It is a high honor to be elected as the 67th president of the New York Board of Rabbis.

Our organization, over 750 rabbis strong, is founded upon two central principles:

First: We believe that rabbis are the indispensable element contributing to the wellbeing and perpetuation of the American Jewish community. We represent and teach age-old Jewish values that have guided and sustained the Jewish people for millennia. In our era of widespread and historically unprecedented Jewish illiteracy, it is rabbis, first and foremost, who are charged with the task of conveying the values of Torah to American Jews, without which, Jewish continuity is impossible. Rabbis must lead the renaissance the American Jewish community in the 21st century.

Second: We believe that the urgencies of our times require us to unite as one body. While we recognize and uphold the importance of debates, even controversies, pursued for the sake of heaven, we come together in friendship, united in our shared determination to seek the welfare of our people. The NYBR unique in the Jewish world, brings together rabbis from all of the major Jewish movements, in respect, collegiality, and common purpose. 

Chazak Chazak Ve’nitchazek!

May we go from strength to strength – and through our work together, may we strengthen each other.

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch