New Religious Action Center leader aims to sharpen Reform Judaism’s stamp on policy

A plaque in the conference room at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism spells out the group’s storied history: Drafted here, it says, were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, efforts that still define the popular image of Jews as liberal players in Washington.

But the room is decades old. This week, the Reform movement changes leadership at “the RAC” — its D.C.-based advocacy arm — for the first time in more than 40 years, aiming to pump new energy into what is by far Judaism’s largest denomination by boosting its influence on policy.

Boston Rabbi Jonah Pesner, a 46-year-old marathon-running community activist, takes over from Rabbi David Saperstein, a respected dean of Washington faith advocates and law professor who was confirmed last month as the State Department’s first non-Christian ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.

As head of the RAC, Saperstein has been a member of probably every major liberal policy coalition since the early 1970s. Being director of the center may be the closest thing to being American Jews’ lobbyist on mostly non-Israel issues, including health care, prison reform, marriage equality and reproductive freedom.

Pesner, a father of four girls who considered running for John F. Kerry’s former Senate seat in 2013, is seen as a phenomenon in the 1.5 million-member Reform Judaism movement. He pioneered the training of hundreds of congregations in Saul Alinsky-like community organizing techniques, wanting to transform synagogues from somewhat distant programming centers where parents drop children off for Hebrew school into intimate communities.

But Pesner’s work in the District won’t be easy. The landscape for faith advocates has transformed dramatically since Saperstein came to Washington in 1974. Religious denominations have lost huge influence in American life, while the number and range of religious and nonreligious advocacy groups setting up shop in Washington has exploded. And in a deeply polarized landscape, Americans are warier than ever about the mix of religion and politics.

But Reform leaders — including Saperstein — hope a rabbi who led the coalition for mandatory health care in Massachusetts can more closely link Reform Jews’ passion for liberal politics with their faith.

Pesner isn’t expected to significantly shift the Religious Action Center’s broad portfolio of topics, but he said that this year, a top issue must be racial and economic disparities.

“Our folks want to be part of the solution. And they want the Reform movement to stand for that justice. They want to see America take on the racial and economic disparities and for us to be a leader, as we were in the civil rights era and at other times,” he said this week.

Building a powerhouse faith office in Washington may be elusive for Reform Jews or anyone else. The era of a few key faith players — such as the RAC, the Catholic Church and even the Moral Majority — that took hold in the early 1980s may be over, some say.

Robert Raben, a longtime legislative counsel on civil rights policy who now lobbies on progressive policy issues, worked with Saperstein after the GOP takeover of Congress in the 1990s and said the Religious Action Center was crucial because it had relationships across the ideological spectrum.

The RAC served as the religious voice in the coalition of civil and human rights groups that included the NAACP, People for the American Way and others, Raben said.

Today, with the proliferation of advocacy in Washington — religious and nonreligious — and many people working on single issues, coalitions are scrambled, he said.

“It’s easier and easier to identify religious organizations and leaders who want to work on a variety of issues,” Raben said. “There’s so much faith advocacy, I don’t need someone like David to be the hookup.”

Saperstein concurs with Raben that the landscape is more challenging in some ways, despite the action center’s increased resources. When he came here in the 1970s, it was essentially a mom-and-pop shop of two people. Today, the center has 25 staff members and each year trains thousands of youths, in particular on social justice advocacy.

“There were fewer public-interest groups in Washington, so we were able to have a much larger presence,” Saperstein said. However, the power of the civil rights movement may have warped people’s perception of Jewish activism and made Jews think their activism heyday has passed, Saperstein said.

“I think you could make the argument that the social-justice work of our synagogues today is larger than in the so-called heyday. I think we do far more feeding programs, tutoring programs, helping people in crisis today,” he said.

But Pesner knows institutional religion today has to prove its value. For him personally, the impact has been clear. Growing up in New York, he was extremely active in his Reform synagogue and youth group. He met his wife, employment lawyer Dana Gershon, at a youth group event and together as teens staffed the ­social-justice table at group retreats, she said.

As president of his high school Jewish youth group, Pesner attended one of the Religious Action Center’s early trainings in the District, where he met Saperstein. Pesner recalled on that trip intensely arguing with an aide to a Republican senator about the need to reduce nuclear stockpiles. Pesner remembers arguing “that we are stewards of God’s Earth” and says those exchanges, decades ago, shaped his life.

He went on to become a congregational rabbi, most recently at the influential Temple Israel in Boston. Despite the synagogue’s apparent health, he said it had a problem that many U.S. houses of worship have: Do people talk deeply with one another about their values? Goals? Jewishness? And how does that translate into action in the public square?

“There’s a gap between what a congregation wants to be and what they often are, which is fairly bureaucratic,” he said.

At Temple Israel, he implemented “relationship building” campaigns and encouraged people to tell their personal stories, which is how the need for health care rose as a priority, he said. Pesner saw a partner in the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization and eventually joined with its African American evangelical founder to push the passage of mandatory health care in the state.

The Rev. Hurmon Hamilton, founder of the interfaith group, became his main partner. Hamilton said their bond was solidified by Pesner’s quick effort to put on the table matters on which they may not agree — including marriage equality. It was their initial long conversation in a Roxbury restaurant that sealed their connection.

“He understands the power of story and understands the significance of being transparent and vulnerable,” he said. “I absolutely love Jonah, and that’s a significant statement considering who we are.”

In addition to health care, they also teamed up to improve conditions for nursing home workers by connecting workers with homeowners — many of whom were Jewish, Hamilton said.

Pesner’s work training synagogues in community organizing won him the job as senior vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism — the denomination — in 2011. Its president, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, says Jews should see the appointment of such a top official to the RAC as a sign of the centrality of social-justice work.

Today, Jacobs said, young people don’t necessarily connect their activism with their Judaism, but he believes that Pesner’s résumé can make that link.

“As core as ritual is, it’s a wakening practice to live lives of courage. Social justice is potentially more important to shape Jewish identity,” Jacobs said. “This is a chance to galvanize what it means to be a Jew in the 21st century.”