DAVIDSON – Rabbi Adam Baldachin has joined Beth Shalom of Lake Norman as a Gladstein Fellow and will work with the congregation from August through July 2013. Beth Shalom holds most of its services at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 301 Caldwell Lane.

Baldachin earned a BA at List College, and majored in Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary and American history at Columbia University. While at List College, he sang in a Jewish a cappella group called Pizmon that traveled to Jewish communities around the world, including Argentina and Ukraine.

He met his wife, Maital Friedman, while traveling to Jerusalem and also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In 2007, Friedman graduated from Princeton University, where she studied religion and African studies, and the couple moved to Uganda for a year, where Friedman received the Henry R. Labouisse ’26 Prize to establish a library at the Bushikori Christian Centre. Baldachin volunteered at a rural village through American Jewish World Service and worked with the Abayudaya, an indigenous Jewish community in Uganda.

When the couple returned to America, Baldachin began rabbinical school.

Friedman is currently a candidate for a master’s in public administration at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and a master’s in Hebrew and Judaic studies at the Skirball Department of Hebrew & Judaic Studies.

The couple’s first son, Shalev, was born in November.

The Gladstein Fellowship in Entrepreneurial Leadership provides an intensive experience in practical rabbinics and community development for students at The Jewish Theological Seminary.