48 February 21 • 2019
jn

soul

of blessed memory

(JTA) 
A

l Vorspan, who helped orga-
nize the Religious Action 
Center of Reform Judaism and 
served as the longtime director of the 
Commission on Social Action, has died.
Vorspan, who also was former senior 
vice president of the Union for Reform 
Judaism, died Feb. 16, 
2019, at the age of 95, 
according to the Union 
for Reform Judaism.
Rabbi David Saperstein, 
senior adviser, Union 
for Reform Judaism 
and director emeritus, 
Religious Action Center 
of Reform Judaism, in a statement 
issued after Vorspan’
s death called him 
“one of the g’
dolei hador, or ‘
great ones’
 
of Jewish social justice work.
“
A true icon, Vorspan shaped much of 
social justice work of the Reform Jewish 

movement, ensuring it lives at the very 
heart of Reform Judaism. Beginning in 
1953, he helped inspire the creation of 
congregational social action committees 
across North America, encouraging 
Reform Jewish synagogues to partner 
with their local communities in pursuit 
of tikkun olam, ‘
repairing the world.
’
 
He played a pivotal role in founding 
the Religious Action Center of Reform 
Judaism, which remains the hub of the 
Reform movement’
s social justice work 
in North America,
” Saperstein also said, 
adding: “
A mentor, friend, and inspira-
tion to all who knew him, Al Vorspan 
was, to many, the personification of 
Reform Judaism’
s social justice efforts.
”
URJ President Rabbi Rick Jacobs 
described Vorspan as “one of the tower-
ing giants of Jewish social justice.
“
Al blazed a trail of courage and con-
science that so many of us have walked,
” 
Jacobs said in a tweet. “Not since the 

biblical prophets Amos, Hosea and 
Micah walked the Earth have we been 
led by such an inspiring justice leader. 
Our Reform movement and our world 
are bereft, for he cannot be replaced.
”
In 1964, Vorspan was jailed with 
a group of Reform rabbis who at the 
request of the Rev. Martin Luther King 
Jr. joined in the civil rights protests in 
St. Augustine, Fla. “We came as Jews 
who remember the millions of faceless 
people who stood quietly, watching the 
smoke rise from Hitler’
s crematoria. We 
came because we know that, second 
only to silence, the greatest danger to 
man is loss of faith in man’
s capacity to 
act,
” he later wrote about his reason for 
joining the protests.
Vorspan, who had fought in the U.S. 
Navy during World War II, was an early 
and vociferous opponent of the Vietnam 
War, which led Sen. Thomas J. Dodd, a 
member of the Senate Subcommittee on 
Internal Security, to call him “a vocif-
erous minority” rather than holding a 
mainstream Jewish opinion.
He also criticized Israel’
s treatment 
of the Palestinians, writing in a piece in 
the New York Times magazine in 1988 
at the beginning of the first Palestinian 
Intifada that “Israelis now seem the 
oppressors, Palestinians the victims.
”
In 1953, Vorspan convinced Rabbi 
Maurice Eisendrath, who was then 

president of the Union of American 
Hebrew Congregations, to create the 
Commission on Social Action, which 
worked with the Union and the Central 
Conference of American Rabbis to 
guide and shape social action in Reform 
communities and in Washington, D.C., 
according to the Religious Action 
Center’
s website.
He then pressed the Union to 
create the Religious Action Center 
in order to make the voice of the 
Reform movement heard in the halls 
of Congress. The RAC was voted into 
existence at the 1961 UAHC Biennial in 
Washington, D.C.
He authored several books, which 
today are standards in Jewish religious 
education, including Justice and Judaism, 
Searching the Prophets for Values; Tough 
Choices: Jewish Perspectives on Social 
Justice; and Jewish Dimensions of Social 
Justice: Tough Moral Choices for our 
Times, which provides Jewish perspec-
tives and moral policy analysis on issues 
ranging from abortion to capital punish-
ment and from the Mideast peace pro-
cess to religious freedom in Israel and 
the United States. 
He was married to his wife, Shirley, 
for 72 years until her death on Aug. 27, 
2018. ■

Al Vorspan

continued from page 47

Jewish Social Justice Leader for 
the Reform Movement Dies at 95

URG/TWITTER

