About Steve Leder
After receiving his degree in writing and graduating Cum
Laude from Northwestern University, and time studying at Trinity College,
Oxford University, Rabbi Leder received a Master’s Degree in Hebrew Letters in
1986 and Rabbinical Ordination in 1987 from Hebrew Union College. He
currently serves as the Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, a
prestigious synagogue in Los Angeles with two campuses and 2,400
families.
Rabbi Leder is currently concluding his 225 million dollar
campaign to develop the congregation’s historic urban campus encompassing an
entire city block. The campus is soon to include a new building by
Pritzker Prize winning architect Rem Koolhaas.
In addition to his many duties at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Rabbi Leder taught Homiletics for 13 years at Hebrew Union College in Los
Angeles. He is a regular contributor and guest on The Today Show, writes
regularly for TIME, Foxnews.com, Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper, contributed a
chapter to Charles Barkley’s book Who’s Afraid of a Large Black
Man?, and has published essays in Town and Country, the Los
Angeles Times, USA Today and the Los Angeles Jewish Journal where
his Torah commentaries were read weekly by over 50,000 people.
His sermon on capital punishment was included in an award winning episode
of The West Wing. Rabbi Leder received the Louis Rappaport Award for
Excellence in Commentary by the American Jewish Press Association and the
Kovler Award from the Religious Action Center in Washington D.C. for his work
in African American/Jewish dialogue and in 2012 presented twice at the Aspen
Ideas Festival.
In the New York Times, William Safire called Rabbi
Leder’s first book The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things “uplifting.”
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein said he “is everything we
search for in a modern wise man; learned, kind, funny, and non-judgmental, he
offers remarkably healing guidance.”
Rabbi Leder’s second book More Money Than God: Living a
Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul received critical and media attention
including feature articles in the New York Times, Town and Country and
appearances on ABC’s Politically Incorrect, NPR, and CBS This
Morning.
His third book More Beautiful Than Before; How
Suffering Transforms Us was reached #4 on Amazon’s overall best sellers
list in its first week. It remains a best seller in several categories
and has been translated into Korean and Chinese. More Beautiful Than
Before has helped tens of thousands of people suffering from emotional or
physical pain and continues to receive prestigious media attention including
CBS This Morning, The Talk, The Steve Harvey Show, and four appearances on
NBC’s Today Show. His fourth book The Beauty of
What Remains; What Death Teaches Us About Life, was published by Penguin
Random House in the spring of 2021, and his latest, For You When I Am Gone, will be released June 7, 2022.
Newsweek Magazine twice named Steve one of the ten most
influential rabbis in America but most important to Steve is being Betsy’s
husband and Aaron and Hannah’s dad. He is also a Jew who likes to
fish. Go figure. Steve lives in Los Angeles, CA.
