Rabbi, attorney and author

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun of Teaneck, New Jersey, Israel Representative of the Coalition for Jewish Values, an attorney, a historian and an author.

Steven Pruzansky
Rabbi Emeritus · Congregation Bnai Yeshurun, Teaneck
Israel Representative of the Coalition for Jewish Values; lives in Modiin.

The pulpit

Teaneck, from 1994 to 2020

Rabbi Pruzansky served Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck from August 1994 until he made Aliyah with his wife in 2020, to the city of Modiin.

Before that he was for nine years the spiritual leader of Congregation Etz Chaim in Kew Gardens Hills, New York. He has served as president of the Vaad Harabanim of Queens and the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County, was a vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, and served on the Board of the Beth Din of America and as a dayyan on the Beth Din itself.

Law and learning

An attorney, historian and rabbi

Rabbi Pruzansky took a BA in history at Columbia University in 1978 and a Juris Doctor at Cardozo School of Law in 1981.

He practiced law for 13 years as a general practitioner and litigator in New York City before taking the pulpit in Teaneck. He studied in yeshivot in Israel and the United States and was ordained at Yeshiva Bnei Torah in Far Rockaway, under Rabbi Yisrael Chait. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy.

Writing and lecturing

Books on Tanakh, responsibility and repentance

His books include A Prophet for Today on the Book of Yehoshua and Judges for Our Time on the Book of Shoftim, both from Gefen Publishing House.

He also wrote Tzadka Mimeni: The Jewish Ethic of Personal Responsibility in two volumes, Repentance for Life (Kodesh Press, 2021), which received the Weinberg Prize, and Road to Redemption (2023). He has lectured in more than 25 countries.

Scholars in residence