Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler, by Michael A. Meyer (China 1995-97)

Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler

by Michael A. Meyer (China 1995-97)

Published February 2025

Available from the Central Conference of American Rabbis

Rabbi Alexander Schindler (1925-2000) was an extraordinarily influential leader in the history of Reform Judaism. From 1973 to 1996, he served as president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (today’s Union for Reform Judaism), where his charisma and vision raised the Reform Movement to unprecedented influence. Never afraid to be controversial, he argued for recognizing patrilineal descent, institutionalized outreach to interfaith families and non-Jews, and championed LGBTQ rights and racial equality. He was a tireless advocate for Israel while maintaining diaspora Jews’ right to speak out independently on the Jewish state. In this nuanced biography, historian Michael A. Meyer draws on extensive archival research and interviews to paint a definitive portrait of Schindler’s life.

About the author

Michael Meyer went to China in 1995 as one of its first Peace Corps volunteers. As the author of the acclaimed The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed, he received a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction, followed by a Guggenheim Fellowship. His second book, In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China won a Lowell Thomas Award for Best Travel Book from the Society of American Travel Writers, as did the third book in his China trilogy, The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China from the Ground Up. His fourth book, Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet: The Favorite Founder’s Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity, was published by Mariner/HarperCollins in 2022. In 2023, when Meyer delivered the commencement address at the Boston trades school that stars in the book it awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree. Meyer’s latest work of nonfiction, A Dirty, Filthy Book (WH Allen/Penguin). details Annie Besant’s obscenity trial in Victorian London over her defiant publication of an American birth control pamphlet. A film adaptation is underway.

Winner of the 2023 Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Meyer is currently Faculty Electus member of the Frederick Honors College, where he teaches intensive nonfiction writing courses that use Pittsburgh as a classroom. As Pitt’s first winner of a Berlin Prize, in 2024 Meyer was in residence at the American Academy in Berlin, working on a biography of Taiwan.

Why did you join the Peace Corps? You spoke Spanish and wanted to go to Latin America.

I was always interested in the Peace Corps, and I was an education major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which historically has churned out Volunteers. I had spent time with United Farm Workers on the Texas/Mexico border, and that led to my applying to the program, thinking I’d be sent to do similar work in Latin America. I was offered seven placement countries — none of which spoke Spanish. Russia, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Kiribati . . . I kept saying, “No,” until the recruiter finally snapped, “It’s not Club Med, it’s the Peace Corps. You don’t get to choose.” I thanked him for his time. A few days later, he called back and said, “Last offer, take it or leave it: China.” I was airborne in three weeks.