Marvin Rosenblum, President

In 1961 the Reform Movement ranked third in size among world Jewry. In that year Marvin Rosenblum, with eight local pioneers, founded Temple Emanuel in Edison, NJ and served as president and Board member for several decades, as well as being active in the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (“UAHC”), now known as the Union for Reform Judaism (“URJ”). In 2001, he heard a speech and met Rabbi Sherwin Wine, after which his curiosity let to the study of several of Rabbi Wine’s published works. He then discovered his true identity within Judaism, that of being a Humanistic Jew. He was president of the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Morris County, NJ for a period and then rose within the Movement when he was elected to the national level by becoming a passionate Board member of the Society for Humanistic Judaism (“SHJ”). After several years of a hiatus of activity within the International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews (“IFSHJ”), primarily after the death of Rabbi Wine, Mr. Rosenblum, along with two Israeli partners, Prof. Drs. Efraim Zadoff and Yair Lifschitz, accepted the role of co-chairs for international development of the Movement through the revitalization of the IFSHJ.

Marvin Rosenblum became president of the IFSHJ and led the organization through the reincorporating of its’ successor non-profit International Federation for Secular & Humanistic Judaism (“IFSHJ”) and moving its headquarters to Washington, D.C. The name change, in part, clarified the identity of IFSHJ as creating cohesion among national like-minded communities world-wide, rather than serving individual Jews directly.

He is a member of the Advocacy committee for the Metro Chapter of the American Jewish committee and serves on the Religious Pluralism sub-committee at UJC MetroWest.

Mr. Rosenblum has been a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization, the Metropolitan President’s Organization and the World President’s Organization for forty (40) years. He founded a public corporation in 1968, Precision Polymers, Inc., architects of the plastic pipe industry, and Unicorp Financial Corporaton in 1979, a vertically integrated venture capital services company. Among other commercial activities, he was Chairman and/or CEO of other private and public companies and a director of United Jersey Banks, Central, N.A., currently merged into the Bank of America. He also served as a Special Project Advisor to the Federal Reserve Board and was a Special Assistant to the Deputy Undersecretary of the Department of Transportation.

A lifelong multi-industry state of the art technology entrepreneur, Mr. Rosenblum pioneered, among others, plastic pipe, valve and fitting manufacturing, food irradiation, precious metal mining and refining industries and alternate energy through the dissociation of water. Semi-retired, his passion within Judaism is to aid in diminishing attrition and in fostering pluralism among all Judaic denominations, religious and secular, in Israel and the Diaspora. Esti and he have three children and 6 grandchildren.

Rabbi Alfred Landsberg says of Marvin Rosenblum:

"I have .. consistently found him to be genuine, innovative, and Judaically creative."

"He personally bears the responsibility to ensure the continued creation of a truly living Judaism."

"He possesses that fire-in-the-blood necessary to translate the ideals of Judaism into those actions required for their implemementation."