Page 9 - AACL 25th anniversary

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HON. JERROLD NADLER has represented the 10th Congressional District of New York
since 1992. Previously, he served for sixteen years in the New York State Assembly. Throughout his career, he has been a champion of civil liberties and civil rights. A senior member of the Judiciary Committee in the US House of Representatives, he has served as either the Ranking Member or the Chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice since 2001. Congressman Nadler is also the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. With Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), he coauthored H. Res. 33, introduced on January 15, 2013, in the U.S. House of Representatives, “commending the Albanian people on the 100th anniversary of the declaration of their independence from the Ottoman Turkish Empire and commending Albanians in Albania and Kosova for protecting and saving the lives of all Jews who either lived in Albania or sought asylum there during the Holocaust.” In 1995, along with Congressmen Ben Gilman and Tom Lantos, he co-chaired and spoke at an historic Albanian American Foundation-sponsored ceremony commemorating the addition of Albania to the “Righteous among Nations” section of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Congressman Nadler is a graduate of Crown Heights Yeshiva, Stuyvesant High School, Columbia University, and Fordham Law School. He lives with his wife, Joyce Miller, on the West Side of Manhattan.
RABBI JOSEPH POTASNIK is Executive Vice President of the New York Board of
Rabbis, the largest interdenominational body of its kind in the world, and the senior rabbi at Congregation Mt. Sinai in Brooklyn Heights, New York, where he has served for forty-three years. He is the co-host of WABC’s “Religion on Line,” the station’s longest running talk radio program, and for the past fourteen years, he has been the religious commentator for Radio WINS. Rabbi Potasnik was appointed to the New York City Human Rights Commission by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He has served as chaplain of the New York City Fire Department, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the New York Press Club. He is the author of numerous articles and the Foreword to The Illustrated Jewish Bible for Children. Rabbi Potasnik has a B.A. degree from Yeshiva College, an M.S. degree from the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University, and a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School. He received his ordination in 1972 from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University. He is the proud father of Harrison Potasnik.
HON. DANA ROHRABACHER is serving his 13th term in Congress, representing
California’s 48th District. He is a senior member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats. A forceful spokesperson for human rights and democracy around the world, he was on the ground floor of the effort to give the people of Bosnia and Kosova the right to defend themselves against the occupation and genocidal warfare of the late Serbian dictator and indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. For his outspoken advocacy, the Albanian American Civic League awarded Congressman Rohrabacher their Balkan Peace Award in 2001. With the late Congressmen Tom Lantos and Henry Hyde, both Chairs of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressman Rohrabacher advocated for the independence of Kosova, which was recognized by the Bush Administration in 2008. In the US House of Representatives in January 2013, Congressman Rohrabacher introduced with Congressman Jerrold Nadler H. Res. 33, “commending Albanians in Albania and Kosova for protecting and saving the lives of all Jews who either lived in Albania or sought asylum there during the Holocaust.” Since 2013, Congressman Rohrabacher has held important hearings in the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats. In April 2013, he held the only hearing in any official body in the West questioning the EU-brokered Prishtina-Belgrade agreement, which has yet to be implemented. In September 2014, he was the first Western official to hold a briefing on the emerging crisis in Macedonia, and in April 2015, a hearing evaluating post-war progress, including US foreign policy, in the Western Balkans. Prior to his election to Congress in 1988, Congressman Rohrabacher served for seven years as a speech writer for President Ronald Reagan. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Long Beach College and a master’s degree in American Studies from the University of Southern California. He and his wife, Rhonda, are the parents of triplets, Annika, Tristen, and Christian.
88 Saluting Albanian Religious Tolerance in an Age of Intolerance 9