Rabbi David Saperstein

Rabbi David Saperstein is director emeritus of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, having served as its director and counsel for 40 years. Designated by Newsweek Magazine as the most influential rabbi in America and by the Washington Post as the "quintessential religious lobbyist on Capitol Hill," under Rabbi Saperstein, writes J.J. Goldberg in his book Jewish Power, the Religious Action Center "has become one of the most powerful Jewish bodies in Washington, second only to AIPAC." 

The first rabbi in American history to have been designated a U.S. Ambassador, during the second term of the Obama administration, Rabbi Saperstein served as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, carrying out his responsibilities as the country's chief diplomat on religious freedom issues. From 2019-20, Rabbi Saperstein served as the President of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, the international arm of the Reform Jewish Movement. He remains today the senior advisor on strategy and policy to the Union for Reform Judaism. 

Also an attorney, he taught seminars on church-state law and on comparative Jewish and American law for 35 years at Georgetown University (GU) Law Center and after government service continued his academic work as an adjunct professor at GU's Foreign Service School and Center for Jewish Civilization, as a Distinguished Fellow at the PM Glynn Institute at Australian Catholic University, and currently serves as Senior Research Fellow at GU's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. 

During his career, Rabbi Saperstein has served as the chair or co-chair of several national interreligious coalitions and currently serves as the chair of the Word Faith Development Dialogue, and co-chairs the Multi-Faith Neighbors Network as well as the Word Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Faith and Action. He has served on several governmental foreign policy taskforces including as the first chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and currently as the chair of a federal advisory committee on human trafficking. He has served on the boards or executive committees of over 20 national organizations including the NAACP, People for The American Way, Common Cause, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the National Religious Partnership on the Environment. 

His work has been recognized over the years from many sources, receiving numerous national organizational awards (including the inaugural recipient of the Embassy of the Netherlands' "Anne Frank Award") and honorary doctorates from several universities (most recently from Yale University in 2016, the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2023), and in 2024, the American Bar Association's Human Rights Magazine honored him with its "Human Rights Hero" designation. His articles have been published in publications ranging from the New York Times and the Washington Post to the Harvard Law Review. He has appeared on most major television news and talk shows, including Oprah, Meet the Press, ABC's Sunday Morning, The Rachel Maddow Show, Nightline, PBS News Hour, Crossfire, Hardball, and The O'Reilly Factor. His latest book is Jewish Dimensions of Social Justice: Tough Moral Choices of Our Time . 

Rabbi Saperstein is married to Ellen Weiss, an award-winning journalist and has two sons, Danny (a musician) and Ari (a journalist). 

In his book Thunder in America, network news correspondent Bob Faw wrote of Rabbi Saperstein: "Saperstein learned from political masters... [His] energy is almost legendary - no one around him worked longer hours, no one darted in and out of more meetings... Once he'd taken on an assignment, he'd always guide it safely home to completion."