Rabbi Natalia Verzhbovska

Natalia Verzhbovska was born in Kiev, Ukraine. She studied piano and musicology at the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory. She then worked for many years as a piano teacher, coach and accompanist.

After participating in the ‘Paideia’ Jewish study programme in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2006-2007, she worked as a programme director at the Moscow Community Centre ‘MEOD’ and as a coordinator of Jewish educational programmes at the Union of Progressive Jews in Russia (OROSIR).

In 2015, Verzhbovska graduated from the University of Potsdam with a degree in Jewish Theology, specialising in rabbinic studies, and was ordained as a rabbi by the Abraham Geiger College in Bielefeld. Since then she has been the rabbi of the Regional Association of Progressive Jewish Congregations in North Rhine-Westphalia and serves the liberal congregations in Bielefeld and Unna.

She is married and has one son. Natalia Verzhbovska lives with her husband Rabbi Alexander Lyskovoy in Bielefeld.