Rav Will Guyster entered the rabbinate following a distinguished 20-year career spanning international development work in Africa, leading social entrepreneurship programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and working with vulnerable and marginalized communities across the U.S. Originally born in the Soviet Union and raised by a community of Shoah and Stalin-survivors, for Rav Guyster, Judaism has always been a sacred and spiritual journey of discovery, historic resilience, and a foundational basis for helping to repair a broken world.

Immediately prior to serving as spiritual leader to Temple Beth Shalom, Rav Guyster provided pastoral care while completing 2,000 patient encounters as Chaplain Resident at the 2nd busiest hospital in the U.S., Lakeland Regional Hospital, in Lakeland, Florida, where he also served as the hospital’s first ever Jewish Chaplain.

Rav Guyster’s rabbinic education has been grounded in academic rigor, global perspectives, and the practical work of caring for others. He completed his Bachelors in Political Science from Columbia University and a Master of Science in Innovation from Northeastern University. His formal religious training included two years of extensive study in Jerusalem at the Conservative Yeshiva, the Schocken Institute, and the Shalom Hartman Institute; running in tandem with several years of ordination training and Masters of Rabbinic Studies work at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York; and serving as Rabbi intern at the Orangetown Jewish Center in Rockland County, NY. Rav Guyster simultaneously teaches in the Hebrew School program at Temple Emanuel in Lakeland, Florida; sits on the Interfaith Coalition of Polk County; helps convene Jewish tribunals/Beit Dins; and provides private tutoring and life-cycle leadership. He considers his earliest work to be some of his most valuable, beginning at age 3, his shtetl-raised grandmother took him on her own pastoral care rounds to visit the sick and take care of the elderly at a nearby nursing home for many years.

Rav Guyster’s dedication to Jewish community and continuity is rooted in his personal history as a child refugee from the Soviet Union. Arriving in America at the height of the Cold War, he carries the legacy of a family that practiced Judaism underground and in defiance of both Czarist Russia and Soviet Communism. His dedication to humanity was further refined as Founder and CEO of a non-profit organization in Ghana to help fight poverty through social entrepreneurship (2006-2011) and the over 1,000 entrepreneurs he advised while serving as Program Manager for the Legatum Center and Global Startups Lab programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2011-2015) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

His legacy of spiritual resilience, caring for all people, and seeing the Divine Spark live within all people is at the heartbeat of Rav Guyster’s rabbinate, driving his belief that a synagogue must be a sanctuary for the soul as well as a vibrant resource for the modern world. Today, Rav Guyster is honored to grow and learn alongside our congregation. He provides our community with regular Torah Study sessions and brings a deep-seated passion and drive to build a community that is intellectually vibrant and spiritually nourishing—a place where everyone is invited to explore our shared history, to support one another, and discover their own “soulful Torah.”