Top 10 Challenges Facing Jews Today

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Rabbi Asher Lopatin

Despite the great diversity of the Jewish community, different denominations, or not affiliated with any denomination, those who practice, those who don’t, those who believe and those who just love the culture or the identity, we all share a lot in common. Rabbi Asher Lopatin, who over the years has connected with Jews from the entire spectrum, even though he is himself Modern Orthodox, explores the common challenges we all share as Jews, relating to our identity, our values, our evolving relationship with the Jewish State, and our understanding of what Judaism or being Jewish really means in the first place. By putting these challenges on the table, and sharing them, we can begin to see how our differences really build an important bridge that unites us individuals and as members of the Jewish People.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin is the president of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School. 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 is the author of numerous scholarly and popular articles in several books, journals and Web sites, 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.

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