Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger
Articles written by Hanan: www.RavHanan.org
Hanan Schlesinger is an Orthodox rabbi and teacher who has been profoundly transformed by his encounters with Palestinians and the Palestinian People beginning in late 2013. As he never tires of saying, he is now healing from the hubris of exclusivity with which he was afflicted all of his adult life. Today he knows that there are two Peoples in the Holy Land, and that each has their own story. Indeed the Land itself bears two identities – the Land of Israel is also the Land of Palestine.
Originally hailing from New York, Rav Hanan immigrated to Israel on his own at the age of 20 and has lived in Alon Shvut, Gush Etzion, for 40 years. He grew up in a secular Jewish family, but already at the end of high school he began delving into observant Judaism. Following his B.A., he spent over 10 years in advanced Jewish study, primarily at the Har Etzion College of Jewish Studies and in the M.A. program of the Dept. of Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew University.
The first part of his professional career was devoted to teaching Jewish studies to young adults, primarily in various colleges of Jewish studies and seminaries in the Jerusalem area. From 1998 to 2000 he served as a fellow in the Judaic Fellows Program of Boca Raton, Florida. In 2005 Rabbi Schlesinger came to Dallas, Texas to serve as the head of the Community Kollel, and he spent eight years serving the Dallas Jewish community. When the Community Kollel folded in 2010, he founded the Jewish Studies Initiative of North Texas to continue the educational work he had been doing in the larger Jewish community of Dallas.
It was in Dallas about 17 years ago that he began to become involved in interfaith work, first with Christians and then with Muslims. There he founded Faiths in Conversation, a framework for Jewish - Christian – Muslim theological dialogue. The mind-expanding experience of these trialogues inspired him to attempt to meet Muslims and Christians back in the Holy Land.
Although always drawn to pluralism and deeply empathic for the other, and sporadically involved in the religious peace movement over the course of the past 4 decades, Rav Hanan never met a Palestinian as an equal until he returned from Dallas to Israel in 2013. The meetings that began then – largely inspired by his interfaith experience in Dallas - have become far more meaningful than he could ever have imagined.
In early 2014, Ali Abu Awwad and an Israeli partner Shaul Judelman, together with Rav Hanan and other Israelis and Palestinians, founded Roots/Judur/Shorashim. Rav Hanan currently serves as its Director of International Relations. He also is the founder of the American Friends of Roots, a multi-faith organization dedicated to supporting the work of Roots/Shorashim/Judur. Rav Hanan frequently speaks in the USA together with one of his Palestinian partner about the amazing work that Roots/Shorashim/Judur is doing in Judea/Palestine.
Rabbi Schlesinger is a member of the Rabbinical Council of America and the International Rabbinic Fellowship, as well as Beit Hillel, an Israeli rabbinical association. He is a Rabbis Without Borders fellow, and was honored in 2013 and again in 2014 as the Memnosyne Institute Interfaith Scholar. His website is ravhanan.org
He and his Israeli–born wife Ayala reside in Alon Shvut, Israel, and have four grown children and eleven grandchildren.
