You Are My Witness : The Living Words of Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer

Marshall Meyer, who died at age 64 in 1993, was a human rights leader and a powerful voice for justice. People flocked to hear him in Argentina, where he served as a rabbi for twenty-five years. In the mid-1980's, he became the spiritual leader of the fastest growing Jewish congregation in the U.S., Congregation B'Nai Jeshurun. People like Sam Freedman, Richard Bernstein, and Jan Hoffman of the New York Times are members. Harvey Cox, Elie Wiesel, and William Sloan Coffin were close friends.

After the rabbi's untimely death, Jane Isay had urged his widow, Naomi Meyer, partner in faith and action, to create a book from his writings so that his voice would not be silenced forever. Instead of finding the yellowing pages of rabbinic prose or the dry papers of a rabbi-scholar, Jane Isay encountered a powerful voice that implores readers to see the cruelty of our greedy world, begging them to understand the pain of the oppressed, urging them to awaken from their slumber of inactivity, and directing them to act for justice out of respect for the great prophetic vision that is the Jewish gift to civilization.

There is a long Jewish tradition of master rabbis, who attract large followings through their lives and whose teachings live long after they die. The writings collected in this gem of a book combine the best of Jewish prophecy with social action and a great sense of joyfulness.

Born in Connecticut in 1930, Marshall Meyer began his spiritual struggle at Dartmouth, where he flirted with the idea of converting to Christianity. Before taking such a big step, he decided to plumb the depth of his Jewish heritage and was fortunate to find a great teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, perhaps the most influential Jewish philosopher of his time. While in Argentina, he became an outspoken critic of the Junta. He became the only non-Argentine appointed to the National Commission on Investigating the Disappeared Persons.

Jane Isay is a legendary book editor and longtime congregant of Marshall Meyer.