Rabbi Stephen Lewis Fuchs was born in East Orange, New Jersey. Upon graduating from East Orange High School, he matriculated at and graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. After five more years and four summers of full-time study, he was ordained as a Rabbi at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio where he earned his MA in Hebrew Letters and a graduate certificate in Jewish Communal Service from the Hebrew Union College branch in Los Angeles, CA.

Rabbi Fuchs and Victoria Steinberg Fuchs, a now-retired elementary school teacher, married on June 9, 1974 in San Francisco, CA. They currently reside in Vero Beach, FL. They have three children and nine grandchildren. 
                                      

In 1992, Rabbi Fuchs earned a Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) degree in biblical interpretation from Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. He received a Doctor of Divinity Degree, Honoris Causa, from the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in March of 1999.

Rabbi Fuchs’ pulpit career spans over fifty years. He served as the first full-time rabbi of Temple Isaiah in Columbia, MD for thirteen years. He then served for eleven years as Senior Rabbi of The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Sholom in Nashville, TN before arriving in West Hartford, CT in 1997 to serve as Senior Rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel, until 2011,when he retired for the first time.  In the fall of 2017, he assumed the pulpit of rabbi at Bat Yam Temple of the Islands in Sanibel, Florida.

On July 1, 2011, Rabbi Stephen Fuchs began his appointment as President of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ). In that role he traveled to over 65 communities on five continents as a proponent of Reform Jewish values and legitimacy.

Career Highlights and Life Achievements 
• In 2003, Rabbi Fuchs was the first recipient of the first annual Judaic Heritage Award from Charter Oak Cultural Center.  In 2011, he was the only Caucasian of the eleven recipients who received the Unlimited Love Humanitarian Award from Bethel AME Church.
• Rabbi Fuchs held the position of Clergy Co-Chair of the Interfaith Fellowship for Universal Health Care .  The IFUHC played a pivotal role in the passage of SustiNeT, Connecticut’s Universal Health Care Initiative in 2009.  
• In 2006 Rabbi Fuchs received the Four Chaplains Award—in honor of the four heroic military Chaplains who perished with the Dorchester in WWII after giving up their life vests to save the lives of sailors.
• He is the author of seven books, one of which, Finding Ourselves in the Bible, has been translated into German, Russian and Spanish and is also available as an audio book.
• For several weeks each year, between 2014 and 2019, Rabbi and Mrs. Fuchs lived in Germany where they taught together about the Holocaust in German Schools. During those visits Rabbi Fuchs taught in Synagogues, at the Abraham Geiger Rabbinical College and preached in more than two dozen German churches.
• On November 6, 2015, Rabbi Fuchs conducted the first Jewish service in the city of Friedrichstadt, Germany, since Kristallnacht.
• During his tenure at Congregation Beth Israel, Rabbi Fuchs was particularly pleased with the launch and overwhelming success of the temple’s Yom Kippur Food Drive, one of the largest of its kind in the United States.  
• Upon his retirement from the pulpit at Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford, FOODSHARE instituted and designated a food-transportation fund in Rabbi Fuchs’ name in honor and recognition of his tireless efforts to end hunger in the state of Connecticut .   
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• “I see the essence of Jewish values expressed in concrete acts of caring and
kindness that make a difference in the lives of others.”

• On October 17, 2017, Rabbi Fuchs accepted the Vanderbilt Divinity School’s Distinguished Alumnus Award. To be considered for the school’s Distinguished Alumni/ae Award, one must demonstrate excellence and distinction in justice-making through their efforts in congregational ministry, religious institutions, non-denominational/all-inclusive organizations, community–based organizations, government, or other social institutions.
• In the fall of 2017, Rabbi Fuchs assumed the position of rabbi at Bat Yam Temple of the Islands in Sanibel, Florida. 
• In the summer of 2024 Rabbi Fuchs assumed a one year position of interim rabbi at Temple Beth Shalom  in Vero Beach, FL. 
• He has now retired for the fourth time and looks forward to spending more time with his beloved wife, children, grandchildren as well as reading, playing more tennis and traveling.