"One of the top 25 pulpit rabbis in America" according to Newsweek, Rabbi Block is a Past President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and Senior Rabbi Emeritus of The Temple - Tifereth Israel, Cleveland, Ohio and Congregation Beth Am, Los Altos Hills, CA. Formerly: Board of Governors of Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, Greenwich (CT) Fellowship of Clergy, and The Greater Cleveland Board of Rabbis. Longtime trustee and investment committee member of the Reform Pension Board of Reform Judaism.Rabbi Block was ordained and awarded a Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, OH in 1982, receiving numerous awards for academic distinction, writing, and sermonic excellence. Subsequent honors include Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco's 1999 "FAMMY" Award, "in appreciation of extraordinary caring and dedicated community service." Hebrew Union College conferred upon him an honorary doctorate in 2007. Newsweek recognized him as "one of the top 25 pulpit rabbis in America." The Council of Churches and Synagogues of Lower Fairfield County awarded him its Humanitarian Award for leadership "worthy of esteem and commendation" that "made a significant difference in his community and in our whole region."Senior Rabbi of The Temple – Tifereth Israel in Cleveland, OH, from 2001 to 2018, transforming the congregation’s culture. On behalf of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, he led an international partnership that assisted 10,000 Ethiopian-Israeli children and their families, and he chaired Federation’s Black – Jewish Relations Task Force. He was instrumental in creating the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Case Western Reserve University’s Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center at The Temple – Tifereth Israel, and The Temple’s Jack and Lilyan Mandel Building. Prior to his rabbinical studies, Rabbi Block graduated with honors from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He was a law clerk to a US District Court judge and served on active duty in the lUS Navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps, including a term as a Special Assistant US Attorney.