Israel Seymour Dresner (April 22, 1929 – January 13, 2022) was an American Reform rabbi who served as president of the Education Fund for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace.

[1] He was instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement, and a close friend to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.[2] Dresner was born April 22, 1929, on the Lower East Side of New York City.

The next five years were spent studying at the New York School of the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, where he was duly ordained as a rabbi.

[5][2] US President Barack Obama honored him at the White House on the evening before the 50-year anniversary celebration of the March on Washington.

He was one of the outstanding rabbinic leaders in the struggle against the war in Vietnam and for the rights of the poor; women; immigrants, gays and lesbians: disabled people; and racial, religious and ethnic minorities.

[1] He was the president of the Education Fund for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace (now Partners for Progressive Israel).

He was a leader of an American Zionist organization for peace, justice, pluralism, and democracy, Partners for Progressive Israel, for a quarter-century, serving as its president for three years in the 1990s.