Israel S. Dresner

Israel Seymour Dresner (April 22, 1929 – January 13, 2022) was an American Reform rabbi who was president of the Education Fund for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace. He was repeatedly arrested for his activism in the Civil Rights Movement, and was a friend of Martin Luther King Jr.

Early life Dresner was born April 22, 1929, on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was raised in Brooklyn, attending an Orthodox yeshiva (day school). At the age of 13, he joined Habonim Dror, a Labor Zionist youth movement, and in his teens, he became one of its leaders. He studied at Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago and got a B.A. and an M.A. in international relations.

Career Dresner spent 1951 and 1952 working at a new kibbutz, Urim, in the Negev. He then spent two years as an enlisted man in the US Army, the first year of which was the last year of the Korean War.

The next five years were spent studying at the New York School of the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, where he was duly ordained as a rabbi. His first year in the active rabbinate was in Danbury, Connecticut, as assistant to Rabbi Jerome Malino. He then spent 12 years as rabbi of Temple Sha'arey Shalom in Springfield, New Jersey and 25 years as rabbi of Temple Beth Tikvah in Wayne, New Jersey. He was elected rabbi emeritus of the latter upon his retirement.

Civil rights movement Dresner was once dubbed "the most arrested rabbi in America." He died at a senior living center in Wayne from the disease on January 13, 2022, at the age of 92.