Rabbi David Shlomo Rosen CBE is the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland (1979–85) and currently serves as the Director of the American Jewish Committee's Department of Interreligious Affairs and the Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Institute for International Interreligious Understanding. From 2005 until 2009 he headed the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations (IJCIC), the broad based coalition of Jewish organizations and denominations that represents World Jewry in its relations with other world religions. His personal website is given below.
Before being appointed Chief Rabbi of Ireland,he was the Senior Rabbi of the largest Orthodox Jewish congregation in South Africa (The Green and Sea Point Hebrew Congregation, Cape Town) and served as a judge on the Cape Beth Din (Rabbinic Court.)
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Based in Jerusalem, he also serves as the Advisor on Interreligious Affairs to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, serving on the latter's Commission for Interreligious Relations.
He is an International President of the World Conference of Religions for Peace; Honorary President of the International Council of Christians and Jews; on the Board of World Religious Leaders for the Elijah Interfaith Institute;[1] and is on the Advisory Boards of the World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace; and the World Economic Forum's council of religious leaders.
In November 2005, Rabbi Rosen was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Gregory the Great in recognition of his contribution to Jewish-Catholic reconciliation (Rabbi Rosen is the first Israeli citizen and the first Orthodox rabbi to receive this honor.) In the same year he also won the Mount Zion Award for Interreligious Understanding. In December 2006, Rabbi Rosen received the Raphael Lemkin Human Rights Award for having founded the organization Rabbis for Human Rights. Rosen was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours.[2]
Rabbi Rosen was the only Israeli participant at the interfaith summit convened by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Madrid in June 2008 and the follow-up meeting in Vienna in July 2009.
He is married to Sharon (née Rothstein) and they have three daughters, Yakarah (married to Arik Attias), Gabriella (married to Dror Rubin) and Amirit; and four grandchildren, Imbar, Nieve, Yair (Yakarah and Arik's offspring)and Zohar (Gabriella and Dror's son.)
Among the many recent issues that Rabbi David Rosen has been quoted on is the caption concerning Pius XII at Yad Vashem. "What Yad Vashem says is not necessarily wrong," conceded Rosen, "but it doesn't give us all the information." Rabbi Rosen quoted eminent historian Martin Gilbert, who says that Pius saved thousands of Jews.[3]
He also expressed grave concerns on the lifting of the excommunication of controversial bishop Richard Williamson,[4] but welcomed the Vatican's subsequent clarifications and Pope Benedict XVI's categorical repudiation and condemnation of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.
Rabbi Rosen is also Honorary President of the International Jewish Vegetarian and Ecology society. He is a vigorous critic of factory farming, noting that "much of the current treatment of animals in the livestock trade makes the consumption of meat produced through such cruel conditions halachically unacceptable as the product of illegitimate means." In addition he has argued that the waste of natural resources and the damage done to the environment by "meat production" make a compelling Jewish moral argument for adopting a vegetarian diet. [1] He has written extensively on a wide variety of interfaith issues [2].
| Preceded by Isaac Cohen |
Chief Rabbi of Ireland 1979–1985 |
Succeeded by Gavin Broder |