GTU Voices - Foundations of the Future: Rabbi Stephen Pearce

Rabbi Stephen Pearce is a GTU board alumnus, former visiting scholar, and lifelong advocate for interfaith education. Today, as a legacy donor and champion of the GTU’s interfaith mission, Rabbi Pearce shares stories, sparks conversations, and reminds others of the enduring power of empathy, education, and community. This article is based on a recent conversation with him.

“I’m a second-generation Jewish immigrant to this country,” Rabbi Stephen Pearce shares, reflecting on a journey that spans five decades of service, teaching, and advocacy. “For some of my first-generation relatives, the notion that I was going to become a rabbi was shocking. What kind of job is that for a nice Jewish boy?”

Raised in New York City, Rabbi Pearce followed his calling despite his relatives' skepticism. Now retired after 50 years in the rabbinate, he has served communities from Forest Hills, New York, to Stamford, Connecticut, to San Francisco, where he served as Senior Rabbi at Congregation Emanu-El for 21 years.

His path to the rabbinate wasn’t linear. Although he first pursued a career in law, the turbulence of the Vietnam War and a deepening passion for justice shifted his trajectory. “I majored in psychology, was accepted to law school, but then the Vietnam War was raging,” he recalls. “I was very active in the antiwar movement. That’s when I decided to go to rabbinical school.”

Pearce also pursued chaplaincy early in his career and later earned a doctorate at St. John’s University, where his worldview expanded in unexpected ways. “Growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York City, I never had exposure to Christian clergy. Suddenly, I was studying alongside priests and nuns. It was transformative.”

His dedication to interfaith understanding made the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) a natural fit. He became acquainted with the GTU through Trustee Emerita Rita Semel, a member of Congregation Emanu-El, who urged him to serve on the board in 2009. Then, in 2014, he became a visiting professor at the GTU’s Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies. “It was a very rich experience,” he explains.

That richness, he says, came from the diversity of thought and faith traditions embraced by the GTU community. “I had students from all walks of life. One class included a

fundamentalist Christian from South Korea who was stunned by the openness here. That kind of exchange—it changes people.”

His passion for the GTU’s mission remains unwavering. “The Graduate Theological Union is the interfaith world coming together,” he says. “There’s more that unites us than divides us. Without the GTU, there’s no public forum for Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, and others to truly come together.”

That belief in shared purpose motivates Rabbi Pearce’s continued support for the GTU. “I support the GTU by being a contributor, by leaving a legacy gift, and by talking it up to lots of people,” he says. “The GTU aligns with my values: openness to the other, rather than staying apart. We come together.”

Now in retirement, Rabbi Pearce remains as vibrant as ever. “I love retirement,” he says. “I get to choose what I want to do.” That includes teaching, pursuing new projects, and newly published book, I Wish I'd Said That: A Guide for Writers, Speakers, and Healers. This anthology is a thematic inventory of narratives, including allegories, allusions, ambiguities, anecdotes, aphorisms, fables, folktales, metaphors, myths, paradoxes, puns, quotations, and witticisms that may be employed in public presentations, written material, and therapy.

For those curious about the GTU, he offers this invitation: “Come have a look. You can’t resist. You’ll get pulled in by the enthusiasm, the freshness, the desire to make a difference in this crazy world.”