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

When Meyer died in 1993, he was only 64 years old, but it was as if he had already lived two very full lives. In the first, he worked as a rabbi in Argentina for 25 years and spoke out frequently against the repressive government. He founded Latin America's first rabbinical seminary and ran an""underground railroad"" that helped people escape the country. In the second, he resuscitated a dying synagogue on Manhattan's Upper West Side and made it one of the most outspoken, active and thriving Jewish congregations in America. Isay, who was one of Meyer's New York congregants, brings her professional skills as an editor to bear on his considerable corpus of papers, which startled her with their power and relevance.""I felt as if I were encountering a burning bush on every page,"" she records in the book's introduction. Isay organizes the book into six basic spiritual themes--faith, confronting God in world events, war and peace, prayer, holy days and the""lessons of Argentina."" In the brief excerpts, Meyer tells stories, preaches about justice and draws on biblical prophets like Amos, whom he affectionately calls""a subversive Jew."" This is a powerful, fitting tribute to a man who""loved Judaism most because of its intolerance of cruelty.""