Is this you? Or do you exclusively represent this speaker?

Steve Leder speaker

Steve Leder

Guiding Audiences to Find Meaning, Resilience, and Legacy Through Life's Complexities.

About

Gender: Male
Nationality: United Kingdom
Languages: English
Travels from: United Kingdom

Engagement Types

Websites

Speakers FAQ

Biography Highlights

  • Senior Rabbi of The Wilshire Boulevard Temple
  • New York Times Bestselling Author, 'For You When I Am Gone', and More
  • Regular Contributor and Guest, 'The Today Show'
  • Louis Rappaport Award for Excellence in Commentary

Biography

After receiving his degree in writing and graduating Cum Laude from Northwestern University, and time studying at Trinity College, Oxford University, Rabbi Leder received a Master’s Degree in Hebrew Letters in 1986 and Rabbinical Ordination in 1987 from Hebrew Union College.  He currently serves as the Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, a prestigious synagogue in Los Angeles with three campuses and 2,700 families. 

In addition to his many duties at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, including having raised over 260MM dollars to expand the congregation’s reach throughout Los Angeles, Rabbi Leder taught Homiletics for 13 years at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles.  He is a regular contributor and guest on The Today Show, writes regularly for TIME, Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper, Woman’s Day Magazine, contributed a chapter to Charles Barkley’s book Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man?, and has published essays in Town and Country, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Los Angeles Jewish Journal where his Torah commentaries were read weekly by over 50,000 people.  His sermon on capital punishment was included in an award-winning episode of The West Wing.  He regularly appears on the Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, NPR and weekly on Spectrum 1 News.  He is a highly sought after speaker who received the Louis Rappaport Award for Excellence in Commentary from the American Jewish Press Association, the Kovler Award from the Religious Action Center in Washington D.C. for his work in Black/Jewish dialogue and has presented twice at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

In the New York Times, William Safire called Rabbi Leder’s first book The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things “uplifting.”  Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein said he “is everything we search for in a modern wise man; learned, kind, funny, and non-judgmental, he offers remarkably healing guidance.”   

Rabbi Leder’s second book More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul received critical and media attention including feature articles in the New York Times, Town and Country and appearances on ABC’s Politically Incorrect, NPR, and CBS This Morning. 

His third book More Beautiful Than Before; How Suffering Transforms Us reached #4 on Amazon’s overall best sellers list in its first week.  It remains a best seller in several categories and has been translated into Korean and Chinese.  His book The Beauty of What Remains; How Our Greatest Fear Becomes Our Greatest Gift was published by Penguin Random House in January 2021.  Publisher’s weekly called it “…elegant and compassionate” and it quickly became a national best seller.  Rabbi Leder’s recent book For You When I Am Gone; Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story, was published in June 2022, translated into Taiwanese, Portuguese and is a New York Times Bestseller.

Newsweek Magazine twice named him one of the ten most influential rabbis in America but most important to Steve is being Betsy’s husband and Aaron and Hannah’s dad. He is also a Jew who likes to fish. Go figure.

Videos

Speaking videos

Media, podcast appearances and interviews

Popular Talks

Inspired by his New York Times bestselling book, Rabbi Steve Leder explores intentional questions to ask when understanding the story of your life. In this uplifting and reflective talk, Rabbi Leder illuminates the values that define our lives and how we can tell our own stories to shape our legacy.

Available: In person, Virtually

Based on his most popular sermon, Rabbi Steve Leder shares the incomparable lessons he’s learned about coping with death, loss, and grief, and the beauty of what remains. In this talk, Rabbi Leder uses both his vulnerability and his sense of humor to encourage audiences toward resilience and healing.

Available: In person, Virtually

In this empowering talk, Rabbi Steve Leder motivates audiences of all kinds to do their part to stop the rise of antisemitism. No matter what our background or religion, we can all be leaders in our own way and stand up against hate, protect one another, and keep our communities safe.

Available: In person, Virtually

Rabbi Steve Leder uses his 15 years of experience as a religious leader and spiritual counselor to tackle the questions with which all of us wrestle on a daily basis: How to keep money from being a focal point, how to understand the difference between wants and needs, what kind of moral code to live by while seeking the comfort that money brings, how to teach children about values involving money, and more.

Available: In person, Virtually

As a Rabbi, Steve Leder has seen many people over the years who have a disconnect between their set of professed values and their lived values — and that’s a recipe for trouble. When we have this disconnect, it can present many problems in our lives, and pose a challenge for how we raise our children. As a father, Leder knows all too well the challenges of raising kids who truly know the value of a dollar and understand the difference between wants and needs. He shares real talk on how to raise healthy, well-grounded and decent humans in the Instagram, instant-gratification reality we live in.

Available: In person, Virtually

Are you a good ancestor? We don’t think of ourselves as ancestors. But we are, just not yet. Every one of us carries our ancestors within us, both within our DNA, but also in our worldview, our empathy or lack thereof, our materialism or lack thereof, our spirituality or lack thereof and we too, will be carried by others. And if we understand that, not in a fearful way, but in an empowering deliberate way, it really can inform us to lead more beautiful and purposeful lives.

Available: In person, Virtually

Rabbi Steve Leder teaches us how to write an ethical will, a letter to our loved ones that helps them understand what we have learned about how to live a meaningful life. It can include joy and regrets, and ultimately becomes both a way to remember a loved one who is gone and a primer on how to live a better, happier life. Rabbi Leder provides prompts, exercises, and inspirational stories to help us write our own ethical wills and shows each of us how to create a lasting, meaningful legacy while enjoying the process of examining our lives.

Available: In person, Virtually
Steve'S

Testimonials

Books

Steve Leder book

For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story

New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller! From the bestselling author of The Beauty of What Remains, a guide to writing a meaningful letter about your life. Writing an ethical will, a document that includes stories and reflections about your past, is an ancient tradition. It can include joy and regrets, and ultimately becomes both a way to remember a loved one who is gone and a primer on how to live a better, happier life. Beloved Rabbi Steve Leder has helped thousands of people to write their own ethical wills, and in this intimate book helps us write our own. Because our culture privileges the material over the spiritual, we sometimes forget that our words carry greater value than any physical thing we can bequeath to our loved ones. Rabbi Leder provides all the right questions and prompts, including: What was your most painful regret and how can your loved ones avoid repeating it? When was a time you led with your heart instead of your head? What did you learn from your biggest failure? Including examples of ethical wills from a broad range of voices—old and young, with and without children, famous and unknown—For You When I Am Gone inspires listeners to examine their own lives and turn them into something beautiful and meaningful for generations to come.

Read more..

For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story

New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller! From the bestselling author of The Beauty of What Remains, a guide to writing a meaningful letter about your life. Writing an ethical will, a document that includes stories and reflections about your past, is an ancient tradition. It can include joy and regrets, and ultimately becomes both a way to remember a loved one who is gone and a primer on how to live a better, happier life. Beloved Rabbi Steve Leder has helped thousands of people to write their own ethical wills, and in this intimate book helps us write our own. Because our culture privileges the material over the spiritual, we sometimes forget that our words carry greater value than any physical thing we can bequeath to our loved ones. Rabbi Leder provides all the right questions and prompts, including: What was your most painful regret and how can your loved ones avoid repeating it? When was a time you led with your heart instead of your head? What did you learn from your biggest failure? Including examples of ethical wills from a broad range of voices—old and young, with and without children, famous and unknown—For You When I Am Gone inspires listeners to examine their own lives and turn them into something beautiful and meaningful for generations to come.

The Beauty of What Remains: How Our Greatest Fear Becomes Our Greatest Gift

The national bestseller From the author of the bestselling More Beautiful Than Before comes an inspiring book about loss based on his most popular sermon. As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Steve Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply by showing us not only what is gone but also the beauty of what remains. This inspiring and comforting book takes us on a journey through the experience of loss that is fundamental to everyone. Yet even after having sat beside thousands of deathbeds, Steve Leder the rabbi was not fully prepared for the loss of his own father. It was only then that Steve Leder the son truly learned how loss makes life beautiful by giving it meaning and touching us with love that we had not felt before. Enriched by Rabbi Leder’s irreverence, vulnerability, and wicked sense of humor, this heartfelt narrative is filled with laughter and tears, the wisdom of millennia and modernity, and, most of all, an unfolding of the profound and simple truth that in loss we gain more than we ever imagined.

Read more..

The Beauty of What Remains: How Our Greatest Fear Becomes Our Greatest Gift

The national bestseller From the author of the bestselling More Beautiful Than Before comes an inspiring book about loss based on his most popular sermon. As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Steve Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply by showing us not only what is gone but also the beauty of what remains. This inspiring and comforting book takes us on a journey through the experience of loss that is fundamental to everyone. Yet even after having sat beside thousands of deathbeds, Steve Leder the rabbi was not fully prepared for the loss of his own father. It was only then that Steve Leder the son truly learned how loss makes life beautiful by giving it meaning and touching us with love that we had not felt before. Enriched by Rabbi Leder's irreverence, vulnerability, and wicked sense of humor, this heartfelt narrative is filled with laughter and tears, the wisdom of millennia and modernity, and, most of all, an unfolding of the profound and simple truth that in loss we gain more than we ever imagined.
Steve Leder book

More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us

Every one of us sooner or later walks through hell. The hell of being hurt. The hell of hurting another. The hell of cancer, the hell of divorce, the hell of chronic pain. The hell of anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s, a kid in trouble. The hell of a reluctant, thunking shovelful of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved. The point is not to come out of hell empty-handed. There is real and profound power in the pain we endure if we transform our suffering into a more authentic, meaningful life. As the Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, one of America’s largest and most important congregations, Steve Leder witnesses a lot of pain: “It’s my phone that rings when people’s bodies or lives fall apart.“ In this deeply inspiring book, written in the spirit of such classics as When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Leder guides us through pain’s stages of surviving, healing, and finally growing. Drawing on his experience as a spiritual leader, the wisdom of ancient traditions, modern science, and stories from his own life and others’, he shows us that when we must endure, we can, and that there is a path for each of us that leads from pain to wisdom. This powerful book can inspire in us all a life worthy of our suffering; a life gentler, wiser, and more beautiful than before. “So often I hear people quote Ernest Hemingway, who said, ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.’ That has always sounded more like Hemingway bravado than the truth to me. . . . I know that a broken marriage, a broken heart, a ruined reputation—none of those things grow stronger. But we can heal enough, we can somehow find our true selves again—or for the first time—and what we find really is often gentler and wiser and more beautiful than before. A second love. A second chance. Another way to walk forward.”

Read more..

More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us

Every one of us sooner or later walks through hell. The hell of being hurt. The hell of hurting another. The hell of cancer, the hell of divorce, the hell of chronic pain. The hell of anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s, a kid in trouble. The hell of a reluctant, thunking shovelful of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved. The point is not to come out of hell empty-handed. There is real and profound power in the pain we endure if we transform our suffering into a more authentic, meaningful life. As the Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, one of America’s largest and most important congregations, Steve Leder witnesses a lot of pain: “It’s my phone that rings when people’s bodies or lives fall apart.“ In this deeply inspiring book, written in the spirit of such classics as When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Leder guides us through pain’s stages of surviving, healing, and finally growing. Drawing on his experience as a spiritual leader, the wisdom of ancient traditions, modern science, and stories from his own life and others’, he shows us that when we must endure, we can, and that there is a path for each of us that leads from pain to wisdom. This powerful book can inspire in us all a life worthy of our suffering; a life gentler, wiser, and more beautiful than before. “So often I hear people quote Ernest Hemingway, who said, ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.’ That has always sounded more like Hemingway bravado than the truth to me. . . . I know that a broken marriage, a broken heart, a ruined reputation—none of those things grow stronger. But we can heal enough, we can somehow find our true selves again—or for the first time—and what we find really is often gentler and wiser and more beautiful than before. A second love. A second chance. Another way to walk forward.”
Steve Leder book

More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul

In this beautifully written and moving book, author Steven Leder uses his 15 years of experience as a religious leader and spiritual counselor to tackle the questions with which all of us wrestle on a daily basis: How to keep money from being a focal point, how to understand the difference between wants and needs, what kind of moral code to live by while seeking the comfort that money brings, how to teach children about values involving money, and more.

Read more..

More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul

In this beautifully written and moving book, author Steven Leder uses his 15 years of experience as a religious leader and spiritual counselor to tackle the questions with which all of us wrestle on a daily basis: How to keep money from being a focal point, how to understand the difference between wants and needs, what kind of moral code to live by while seeking the comfort that money brings, how to teach children about values involving money, and more.
Steve Leder book

The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things

Finding meaning in the mundane is just a matter of knowing where to look. Herewith, the miraculous nature of everyday life is explored. Through vignettes at turns funny and poignant, Rabbi Leder points out those easily overlooked connections between everyday experiences and the teachings of Judaism. God and spirituality can be found in every aspect of our daily routines. Ordinary things–a pet frog, a weekend fishing trip, a roller coaster ride–become extraordinary when reexamined through Jewish eyes. Woven throughout Rabbi Leder’s essays are midrashic texts, talmudic excerpts, and passages from the Torah, reflecting thousands of years of Jewish wisdom. Whether recalling a memorable walk along the beach with Dad, teaching a child the commandment of tzedakah, or stepping into the shoes of an anxious father-to-be as he paces the halls of the maternity ward, these stories reveal Judaism’s power to illuminate our lives. On child-rearing: Eleven Suggestions for Raising a Mensch On the paradox of modern life: You can’t put one tuchus in two chairs. On miracles: The miraculous is the common and the constant: birth, teaching, our breath. Discover The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things.

Read more..

The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things

Finding meaning in the mundane is just a matter of knowing where to look. Herewith, the miraculous nature of everyday life is explored. Through vignettes at turns funny and poignant, Rabbi Leder points out those easily overlooked connections between everyday experiences and the teachings of Judaism. God and spirituality can be found in every aspect of our daily routines. Ordinary things--a pet frog, a weekend fishing trip, a roller coaster ride--become extraordinary when reexamined through Jewish eyes. Woven throughout Rabbi Leder's essays are midrashic texts, talmudic excerpts, and passages from the Torah, reflecting thousands of years of Jewish wisdom. Whether recalling a memorable walk along the beach with Dad, teaching a child the commandment of tzedakah, or stepping into the shoes of an anxious father-to-be as he paces the halls of the maternity ward, these stories reveal Judaism's power to illuminate our lives. On child-rearing: Eleven Suggestions for Raising a Mensch On the paradox of modern life: You can't put one tuchus in two chairs. On miracles: The miraculous is the common and the constant: birth, teaching, our breath. Discover The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things.

Enquire About

Steve Leder
Contact Speaker
Your name
Your name

Speaker Bureaus and Talent Agencies

Steve Leder is available to book via these agencies
Recommended
Harry Walker
Speaking Agency