Rabbi Asher Lopatin

Executive Director JCRC/AJC Detroit

Encounter enables American Jews – in a powerful, emotional, but also joyous way – to meet Palestinians, hear their stories and get a sense of what their lives feel like to them. Through this experience, I gained an increased appreciation for how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict not only affects individuals, but how families – husbands from wives, parents from children – are painfully separated or put at great risk of being separated by the current situation; as a husband and father, that reality hit me in a deep way. As an American Jew, the very least I can do to help Jews and Palestinians live together is to take the time to go on an Encounter experience and start this process of connecting our peoples.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin participated in Encounter’s August 2017 Intensive Leadership Seminar. Rabbi Lopatin joined the program with the intention of “growing and getting to know the Palestinian people and their frame of mind – and thoughts and opinions – better.” Reflecting on his experience, he says, “Jews and Palestinians are destined to be together in the same special Land no matter what political solution or lack-of-solution develops. Therefore, to coexist, we must meet each other, connect with each other and try to understand how each of us feels – no matter our place on the political spectrum.”

Rabbi Asher Lopatin is the Executive Director of JCRC/AJC Detroit. Previously, he was the spiritual leader of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation, a modern Orthodox synagogue in Chicago. Ordained by Rav Ahron Soloveichik and Yeshivas Brisk in Chicago, and also by RIETS/Yeshiva University in New York, Rabbi Lopatin was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He was both a Rhodes and Truman Scholar, and holds an M.Phil. in Medieval Arabic Thought from Oxford University, where he also did doctoral work on Islamic Fundamentalist attitudes toward Jews. Rabbi Lopatin has written chapters in over 20 books and has appeared in numerous journals, publications, and websites, and has been the co-chair of the Muslim-Jewish Community Building Initiative of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. He is married to Rachel Tessler Lopatin, a Wexner Graduate Fellow herself, and together they have four children.