Allen Secher

Allen's father Jack, graduated the University of Pittsburgh in 1925 and then from Columbia University in 1927 with a Master of Social Work.

Jack performed social work at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement while at the University of Pittsburgh, and along with his wife ran a puppet theater at the Irene Kaufman Settlement.

After graduating from Columbia University he opened and ran a series of restaurants and delicatessens in Pittsburgh.

Rabbi Allen Secher (born February 14, 1935) is a rabbi, civil and human rights activist,

radio host, television producer, actor, author and public speaker.

Allen was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

His father was Jack Secher and his mother was Eleanor Steiner.

He has one sister, Linda and three children, Judith, Debra and Adam.

Allen grew up in Pittsburgh and Butler, Pennsylvania.

While attending Brandeis University Allen served as Eleanor Roosevelt's driver for five days in June 1955.

In the 1960s, Secher pioneered the use of multi-media worship services at Temple Ahavat Shalom Northridge in Los Angeles.

After leaving his congregation in Los Angeles and before moving to Chicago, Secher started, ran and then closed an audio recording business for conferences and meetings.

The business was first named Aviva and then renamed Butterfly Media Dimensions.

The name Butterfly was in honor of "I Never Saw Another Butterfly", a collection of Jewish children's art and poetry from the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

In the early 1960s, Secher was one of the Freedom Riders during the civil rights movement.

Allen received a Bachelor of Philosophy from Brandeis University, was ordained by New York's Hebrew Union College in 1962, and earned his honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Hebrew Union College in 1987.

Allen Secher served congregations in New York City, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Montana between 1962 and 2013.

In August 1962 Dr. King put out a call to clergy to join him on a prayer pilgrimage to Albany, Georgia to support the civil rights movement.

Dr. King had three requirements to participate—each person needed to have bail money, they could not have anything on their arrest record that would embarrass the civil rights movement and they all had to be committed to non-violence.

Secher traveled to Albany and was part of a group of clergy that held a prayer service on August 28, 1962, in front of the Albany city hall.

Four hundred onlookers watched as all 75 clergy were arrested and taken to 4 surrounding jails.

Dr. King wrote a "Letter from the St. Augustine Jail" to Rabbi Israel S. Dresner, urging him to recruit rabbis from a Central Conference of American Rabbis conference to come to St. Augustine, Florida and take part in the demonstrations being held in St. Augustine.

Secher responded to the appeal and traveled to St. Augustine to participate in the demonstrations.

Sixteen rabbis including Secher arrived and attempted to integrate the whites-only pool and restaurant with a group of civil rights organizers at the Monson Motor Lodge on June 18, 1964.

The protesters and rabbis were arrested.

While in a segregated holding cell at St. John's County Jail, the clergy wrote a group letter titled "Why We Went: A Joint Letter from the Rabbis Arrested in St. Augustine".

The day after the demonstration Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on June 19, 1964, after an 83-day filibuster.

In 1991, with his wife, Ina Albert, Rabbi Secher founded Makom Shalom, Chicago's first Jewish Renewal congregation, melding traditional and holistic paths (mysticism, meditation, gender equality) toward spiritual intimacy.

He also served on the board of Aleph, the umbrella organization for Renewal Judaism.

Secher moved to Whitefish, Montana in 2000.

In January 2005, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer appointed Secher to the Montana State Human Rights Commission, and reappointed him in 2009.

In 2008, there were only about 1,000 self-identified Jews in Montana, a state with a population of about 900,000.

For many years Secher was the only resident rabbi in Montana.

He traveled between congregations in Whitefish, Missoula, Helena, Bozeman, Billings and Great Falls and was known as the "Lone Rabbi of Montana".

In 2008 Secher, along with his wife Ina Alpert and two others co-founded Love Lives Here in Whitefish, a non-profit organization dedicated to diversity and equal treatment for all citizens, in response to some white nationalist film showings.

Love Lives Here worked with other Whitefish community members to try and get the Whitefish City Council to enact diversity, tolerance and anti-discrimination legislation.

In November 2011, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer appointed Secher to the Montana Arts Council.

Secher retired from congregational life in 2013.

In 2015 the Whitefish City Council approved an anti-discrimination ordinance.

In 2015, Richard B. Spencer, a spokesman for the "alt-right", lives part of the year in Whitefish.