Rabbi Jonah Pesner has a hefty job overseeing the Reform movement’s justice work in 850 congregations across North America, keeping social justice and Jewish community top of mind.
As director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism since 2015, the Bethesda resident organizes the 2,000 North American Reform rabbis on local, state and federal levels to “stand up for enduring Jewish values.” Members of the Washington-based RAC advocate for civil rights in Congress, state houses and mayors’ offices.
“I represent [RAC] in Congress and in the White House on everything from Israel advocacy to combating antisemitism, and, of course, our historic commitment to racial justice [and] civil rights,” which includes LGBTQ+ equality and affordable health care, Pesner said.
The nonpartisan group also works with other faith communities and across the political spectrum.
“We take very seriously studying our Torah sources, our biblical sources, then rabbinic tradition, then the Reform movement, then debate, and discuss policy positions that come out of those enduring Jewish values,” Pesner said. “We pass resolutions, and I’m empowered to organize with my people.”
“Everything we do is rigorously rooted in 3,000 years of Jewish text and tradition,” he added.
A current member of Washington Hebrew Congregation, Temple Micah and Temple Sinai, Pesner was raised attending a small Reform synagogue in Lower Manhattan. His parents, first-generation Americans, were the children of refugees who fled the pogroms in Europe.
“So they really believed that Jews have to stick together, and they were very active in my synagogue,” Pesner recalled. “But they also were very passionate Reform Jews. They believed in being American and integrated into the democracy that we lived in.”
Pesner’s father served as the temple’s president, his mother served on the temple board and his older brother was among the first members of the youth group. The family hosted their rabbi for Shabbat dinners. Board meetings took place at the Pesners’ dining room table.
His seemingly idyllic life took a turn as Pesner entered high school and his father unexpectedly died.
“The Jewish community — my synagogue, my rabbis, the rabbinical students at Hebrew Union College — were wonderful,” Pesner said. “They surrounded my mother and my brother and me with love.”
He said he pursued the rabbinate in large part because of the way the community’s rabbis took Pesner under their wing, sending him to Jewish summer camp and accompanying him on a trip to Israel.
“I remember saying Kaddish for my father at his first yahrzeit in July that summer in Israel with my friends from youth group,” Pesner said. “So that’s why I became a rabbi.”
He also began to see the world from a new perspective, living in rent-controlled housing with a single working mom and moving from private school to a public school in the Bronx.
“The reason I lead the Religious Action Center, and the reason I pursue social justice and civil rights in the steps of Kivie Kaplan and Rabbi [Richard] Hirsch and Rabbi [David] Saperstein, is that I witnessed the poverty and suffering of the South Bronx,” Pesner said. “I believe that Jews should bring their values to the public square and we should be as concerned about bar mitzvah boys becoming more deeply committed to Jewish life as we are about people suffering in the streets around us.”
He started out as a congregational rabbi for about 10 years, first in Connecticut, then in Boston. The next decade was spent under the tutelage of Saperstein, RAC’s former longtime director and legal counsel, strengthening state and local political advocacy and building interfaith relationships to advocate for affordable housing and public education.
“I chaired the health care campaign in Massachusetts that became the health campaign in Washington, and I was working for David all of that time,” Pesner said.
His previous work as a congregational rabbi informs Pesner’s leadership today.
“Because I was at the grassroots level, at a congregation working with families, I got really rigorous about the work that we were doing, being deeply rooted in the lives of the families who are paying money and giving their time and their love and showing up,” Pesner said.
It’s due to his rabbinical experience that Pesner said he deeply connects with others. After an armed man rammed his pickup truck into a Michigan synagogue, Pesner “immediately” texted his rabbinic colleagues and Jewish leaders to check in and ask how he could help.
“Social justice in Washington is great, but people have to feel safe and be able to thrive in their local community,” he said. “Being a congregational rabbi really teaches you to listen to the local people, the local rabbis, who are day in and day out doing this work, trying to keep the [synagogue] doors open.”
He’s responded to other crises too, providing pastoral care at the scene of the deadly Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018 and delivering the “big call to action” at the Minneapolis protest in January after federal agents killed two residents. “I try, when I’m invited, to be on the ground with people,” Pesner said. “We all have to take care of each other.”
What is Pesner most proud of after more than a decade in his senior leadership role?
“[I’ve] managed to be a public-facing rabbi who’s devoted a career to the Jewish community and social justice,” Pesner said. “I’m very proud that many, many people who I’ll never know or meet, their lives are better because of the policies and the practices that I’ve advocated for, whether it’s people getting health care access or women having abortion access or trans kids being safe and protected, and I’m proud that through it all, I was informed by a higher, more moral calling: what we would call the Holy One.”
