Rabbi Bob Kaplan is currently the founding Director of The Center for Community Leadership, a division of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC), the central coordinating and resource body for 62 major Jewish organizations in the metropolitan New York area. Mr. Kaplan is involved in a variety of issues including conflict resolution, coalition building, interracial/inter-religious relationships, combating hate crimes, and community building. He has served on the Board of Habitat for Humanity- NY and Health Plus and currently serves on the Boards of the Lutheran Medical Center and the Lutheran Family Health Care Centers as well as the Board of the Center of Ethnic and Community Media at the City University of New York. Amongst the leadership initiatives he has founded are; YouthBridge-NY, the We Are All Brooklyn, and Queens, We Are the Bronx, Community Connections, and Haitian Leaders Fellowships.
Under Mr. Kaplan’s leadership, the commission has been instrumental in developing and consulting to many community-based coalitions and community building initiatives such as We Are All Brooklyn, the Northern Queens Health Coalition, Project C.A.R.E. (Crown Heights), the Greater Southern Brooklyn Health Coalition, the Coalition for Far Rockaway and the Lower Manhattan Heath Care Coalition, amongst others. He founded the Queens Forum and Institute at La Guardia Community College and the Bronx Center for Non – Profits a partnership with Hostos Community College. All of these groups are dedicated to improving the quality of life for all.
Mr. Kaplan is called upon by the non-profit and government sectors and as an expert and consultant in the arena of diversity, community building, leadership development, coalitions, and intergroup relations. In February 2009, Bob Kaplan, along with Mohammed Razvi, trained Jewish and Arab leaders in the skills of coalition building and coexistence work, in mixed cities in Israel on the behalf of the U.S. State Department. He also served as a consultant for the United Kingdom Foreign Office working with groups in London and Bristol on Muslim /Jewish Relations. He was also part of a team of community and policing experts that traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland to train and teach local community leaders and police officials as part of a U.S. State Department sponsored program. He has also lectured for the Jamaican Foreign Ministry, European Union and The Department of State of the United States on issues of diversity, ethnic media, coalition and community building, social change and responsibility in the media and community organizing. He has for the past four years served as a delegate and presenter to the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue. Rabbi Kaplan served as an adjunct professor in the Jewish Studies Department at The City College of New York where he taught a course on the Jewish Immigrant Experience in New York City. In February 2009, Bob Kaplan, along with Mohammed Razvi, trained Jewish and Arab leaders in the skills of coalition building and coexistence work, in mixed cities in Israel on the behalf of the U.S. State Department. He also serves as a consultant for the United Kingdom Foreign Office working with groups in London and Bristol on Muslim /Jewish Relations. He was also part of a team of community and policing experts that traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland to train and teach local community leaders and police officials as part of a U.S. State Department sponsored program. He has also lectured for the Jamaican Foreign Ministry, European Union and The Department of State of the United States on issues of diversity, ethnic media, coalition and community building, social change and responsibility in the media and community organizing. He has for the past four years served as a delegate and presenter to the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue. Rabbi Kaplan served as an adjunct professor in the Jewish Studies Department at The City College of New York where he taught a course on the Jewish Immigrant Experience in New York City. He served as a member of the Design and Training Team for the Interfaith Health Program of The Carter Center to the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He is likewise a member of the Interfaith Task Force of the Global forum on Anti-Semitism.
He serves as a mentor and fieldwork supervisor for Master of Social Work graduate students in the field of community organizing.
Mr. Kaplan serves as a member of the Mayor DeBlasio’s Interfaith Advisory Committee and the NYC Department of Education’s Diversity Council. He presented to President Clinton’s White House Conference on Race and was a member of the Plenary Committee for the United Nations Conference, Habitat II. He served as the coalition consultant to the Black/Jewish Congressional Coalition in Washington DC.
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