L.A. Rabbi Named T’ruah’s 2019 ‘Rabbinic Human Rights Hero’

T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights has named Rabbi Jocee Hudson a human rights hero. Hudson, rabbi of Temple Israel of Hollywood, will receive her award on May 22, at T’ruah’s Celebration of Human Rights in New York City.

Every year, the New York-based group selects two Jewish clergy members who are exceptional advocates for social justice and leaders for its Rabbinic Human Rights Hero Award.

T’ruah said they are honoring Hudson for “leading by example and mobilizing her community to work with partners from diverse backgrounds around issues of race and criminal justice, housing and food insecurity, climate change and gun violence.”

Rabbi Elliott Tepperman of Congregation Bnai Keshet in Montclair, New Jersey is the second rabbi honored with the 2019 Rabbinic Human Rights Hero Award.

“The Jewish community is blessed with a growing and diverse array of leaders bringing a collective moral voice to the crises of the moment,” T’ruah Executive Director Rabbi Jill Jacobs said in a statement to the Journal. “That’s why every year we choose to honor several heroes, both clergy and other communal leaders who live out their Jewish values by standing up for the human rights of all people.”

Rabbi Hudson is an Associate Rabbi at Temple Israel of Hollywood (TIOH), where she has served since 2009. She has been at the forefront of social justice efforts since 2014 and was instrumental, in partnership with lay leaders, in the creation of the temple’s Social Justice Coalition.

In addition, she has been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights. In 2017, Temple Israel was awarded the Religious Action Center’s Irving J. Fain Award for exemplary social justice work. She along with her congregation are active in LA Voice, the California Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the Black Jewish Justice Alliance, and many other justice groups, believing that justice work is most effective when it is done in collaboration. Together they have been deeply involved in statewide campaigns on criminal justice reform, affordable housing, and climate change.

“Rabbi Hudson embraces and makes manifest the biblical prophetic tradition as few rabbis I know do. She is largely the reason that the Union for Reform Judaism presented Temple Israel of Hollywood with the prestigious Irving Fain Award for Social Justice Programming at the 2017 URJ Biennial in Boston,” Rabbi John L. Rosove, senior rabbi of Temple Israel of Hollywood, said in a statement. “I am proud of Rabbi Hudson, not only for her significant accomplishments and depth of commitment to create a more just and compassionate society, but as an example to young and old that being Jewish and a social justice activist are intrinsically linked.”