Only eight other Jews have been knighted by the order, established in 1831, which recognizes personal service or unusual labor in support of the Catholic Church. Among them are three other rabbis, David Rosen and the late Mordecai Waxman and Leon Klenicki.
Rudin, a Reform rabbi and a writer who has contributed hundreds of columns over the years to Religion News Service, traveled widely, meeting with popes, presidents, Protestant denominational leaders and world-famous evangelists in his efforts to improve Jewish-Christian relations in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.