ABOVE ALL, WE ARE JEWS

An award-winning Jewish scholar surveys the life of Alexander Moshe Schindler in this groundbreaking biography.

Rabbi Schindler, writes Meyer, “was a central figure within American Judaism whose significance has yet to be fully understood.” Indeed, despite his preeminent role in post–World War II American Judaism, which included multiple decades as president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and as chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, before now there has been no published biography of the Jewish leader. Here, Meyer both fills this literary void and provides readers with an important addition to the history of post-Holocaust American Judaism. The son of Yiddish poet Eliezer Schindler, Alexander was born in Germany in the 1920s and arrived in the United States after his family fled the Nazi state in the 1930s. A central figure in the American Reform movement, Schindler was not without controversy; not only was he a close ally of Andrew Young, Roy Wilkins, and other Black activists during the height of the Civil Rights movement, but he was also a vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and a peace activist during the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts of the 1960s and beyond. He befriended Jews across the ideological spectrum, including nonpracticing Jews and the children of Jewish fathers born in interreligious relationships. While most of the book covers Schindler’s public life, his relationships with his wife and children are addressed in a concluding chapter. The author’s prose effectively balances accessibility with scholarly rigor. The text’s more than 800 research endnotes demonstrate Meyer’s firm command of the relevant academic literature and draw heavily from Schindler’s personal papers and interviews with acquaintances. An award-winning author on Reform Judaism, a professor of Jewish history, and a former president of the Association for Jewish Studies, Meyer is the ideal author for the first biography of one of the 20th century’s most important American Jewish leaders.

A well-researched, engrossing biography of a leading Jewish reformer.