Samuel Gordon
Rabbi Samuel Gordon has made a difference and enriched our community through providing spiritual and personal guidance, provocation and inspiration, and serving as the still point in a turning world. For many years, Congregation Sukkat Shalom did not have its own building in which to conduct worship services or to gather. Instead, congregants were truly wandering Jews, coming together in various churches and community centers to observe our faith. And it was important to many members of the congregation that we exercised pure volition to meet and study and worship without a building as the congregational home. Rather, Rabbi Gordon was (and is) our home. His sermons are filled with topical references, using news of the day to relate to ancient teaching and explication of texts. He is deeply generous with his time, learned and funny. He makes Judaism a living faith, and the congregation is one of few that is demonstrably inclusive to people of other faith traditions and to non-traditional families and couples. Rabbi Gordon’s example of a man living out his faith — questioning, probing, expressing — is a model for us all.
— Michael Rothstein + 7 other nominations
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
