Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Orthodox Council Mourns Rabbi Steven Dworken

Rabbi Steven Dworken, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, a professional body serving over 1,100 Orthodox rabbis, died suddenly at his home in Teaneck, N.J., on January 13 of a heart attack. He was 58.

Hundreds of mourners came from as far away as Chicago, Boston and Miami to attend his funeral Tuesday at Yeshiva University’s Lamport Auditorium, where colleagues remembered him as a rabbi’s rabbi.

“When a rabbi has a problem, who does he turn to?” asked Rabbi Heshie Billet, president of the RCA. “Steve Dworken.”

Dworken was a native Bostonian with “a Boston accent he never lost,” according to Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union. He attended Maimonides High School in Boston and later Y.U., where he studied under Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the late pillar of Modern Orthodoxy.

Before Dworken became involved with the RCA, he served as a pulpit rabbi for synagogues in Stamford, Conn., and Portland, Maine, before settling in New Jersey.

Ten years ago, when he took the reins of the RCA, the organization was struggling. The death in 1993 of Soloveitchik, who guided policy decisions at the organization for nearly 40 years, sent shock waves through the organization and the Modern Orthodox rabbinate. “The organization basically floundered for a while,” Billet said. “We were basically the Soloveitchik organization, without Soloveitchik. Steve got the organization back on its horse.”

Dworken lured hundreds of rabbis to RCA conventions, established relationships with the O.U. and the rabbinates in England and Israel, and made strong — often affectionate — ties to Conservative and Reform rabbis. “He was an individual who always tried to find the good in everybody in every area,” said Rabbi Joel Meyers, head of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly.

More than anything, Meyers said, Dworken cared about education. “He was making certain the Orthodox world would have very good teachers and continue to produce good rabbis.”

“He was always reaching out to others — he reached out to the maximum number of people,” Weinreb said. “Unfortunately he didn’t get a chance to complete his mission.”

Dworken is survived by his wife, Susan, head of school of the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy, in Livingston, N.J; his children Aliza, Nomi and Arye, and four grandchildren.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.