Israel S. Dresner

Israel S. Dresner
Israel Dresner with Martin Luther King Jr.
Born	United States
Occupation	Rabbi

Israel Seymour (Si) Dresner is a Reform rabbi, and past president of the Education Fund for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace. He was instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement, and a close friend to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Rabbi Israel S. Dresner was born in April 1929 on the Lower East Side of New York City.

He was raised in Brooklyn, attending an Orthodox yeshiva (day school). At the age of 13 he joined Habonim, a Labor Zionist youth movement, and in his teens became one of its leaders. He has been a card carrying, dues paying Zionist since 1942. He studied at Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago (B.A, M.A. in International Relations.) He spent 1951-1952 working at a newly established kibbutz, Urim, in the Negev and then spent 2 years as an enlisted man in the U.S. Army, the first year of which was the last year of the Korean War.

The next 5 years were spent studying at the New York School of the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, where he was duly ordained as a rabbi. His first year in the active rabbinate was in Danbury, Connecticut as assistant to Rabbi Jerome Malino. He then spent 12 years as rabbi of Temple Sha'arey Shalom in Springfield, N.J. and 25 years as rabbi of Temple Beth Tikvah in Wayne, N.J. He was elected Rabbi Emeritus of the latter upon his retirement.

Rabbi Israel Dresner was once dubbed, "the most arrested rabbi in America."

Rabbi Dresner was the foremost rabbinic participant in the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s, and was one of the three rabbis who was closest to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King spoke on two occasions (1963 and 1966) at Rabbi Dresner's congregation in Springfield. Rabbi Dresner was the first rabbi arrested in the freedom struggle in 1961 in an interfaith clergy freedom ride. He served for short periods as a prisoner on four occasions in southern prisons in Florida and Georgia mm the years 1961-1964. One of his cases, Dresner et al. v. Tallahassee, reached the U.S. Supreme Court. President Obama honored Rabbi Dresner at the White House the evening before the fifty year anniversary celebration of the March on Washington.

Rabbi Dresner was one of the outstanding rabbinic leaders in the struggle against the war in Vietnam, and for the rights of the poor; women, immigrants, gays and lesbians, the disabled and racial, religious and ethnic minorities. He has served on the Social Action Commission of Reform Judaism for almost 44 years and is one of its few lifetime members. He was an early (1966) leader in the struggle for Soviet Jewry.

Rabbi Israel Dresner is a critic of the Netanyahu government, and is active in the peace movement in Israel.