YEREVAN, JULY 31, ARMENPRESS. The ANCA congratulates Rabbi David Saperstein, a longtime advocate for the condemnation and commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, to serve as the next U.S. Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom. As reports “Armenpress” citing The Washington Post, he will be the first non-Christian to ever hold this post.

In a May 30, 2007 letter to Congress, that he signed and sent on behalf of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Rabbi Saperstein wrote: "The April 24 commemoration of the 1915-1923 Armenian Genocide is a stark reminder of the dangers of ethnic cleansing based on religious or ethnic divisions. The massacre of over 1.5 million Armenians, beginning in 1915 by the Ottoman Turks and the subsequent exile of an additional 500,000 Armenians is a painful and shameful chapter of modern history. Those who today fan the flames of religious and ethnic intolerance do so taking comfort in knowing that in the past, good people have remained silent for too long in the face of such injustice."

U.S. President Obama on Monday (July 28) said he plans to tap Rabbi David Saperstein as the next ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, the first non-Christian to hold the job, which was created in 1998.

As ambassador, the man named as the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek magazine in 2009, will head the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, and will be tasked with monitoring religious freedom abuses around the world.

A Reform rabbi and lawyer, Saperstein, 66, has led the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism for 30 years, and has spent his career in Washington, focusing on social justice and religious freedom issues. He was instrumental in the 1993 passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which requires the government to show a compelling reason for any action that impinges upon the exercise of religion.