The CURE Community Leaders

Rabbi (Bob) Robert G. Kaplan
Bob Kaplan is currently the founding Director of C.A.U.S.E. – NY, formally know as the New York Center for Community and Coalition Building, 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. As a liaison for more than 29 identified Jewish communities, Mr. Kaplan is involved in a variety of issues including coalition building, conflict resolution, ethnic media, interracial/inter-religious relationships, combating hate crimes, and community building. Mr. Kaplan acts as a consultant to many community-based organizations -- Jewish and non-Jewish -- on the issue of intergroup relations and capacity building. Bob Kaplan is likewise the Executive Director of YouthBridge-NY, a teen diversity leadership organization managed by the CAUSE-NY/ JCRC. He also co-directs the New York- Jerusalem Dialogue Project, a program of the UJA-Federation and the Jewish Agency.

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 the Northern Queens Health Coalition, Project C.A.R.E. (Crown Heights), the Greater Southern Brooklyn Health Coalition, the Coalition for Far Rockaway, the Lower Manhattan Heath Care Coalition, Bronx Women Moving Our World, amongst others. He founded the Queens Community Forum and Institute at La Guardia Community College and the Community Organizing Leadership Institute at Hostos Community College. All of these groups are dedicated to improving the quality of life for all.

He served for five years as the Associate Executive Director of Hillel of New York. His former Hillel directorships include New York University, C.W. Post and Pace University.

Bob Kaplan was 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 and Israeli Foreign Ministries, on issues of diversity, coalition building and community organizing.

Mr. Kaplan served as a member of the NYC Department of Education Chancellor’s Interfaith Commission. He currently serves on the New York City Leadership Committee and sits on the Board for Habitat for Humanity and Health Plus.

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. Mr. Kaplan is a member of the Design Team and is presently a faculty member of the Institute for Public Health and Faith Collaborations, collaboration between the Rollins School of Health at Emory University and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. He served as the coalition consultant to the Black/Jewish Congressional Coalition in Washington DC. Mr. Kaplan served as a Member of the Working Group on “Governance Dilemmas”. This group’s focus and purpose to educate community leaders on how to lead during bio-attacks and epidemics with the publics trust and interest.

As a member of the clergy, Rabbi Kaplan was a grief counselor for the American Red Cross assigned to working with relief workers at the respite center located at Ground Zero. He likewise serves as a Clergy Liaison to the Chief of the Department of the New York Police Department (NYPD).

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. He serves as a mentor and fieldwork supervisor for Master of Social Work graduate students in the field of community organizing. He has been trained by the Queens Mediation Center in conflict resolution.

Currently Mr. Kaplan is an adjunct professor in the Jewish Studies Department at The City College of New York where he teaches a course on the Jewish Immigrant Experience in New York City.

Mr. Kaplan studied at Empire State College and Yeshiva Chaim Berlin.

.