Stephen S. Pearce (Senior Rabbi Emeritus and Taube Emanu-El Scholar at Congregation Emanu-El) served Congregation Emanu-El as the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Senior Rabbi from 1993 to 2013. He was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and earned his doctorate in counselor psychology at St. John’s University. He is an advisory board member of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture and is a current board member of the University of San Francisco’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good. He is a board member of the San Francisco and Marin Food Bank. Dr. Pearce is the former editor of the Journal of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and author of Flash of Insight: Metaphor and Narrative in Therapy, and coauthor of Building Wisdom’s House: A Book of Values for our Time, in addition to other books and numerous articles and poems. Dr. Pearce was awarded The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association’s Silver Spur Award for interfaith community dialogue and engagement; the national Jefferson Award for inspiring worshippers to fight hunger; The San Francisco Food Bank Community Partner Award for inspiring members of Congregation Emanu-El to donate over 90,000 pounds of food during the two decades of his leadership at Congregation Emanu-El; and the San Francisco Interfaith Council recognition for encouraging green sustainability at the Temple. Dr. Pearce has been recognized three successive times by Newsweek as one of the 50 Most Influential rabbis in the United States. This donated oral history covers his family origins, early years, and his decades of wise and devoted service to Emanu-El families and city-wide interfaith work.