For Alan Ronkin, being a Jew means stepping up, getting involved, leading and seeking to inspire others. It’s what he does through his Jewish advocacy.
“This isn’t a career; this is a calling,” he said.
The Silver Spring resident is the longtime regional director of American Jewish Committee Washington, D.C., which covers Maryland, Virginia, D.C. and West Virginia. This role is the latest in Ronkin’s nearly 40 years in Jewish community relations.
Ronkin aims to ensure that AJC achieves its mission in the region: to enhance the quality of Jewish life through positive contributions to the community, combating antisemitism, Israel advocacy, relationship-building to benefit Israel and the pursuit of democratic values.
In his efforts to counter antisemitism, Ronkin has written articles, met with FBI executives, spoken with the media and given talks and trainings about anti-Jewish hate.
He has run antisemitism awareness workshops for years, primarily geared toward non-Jews.
“You would be very, very surprised at what people don’t know about what it means to be Jewish,” Ronkin said. “When I have these conversations about antisemitism, you have to start way back before the idea of antisemitism. We have to talk about what it means to be Jewish and who the Jews are: the fact that we are an ancient people and that we have this tie to our homeland, and we have a faith, and there are foods and there are celebrations. There’s all this culture and history that we have. … And once you get them curious, then you can also talk about the challenges our community faces.”
Ronkin emphasized the importance of having conversations, especially for a group such as the Jewish community, which is historically considered “other.”
“When you’re ‘other,’ it puts you in a very different position, and requires creating opportunities for conversation so that we can thrive, and we thrive in democracies that are open, free press, an exchange of ideas,” he said. “What worries me sometimes is that we’re seeing a narrowing of discourse and the elevation of the loudest voices on either side, generating that polarization.”
Ronkin expressed serious concern about polarization and extremism in the United States when he spoke with Washington Jewish Week for an October 2023 story. His solution? Finding common ground.
“We have to create authentic relationships with people, and they don’t always agree with us on everything,” he said. “But we can find areas where we do agree, and we can build relationships on those bases — even something as simple … as democratic values.”
Ronkin spoke to his “strong Jewish background” as an asset to his community-building approach. “I’ve had the opportunity to live in — I wouldn’t say the full spectrum — but a good spectrum of the American Jewish experience,” he said.
Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Ronkin was raised in an Orthodox home and attended Jewish day school through eighth grade.
He’s an officer at Adas Israel Congregation, a Conservative synagogue. He attended Yeshiva University and pursued graduate school at Hebrew Union College, a Reform institution.
“So I get the Jewish spectrum,” Ronkin said. “Within that mainstream, there’s so many people who don’t talk to each other — they don’t connect with one another.”
Ronkin strives to be that connector, encouraging community members to bring their “full selves” as Zionists and Jews to the table.
He never envisioned himself working as a Jewish professional. Then he got involved in the Soviet Jewry movement during college.
“I sort of caught the bug during the Soviet Jewry [movement], where it was a unifying force across Diaspora Jews — refugees as well — to free these Soviet Jews,” Ronkin said. “And it was not only exhilarating, but it really resonated with my personal commitments, my personal beliefs, to what it means to be a Jew.”
He recalled seeing “incredible people” within the movement who he said committed to stepping up and getting involved.
Ronkin also participated in a Hillel program that placed him in an internship at AJC. There, he met fellow Jewish students.
“I met Jews from across the spectrum who were seriously connected to Jewish life through their synagogues, through their youth groups, through what they did on their campuses,” he recalled. “And I decided at that point that I would get professionally involved.”
After a summer internship with the now-defunct Jewish Education Service of North America, Ronkin earned his master’s in Jewish communal service, now known as Jewish nonprofit management, from Hebrew Union College.
He’s worked in Cleveland, Seattle and Boston — including a stint as a policy advisor to Rep. Joe Kennedy III — before settling in D.C., where Ronkin is now in his 14th year with AJC. “I found an organization that really resonated with my values and the way I like to work — relationship-based,” Ronkin said. “I’ve always been in the ‘community relations’ side of the field: front-facing advocacy [and] relationship-building.”
As for the near future, Ronkin said he looks forward to figuring out what strategies will be most effective in helping the Jewish community thrive.
“Whether it’s dealing with the range of views that have emerged around our community’s relationship with Israel, or how people are experiencing antisemitism in their lives or how they’re relating to their neighbors and their friends, those things are all in play right now,” Ronkin said. “It’s our responsibility now to write a new chapter in that playbook and figure out the best use of the incredible talent and energy and resources this community has to take it into the next 100 years.”
