An Interview with Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein

PRESENTER: Good afternoon viewers, thank you, we are here with Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein in Southern California. Before we get started, I'd like Rabbi Adlerstein to introduce himself, tell us a little bit about himself and his work in Los Angeles.

RABBI YITZCHOK ADLERSTEIN: It's great to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. It's a pleasure and privilege to be able to speak to you from across a couple of oceans. I have been with the Simon Wiesenthal Center for a good number of years. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is the largest Jewish membership organization in North America, with about 400 thousand member families. We are a NGO with devoted essentially to human rights, Jewish issues and a good many non-Jewish issues as well. My specific role is Director of Interfaith Affairs. We try to build bridges of understanding with other faith communities. I would say that difference between ourselves and some other approaches is that we stress multi-faith rather than inter-faith, meaning that we accept the differences between different religions, understand that there are often irreconcilable theological differences, but  still take note of the great commonality that difference faiths have and the common role we all have in probably battling the real enemy, which is agnosticism and skepticism, and making this a better, more comfortable world for God and for His message.