Marshall Meyer

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Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer (1930-1993) was an American-born Conservative rabbi and a recognized international human rights activist.

He attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1952. Upon meeting Abraham Joshua Heschel, he enrolled in the Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary. After his ordination in 1958, he decided to take a position as Assistant Rabbi at the Congregación Israelita de la República Argentina in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His charismatic character turned him immediately into an important figure in the Argentine Jewish community. He founded the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano, a rabbinical school that soon became the center of Conservative Judaism in Latin America. In it were ordained dozens of Spanish-speaking rabbis that would serve communities in Argentina, Latin America and the rest of the world.

Rabbi Meyer also founded and led Comunidad Bet El, a congregation that became a model of many other Conservative synagogues both in Argentina and Latin America. The congregation established its own day-school. During the years of the military regime of 1976-1982, Rabbi Meyer became a strong critic of the military government and its violations of human rights. He worked to save the lives of hundreds of people that were being persecuted by the regime and he visited prisoners in jails, among them the renowned journalist, Jacobo Timerman, who dedicated his book, Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without A Number, to the rabbi, who "brought solace to Jewish, Christian and atheist prisoners".

In 1983, when democracy returned to Argentina, the newly elected president, Raúl Alfonsín, recognized the work of Rabbi Meyer by bestowing upon him the highest Argentine decoration, the Medal of San Martín. Rabbi Meyer returned to his native country in 1984, and after a short stay at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, accepted the position of rabbi at Congregation Bnai Jeshurun in New York City, the oldest Ashkenazic synagogue of the city, with the mission of reviving the congregation.

Between 1984 and 1993, Bnai Jeshurun became a thriving liberal community that attracted thousands of Jewish people. The challenging theology espoused by Rabbi Meyer, the spiritually uplifting religious services, an agenda that emphasized social action as a central part of the synagogue's principles, ecumenical work with Christian and Muslim clergy and a leading role in the peace movement in regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, led to the rapid growth of the congregation, which became a model for many other synagogues in the United States.

Rabbi Meyer was married to Naomi Meyer, and had three children: Anita, Dodi and Gabriel. He died in 1993 of cancer, and was buried in the cemetery of the synagogue of his home town in Norwich, Connecticut. http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/rbmscl/meyermarshall/inv/ - inventory of his writings. should be in the sources section.