Biography
Rabbi Dov Fischer, Rav of
Young Israel of Orange County, has emerged uniquely as the only Orthodox Rav
in all of Orange County, California who has served in both of the
County's non-Chabad Orthodox congregations. He
became a Congregational Rabbi in Irvine, California in August 2005, when
he assumed the role at Beth Jacob Congregation of Irvine.
Rabbi Fischer arrived in "The O.C." from the San Fernando
Valley of Los Angeles, where he had been Rav of Young Israel of Calabasas
since that shul’s inception. In February 2008, sixty Beth Jacob
membership households joined with Rabbi Fischer in establishing Orange
County's first new Orthodox Jewish congregation in more than twenty
years: Young Israel of Orange County. Orange County is home to 100,000 Jews.
Rabbi Fischer is a nationally prominent Jewish leader and speaker, a
member of the National Executive Committee of the
Rabbinical Council of
America, the central body of the Modern Orthodox Rabbinate in the
United States, and of the Board of Directors of the
Hillel Foundation
of Orange County. Previously, Rav Fischer served as National
Vice President of the Zionist Organization
of America. He is a widely published author, a columnist for
Frontpagemag.com, contributor to
The American Thinker, and a Rabbinic Scholar Panelist for
Jewishvaluesonline.org Yet Rav Fischer's first focus is, and always has
been, on the needs of each and every individual in his congregational
community. For all his prominence, private pastoral care comes
first.
As a quintessentially “Modern Orthodox” centrist rabbi -- Ivy League
graduate, amateur film buff extraordinaire, American History scholar,
theater and opera aficionado, and Yankees-Mets/ Giants-Jets/
Rangers-Islanders fan (depending on which teams are having good years!)
-- our Rav creates a unique home for educated and critical-thinking
Contemporary Jews who observe the Shabbat and for those who are "not yet
Shomer Shabbat." The remarkable synthesis of the population
groups in our YIOC community creates a distinctive flavor that celebrates the diversity of our
wonderfully eclectic congregation of distinguished professionals,
accomplished entrepreneurs, and just-plain nice people.
Rabbi Fischer and his dynamic and personable wife, Rebbetzin Ellen, work
together as an inseparable team, often teaching classes
together, regularly hosting Shabbat guests and lunch visitors, and
frequently dedicating Friday Nights to hosting young people for Shabbat
dinner. Thus, Ellen plays a critical role, welcoming new families,
hosting a steady flow of Shabbat guests, attending services and helping
women with davening, and participating in classes as an additional
resource. Like the Rav, Ellen devotes part of each week to providing
private pastoral care for members of the Shul community. Rabbi
Fischer frequently tells of how he owes everything in his career to
Ellen.
In these capacities, Rebbetzin Ellen and Rav Fischer have established a
demonstrated record of reaching out successfully to Jews of all
backgrounds, attracting a dynamic blend of younger families, more senior
families, and "Baby Boomers" in between. In the process, they give voice
and dignity to the cultures and customs of our
congregants, appealing to Jews from Israel, Iran, Russia,
South Africa -- and even those who grew up in Brooklyn, Queens, The
Island, and The Valley.
A Rabbi with a National Impact:
Rav Fischer has an eclectic background. Most rabbis are not
Kentucky Colonels -- but Rav Fischer has been
named by three different Governors of the Commonwealth of Kentucky --
Gov. Brereton Jones, Gov. Paul Patton, and Gov. Ernie Fletcher -- as an
Honorary Kentucky Colonel for contributions he has made to the people
and social welfare of that state. (He was born and reared in Brooklyn,
but he likes Makers' Mark.) Rabbi Fischer continues to publish social,
political, and cultural commentary in prominent national outlets – his
writings have appeared on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and
the Los Angeles Times, as front-cover banner headline stories in the
Weekly Standard, and in
National Review Online, the
Jerusalem Post, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, the
Jewish Press of New York, and
Midstream
– as well as the Blog on this website. As noted above, He also is a
columnist for FRONTPAGE MAG (.com), a contributor to THE AMERICAN
THINKER (.com), and a Rabbinic Scholar Panelist for JEWISH VALUES ONLINE
(.org). He is particularly known in
Southern California where he has contributed as many as 100 published
articles over the past twenty years, emerging as a strong community
advocate for Torah values.
Through the years, Rav Fischer's writings have continued to draw
national and international attention -- as any "Google search" of his
name demonstrates -- and he has served on a wide range of public
community posts including as a National Vice President of the Zionist
Organization of America, Board member of the L.A. Jewish Federation
Council's Jewish Community Relations Committee, member of the Los
Angeles Yeshiva Principals’ Council, Executive Board member of the
American Jewish Committee of Orange County, Executive Board member of
the Bureau of Jewish Education of Orange County, Executive Board member
of the Hillel Foundation of Orange County, and in other local and
national capacities. He has been honored by his city's United Jewish
Appeal campaign, by American Magen David Adom, and by other agencies. He
plays an active role in Orange County NCSY, and he was invited to serve
as a member of the 12-member task force created initially by the Hillel
Foundation of Orange County to study allegations of anti-Jewish activity
at the University of California at Irvine (UCI).
Rav Fischer is a member of the Rabbinical Council of America, the
Rabbinical Council of California, the National Council of Young Israel
Rabbis, the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological
Seminary (RIETS) Alumni Association, the State Bar of California, and
a wide range of other civic, religious, and social organizations. Within
the Rabbinical Council of America, he has served during Year 2008-2009
on the RCA's
Task Force on Jewish Principles and Ethical Guidelines for Business and Industry (“JPEG”),
and on the RCA National Convention Resolutions Committee.
Twenty-Five Years of Service to the
Jewish Community: After receiving his undergraduate degree at
Columbia University, Rav Fischer studied at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan
Theological Seminary (RIETS) of Yeshiva University and was ordained a
Rav in 1981. In 1983, Rabbi Fischer was awarded his master’s degree in
American Jewish history. His master’s thesis was nationally honored by
the American Jewish Historical Society and published in its scholarly
quarterly, American Jewish History.
During the first decade of his rabbinical career, Rav Fischer was a
synagogue congregational Rav in New Jersey, taught on both the religious
and secular faculties of two yeshiva high schools, was Rabbinical
Advisor to the largest Soviet Jewry immigration agency in New Jersey and
to his city’s NCSY chapter for teens, and served as Jewish chaplain both
at the largest private hospital in the city and for the Jersey City
Police Department. He also wrote a regular column for the
mass-circulating Jewish Press
of Brooklyn, authored two books -- Jews for Nothing: On Cults,
Assimilation and Intermarriage (N.Y.: Feldheim, 1983) and
General
Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine (N.Y.: Steimatzky, 1985) – and served
as national executive director of the Likud Zionists of America.
From 1985 to 1987, Rav Fischer lived in Israel where his was one of 40
pioneering families that created a new Jewish community in Samaria.
During that time, he also served as Assistant Director of the American
High School at Pardes Hanna, cosponsored by the Los Angeles Jewish
Federation Council's Bureau of Jewish Education and by the Los Angeles
Unified School District. He taught in the Overseas Program at Orot
Women's College for Torah Studies, guest lectured several times at Bar
Ilan University for a course in Jewish Values taught to members of the
Israeli Defense Forces, and he worked intimately with Ethiopian Jews at
the Merkaz Klitah Absorption Center in Hadera.
Rabbi Fischer came to California in 1987 to serve as Rav of a new
congregation, Beit Hamidrash of Woodland Hills, and served as Founding
Rav and Headmaster of a new Yeshiva Day School in the area, the West
Valley Hebrew Academy, also based in Woodland Hills. During his three
years in Woodland Hills, the Beit Hamidrash Congregation grew from ten
families to more than sixty membership households, and the yeshiva day
school expanded into three grades and more than 60 students.
A Decade of Legal Service to the
American Jewish Community, Too: After a decade’s
service in the American Orthodox rabbinate, Rav Fischer received his
Juris Doctor degree in 1993 at UCLA School of Law where he also was
selected to serve as Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review. His Law
Review Comment on a federal law affecting directors and officers of
depository institutions has been cited in nine federal judicial
opinions, a remarkable and virtually unheard-of honor for a law student.
The following year, Rabbi Fischer served as federal judicial
appeals-court clerk to the Hon. Danny J. Boggs, now Chief Judge of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Rabbi Fischer
thereafter practiced complex business litigation for nearly a decade at
three of America’s most prominent law firms.
As part of his practice, Rav
Fischer became uniquely positioned to play ongoing significant pro
bono legal roles representing leaders in the Orthodox Jewish community and
advocating legal positions important to the greater Jewish community.
Thus, Rav Fischer participated significantly on a pro bono legal team
that represented the plaintiff class suing certain European insurance
companies over Jewish claims arising from the Holocaust era. He also has
performed a wide range of other pro bono legal services for the
Jewish community, including successfully helping women obtain Gittin
from recalcitrant husbands, stopping an unauthorized autopsy from being
performed in Orange County and having another autopsy dramatically
modified in scope, and representing religious institutional leaders in a
series of public-interest matters. He continues to contribute to
American legal education today as Adjunct Professor of Law at Loyola Law
School in Los Angeles, where he teaches California Civil Procedure and
the Law of Complex Torts.
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