Raphael Lemkin Human Rights Award
From the arts, to the United Nations, to Human Rights Watch, Marina Kaufman has dedicated her life to human rights for all people. In 1978, she became involved with an organization called the University for Peace in Costa Rica, where she was one of the “producers” of a benefit concert organized in Japan for the University, with musicians like Peter Gabriel, Youssou N’dour, Howard Jones, Nona Hendrix and Lou Reed. In 1986, she went to her first Americas Watch meeting and she never left. Marina is an Emerita Member of the Board of Human Rights Watch and was one of the founders of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. She has been on the Board of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, as well as Chair of “Storahtelling,” which endeavors to reclaim the art and rituals of sacred Jewish storytelling both inside and outside of the synagogue.
Founder’s Award
Rabbi Charles (Chuck) Feinberg has been a rabbi for 50 years. He has served as a rabbi at congregations in Madison, Wisconsin, Poughkeepsie, NY, Vancouver, BC, and Washington, DC.
Chuck was the founding executive director of Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR), and now serves as interim executive director. IAHR represents people of faith who educate and advocate in Maryland, DC and Virginia for corrections systems that avoid unnecessarily punitive practices such as solitary confinement.
During his career, he was a leader in various social justice arenas, such as the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980s. His congregation in Madison gave refuge for 18 months to a Guatemalan family of six who eventually immigrated to Canada. In Poughkeepsie, Chuck became chair of an important social service agency called Dutchess Outreach. In Vancouver, he was chair of the Multifaith Society. Chuck was the chairperson of the Social Action Committee of the Rabbinical Assembly for six years. He also served on the board and was co-chair of Rabbis for Human Rights North American (RHR-NA) and T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.
Rabbinic Human Rights Hero Award
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is an award-winning author of eight books. She has received the Lives of Commitment Award from Auburn Seminary, was named by Newsweek as a “rabbi to watch,” and as a “faith leader to watch” by the Center for American Progress. Her newest book, On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World is a National Jewish Book Award winner and an American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Honor Book. It was hailed by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley as “A must read for anyone navigating the work of justice and healing.”
She has served in a number of leadership roles in the Jewish community, including as a campus rabbi at Tufts and Northwestern; creating programs on economic justice and systemic change at Avodah; supporting institutional transformation around gender, power and abuse as part of the founding committee of Safety, Respect Equity, as a member of the Gender and Power Committee of the Rabbinical Assembly, and as a consultant and activist throughout the community; and, most recently, she served as Scholar in Residence at National Council of Jewish Women, where among other things, she founded and led a 2500-strong Rabbis for Repro network of Jewish clergy committed to using their platform towards reproductive freedom. She now writes full-time, based at LifeIsASacredText.com.
Rabbinic Human Rights Hero Award
Rabbi Toba Spitzer has served Congregation Dorshei Tzedek in West Newton, Massachusetts since 1997. She is a past president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, and was the first openly gay or lesbian leader of a national rabbinic organization. She is also a past president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis, and has been included in the “Forward 50” and Newsweek’s “Top 50 Rabbis in America.”
She was the Assistant Director of the Jewish Peace Lobby in Washington from 1989-91, helping to build a Jewish advocacy group promoting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While in rabbinical school, she organized a rabbinic human rights mission to Haiti during the military junta, and helped found the Philadelphia Interfaith Coalition for the General Welfare, a group addressing issues of poverty and welfare reform. In her time in Boston, she has served as co-chair of the Boston J Street Rabbinic Cabinet, as well as being a member of J Street’s national Advisory Council. She has been active with the New England Jewish Labor Committee, sits on the strategy team of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, and currently co-chairs T’ruah’s Massachusetts regional cluster of rabbis and cantors. Rabbi Spitzer has published articles on topics including process theology, Judaism in the public square, and covenantal community, and in 2002 her book God Is Here: Reimagining the Divine was published by St. Martin’s Press.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Rabbi Victor Urecki has served as the spiritual leader of B’nai Jacob Synagogue in Charleston, West Virginia since 1986. He is the co-founder and past president of the West Virginia Interfaith Refugee Ministry, as well as co-founder of the Root and the Branch, an organization dedicated to bringing together faith traditions in West Virginia to dialogue and learn from one another.
A longtime activist for immigrant and refugee resettlement, Victor has gone to the Southern border with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs to witness the humanitarian crisis there and completed a fellowship that took him to Guatemala with American Jewish World Service. He is the recipient of the West Virginia “Living the Dream” Award, the “West Virginia Civil Rights Day” Award, in addition to the ACLU Syd Bell Memorial Award for his work on interfaith relations and civil rights.