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