Rabbi Rich to quit as Liberals’ chief executive
V LIBERAL JUDAISM chief executive Danny Rich will step down after 15 years at the end of March.
Unafraid to voice his views, Rabbi Rich has been the movement’s leading spokesman, presiding over a period of congregational growth with 11 new communities starting up, from Crouch End to York.
Quoting the Book of Ecclesiastes —“For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven” — Rabbi Rich said: “I have decided that it is the right moment for me to turn my mind and skills to other opportunities.”
Rabbi Rich, who will be 59 in March, was previously minister of Kingston Liberal Synagogue for 20 years.
“As I move to pastures new,” he said, “I shall continue to play a different role in promoting Liberal Jewish values and furthering the Jewish mission — to contribute to the creating of a decent and worthy society in which ‘a person may sit under the vine and the fig and no other person shall make them afraid’.”
He had been “particularly proud of the crucial role of Liberal Judaism, in partnership with Citizens UK and others, in making the United Kingdom a welcoming home for Syrian refugees, and of the Liberal Judaism leadership — with the Quakers and Congregationalists — to persuade Parliament to introduce equal marriage.”
The movement will celebrate his achievements during its biennial gathering in May.
LJ acting chair Ruth Seager paid tribute to Rabbi Rich as “a charismatic and inspirational leader that so many of us have followed”. His regular visits to all its communities demonstrated his “truly impressive” commitment, she said.
He had been “a wonderful ambassador, thus enabling LJ to punch far above its weight and be heard in places that our numbers alone would not command”. Regarded with “warmth and affection” within the movement and beyond, “for many people, he embodies Liberal Judaism”.
Rabbi Andrew Goldstein, the movement’s president, said Rabbi Rich had “helped ensure that Liberal Judaism has continued to be a creative, progressive, radical movement”.
He had been “a mentor to many rabbis and lay people, bringing many of them to Liberal Judaism. His place in the history of Liberal Judaism is assured.”
Happy to step in where others feared to tread, Rabbi Rich became a Labour councillor in Barnet in 2018 at a time when the party’s failure to capture the borough was widely attributed to its large Jewish community’s antipathy to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
On one occasion, Rabbi Rich entertained Mr Corbyn to Friday night dinner and was tipped by some as a potential Labour candidate to contest Finchley and Golders Green in the last election.
Kingston’s current minister, Rabbi Rene Pfertzel, said Rabbi Rich had been “an outstanding advocate of our progressive values. On a personal level, Danny has been a great support for me when I was a student rabbi and when I started my rabbinic journey. I will be forever grateful for it.”