties both in English and Spanish.

For almost eleven years (2012 – 2023) Hernán covered different roles at Templo Libertad, Argentina’s iconic first Israelite congregation: He was Chazzan (Cantor), Moreh (teacher), executive director, rabbinical student and then rabbi. His role at Libertad meant he had to represent his congregation in several diplomatic and official activities, including the visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the synagogue. 

He trained as Chazzan and Student Rabbi in the Conservative Latin American Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires (2014 – 2017) and the Conservative Yeshiva, in Jerusalem (2016). During his stay in Israel, he joined the programs of Rabbis for Human Rights, sang in the Navah Tehilah prayer circle and was invited to participate in a program for the rabbinical students of the conservative and reform schools of the U.S., where he met both the main problematics of the Israeli society as well as the realities on terrain at both sides of the Israeli-Palestine border. 

During 2017 and 2018 he was selected by the Union for Reform Judaism of the USA for the “Klal Yisrael Fellowship”, becoming the first south american to be able to participate in the seminaries that this scholarship provided in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Berlín and New York. The German government, also during 2018, invited him to that country for the program “Jewish life in current Germany”. In 2019 he represented the latin american reform movement at the URJ biennial in Chicago, being a part of a round table on antisemitism. In 2022 he was again selected, this time by the World Union for Progressive Judaism, to be a part of that organization’s Education seminary in Israel. That year he also led High Holidays services for Barcelona’s reform congregation.

Hernán has a degree in Government and International Relations, having been selected for his university’s early talent detection program. He also has university studies of philosophy and a high school degree in chemistry. During college he sang in diverse chamber music groups, both academic and popular, and has kept training vocally up to this day. He also took acting lessons and performed in halls, associations and jails. Between 2011 and 2013 he was a teacher in an experimental support program for students and teachers of the educational system of the Buenos Aires City Government. In 2014 he was invited to sing in the Vatican in front of Pope Francis, as a part of an interreligious ensemble.

Hernán has also officiated weddings and ceremonies in Spain, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia and, of course Argentina and Puerto Rico.

He is happily married to Angélica María Tobón Rendón, since april 2019.

Rabbi Roberto Graetz	Rabbi Norman Patz
Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Isaiah Lafayette, California	Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Sholom of West Essex Cedar Grove, New Jersey