Uri D. Herscher
Rabbi and academic
Uri D. Herscher (born March 14, 1941) is an American Reform rabbi and academic who founded and served as president and CEO of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. In 2020, Herscher retired from the Skirball Center.
Early life and education
Herscher was born in Tel Aviv, Israel to Lucy, a laundress, and Joseph Herscher, a cabinetmaker. His parents fled Germany in the mid-1930s; their parents and many of Herscher's relatives were murdered in Nazi death camps.
In 1954, Herscher, his parents, and his younger brother, Eli, moved to San Jose, California. In high school, he was elected student body president. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated in 1964 with a BA in history and sociology. During his undergraduate years he founded Cal Camp, a summer camp that serves underprivileged children in the San Francisco Bay Area. Robert D. Haas was also a counselor at Cal Camp, and would years later help Herscher to build the Skirball Center.
Though not religious, Herscher's interest in Jewish culture caused him to attend Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, a Reform seminary.
“Uri D. Herscher” enters the record as rabbi and academic. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Herscher, Rabbi and academic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Uri D. Herscher” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Herscher, Rabbi and academic provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7900518. VIAF identifies the subject as 70220470. The Library of Congress control number is n80018455. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 2020, 1954 and 1964.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Uri D. Herscher”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Uri D. Herscher primary sources, Uri D. Herscher archive and Herscher research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Uri D. Herscher”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Uri D. Herscher” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.