Rabbi Benjamin Ross

Rabbi Benjamin Ross is an acclaimed experience designer and leadership innovator with a proven record of launching transformative initiatives that continue to thrive long after his direct leadership. Now, through The Amen Center for Civic and Spiritual Leadership, he is advancing a vision of vibrant communities powered by capable, spiritually grounded leaders.

Rabbi Ross’s career spans community organizing, congregational leadership, seminary teaching, spiritual direction, and entrepreneurial ventures. He served as a Community Organizer in Harlem and Brooklyn, and later as Director of National Leadership Initiatives at Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, where he led a 15-person team and managed a $3 million budget. Driven by a hunger for the intellectual richness and spiritual depth of Jewish tradition, Benjamin pursued rabbinic ordination, supported by the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and the Tisch Fellowship for Visionary Synagogue Leadership. After ordination from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in 2016, he served as an Associate Rabbi at Leo Baeck Temple (Los Angeles) for six years and then directed engagement work at Temple Shaaray Tefila (NYC) for three years.

A serial innovator,  dynamic teacher and reflective practitioner, Rabbi Ross currently teaches Spiritual Leadership at HUC-JIR in New York, co-authored a recent report on leadership formation in rabbinic education for HUC-JIR, co-founded Project Zug (now part of Hadar) serving thousands each year, served on the board of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (NYC) from 2006-2011, co-created Manna: A Jewish Food Initiative and currently serves on the boards of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and PICO California.