Podcasts

RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, discusses the surge in anti-Semitism

03 October 2022

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, a native New Yorker who grew up playing baseball with Irish and neighborhood kids in Rockaway, Queens,. is Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading global Jewish human rights organization. 
 Rabbi Cooper has been a longtime activist for Jewish and human rights causes on five continents. In 1977, he came to Los Angeles to help Rabbi Marvin Hier found the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Together with Rabbi Hier, Rabbi Cooper regularly meets with world leaders, including Pope Francis, presidents, and foreign ministers to defend the rights of the Jewish people, combat terrorism and promote multi-faith relations worldwide.Rabbi Cooper is an acknowledged expert on online hate and terrorism and has helped produce and present the SWC’s renowned traveling exhibitions at the Vatican, the UN, Knesset, US Congress, Tokyo, New Delhi, and Buenos Aires. He is a founder of the Global Forum on Anti-Semitism, and Newsweek ranked Rabbis Cooper and Hier as #8 among the 50 most influential rabbis in America. Rabbi Cooper has worked extensively with Arab leaders in the Gulf States and witnessed the historic UAE/Bahrain/Israel Abraham Accords ceremony at the White House. In 2022, Rabbi Cooper was appointed Vice Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom which tracks violations of religious freedom around the world. 
Rabbi Cooper co-authored with Rev. Johnnie Moore, The Next Jihad, based on their interviews in Nigeria with scores of Christian survivors of deadly Islamist terrorist attacks. His op-eds appear in major US and Israeli outlets, in Asia and in the Arab News and Al-Arabiya. Rabbi Cooper is a recipient of Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Community Service Leadership Memorial Award, a recipient of an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University and the Orthodox Union’s National Leadership Award.