Next Town Hall
Days
Hours
Minutes
Menu
Named The Most Influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek and one of the 50 Most Influential Jews in the World by The Jerusalem Post, and twice named one of the 500 Most Influential People in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal, David Wolpe is the Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi of Sinai Temple. He serves as the ADL’s inaugural rabbinic fellow and a scholar in residence at the Maimonides Fund. Rabbi Wolpe has taught at Harvard, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the American Jewish University, Hunter College, and UCLA. Rabbi Wolpe has published widely, including in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and The Atlantic. He has been featured on The Today Show, Face the Nation, ABC This Morning, and CBS This Morning as well as series on PBS, A&E, History Channel, and Discovery Channel, and has engaged in widely watched public debates with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and many others about religion and its place in the world. Rabbi Wolpe is the author of eight books, including the national bestseller Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times (Riverhead). His latest is titled David, the Divided Heart (Yale U Press). It was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards, and has been optioned for a movie by Warner Bros.
In his memoir Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American, Wajahat Ali teaches us how to create our own superhero origin story, invest in hope for the future of America, and enact real social change. Wajahat is also the author of The Domestic Crusaders—the first major play about Muslim-Americans in a post-9/11 world. He was the lead researcher and author for the Center for American Progress’s seminal report “Fear Inc., Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” and served as a national correspondent for Al Jazeera America, where he told stories about communities and individuals often marginalized or under-reported in mainstream media. As Creative Director of Affinis Wajahat Labs, he worked to create social entrepreneurship initiatives to support and uplift marginalized communities. He also worked with the US State Department to design and implement the “Generation Change” leadership program to empower young social entrepreneurs. Wajahat initiated chapters in eight countries, including Pakistan and Singapore. He has given keynote speeches around the world such as TED, The Aspen Ideas Festival, Google, the United Nations, and The New Yorker Festival. His writing appears regularly in the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and The Guardian.