Biography of Rabbi Gerald Serotta

Rabbi Gerald Serotta has been involved in interfaith work through the Fellowship of Reconciliation (beginning with a reconciliation mission in 1975 to Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Palestine, and Israel) and the Interfaith Committee for Peace in the Middle East. He has a decades long record of activism in seeking solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, beginning in 1973 when he co-founded Breira; in 1980 he was the Founding Co-Chair of New Jewish Agenda.

Rabbi Serotta has been very active in community affairs throughout his career. He currently serves as Co-Chair of Rabbis for Human Rights, North America. He is also a Board Member of the Faith and Politics Institute, an interfaith, bi-partisan effort to bring spiritual reflection to the work of the US Congress. He has served on a numerous other Boards including those of Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and Tikkun Magazine.

Gerald Serotta is the Associate Rabbi at Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, Maryland and served as Campus Rabbi at The George Washington University, where he directed the Hillel Foundation Director for 20 years. He recently completed a Sabbatical assignment as Senior Rabbinic Scholar-in-Residence at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Rabbi Serotta served as a university chaplain for 27 years. He is a past chair of the Board of Chaplains at The George Washington University and a past-president of the Association of Jewish Campus Professionals.

His undergraduate degree is from Harvard and he has an honorary Doctorate (Doctor of Divinity) degree from Hebrew Union College, where he was ordained Rabbi in New York in 1974. He holds Masters degrees from Hebrew Union College in Hebrew Literature, and from New York Theological Seminary in Pastoral Counseling. He also did graduate work at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has been an instructor in the International Conflict Resolution program at Eastern Mennonite University.

He and his wife, Dr. Cindy Arnson, an expert in Latin American affairs, live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with their three children, Zack, 14, and the twins, Jeanne and Micah, 7.