NEWS FEATURE: Rabbi courts the powerful in pursuit of human rights

c. 1998 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ The photos covering one wall of Rabbi Arthur Schneier’s synagogue office on Manhattan’s tony Upper East Side tell the story: There he is with Pope John Paul II. There he is with Chinese President Jiang Jemin. There he is with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. And, in a […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ The photos covering one wall of Rabbi Arthur Schneier’s synagogue office on Manhattan’s tony Upper East Side tell the story:

There he is with Pope John Paul II. There he is with Chinese President Jiang Jemin. There he is with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. And, in a succession of photos, there he is _ wearing his standard dark suit and black velvet skull cap _ with every American president since Gerald Ford.


He’s shaking hands, he’s smiling and, above all, he’s close to the center of power and talking about human rights.

For more than three decades, Schneier has worked the corridors of power as a self-appointed advocate of religious and political freedoms. Since the mid-1960s and the successful movement to free Soviet Jews, Schneier has been involved in Northern Ireland, Spain, Argentina, Cuba, the former Yugoslavia, El Salvador, China and elsewhere that religious intolerance or political repression have held sway.

His efforts helped free political prisoners in Argentina and China and facilitated the shipment of kosher foods and religious texts to Jews in nations of the former Soviet bloc. They also helped gain additional freedoms for Catholics in Lithuania when it was communist and Protestants in Spain when it was ruled by dictator Francisco Franco.

For nearly two decades, he has organized State Department seminars designed to sensitize U.S. diplomats to religious issues in the nations in which they serve. The programs, Schneier said,”really push forward the entire commitment to human and religious rights in statecraft.” They also insure he has personal contacts at U.S. embassies worldwide.”Whether I go to an embassy in Beijing or Belgrade, I find I have alumni there,”said Schneier.

A Holocaust survivor profoundly influenced by his experiences in Nazi-occupied Hungary, Schneier is more than willing to talk to hatemongers and tyrants held in utter contempt by others if it might possibly aid the oppressed.”I do best at establishing a relationship with a government and pointing out to the government in question that it is in their best interest not to be oppressive,”Schneier said during an interview in his office, which is filled with some of the many awards and gifts he has received from foreign leaders and international organizations.”It’s about gaining access to make your case.” In recent months, Schneier, 68, has been most visible in regard to China, a frequent target for its human rights record.

In February, he was one of three American religious leaders who traveled there as unofficial White House emissaries. Assistant Secretary John Shattuck, the State Department’s top human rights staffer, said the”unprecedented”mission played a”very important”role in laying the ground work for President Clinton’s own comments on religious and political freedom during his early summer visit to China.

The president’s visit also allowed Schneier to collect yet another photo for his wall collection: a shot of him with first lady Hillary Clinton at a Shanghai synagogue restored and returned to the city’s small Jewish community _ largely because of his relationship with China’s ruling elite.”What he accomplished was incredible and something we could not have achieved,”said Seth Kaplan, a New Jersey Jewish businessman currently living in Shanghai.”He’s got access and we don’t.” But not everyone sings Schneier’s praise. Other activists have criticized him for what they regard as his willingness to mute his criticism of oppressive governments in order to maintain high-level access.


While in China, Schneier and his travel companions _ Roman Catholic Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of Newark, N.J., and the Rev. Don Argue, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals _ were criticized for cozying up to Beijing while gaining little for those Chinese suffering religious or political persecution.

Nina Shea, religious freedom program director at Freedom House, a Washington human rights group, said the three clerics handed Beijing”a propaganda triumph”by lending”legitimacy to the government-controlled religious structure.” However, Schneier’s harshest critics can be found within the tight-knit community of New York Jewish activists. The most cutting comments come from some who were involved in the struggle on behalf of Soviet Jewry _ the issue that first brought Schneier to public attention.

These critics regard Schneier as a publicity seeker whose alleged compromises frequently undercut the more confrontative efforts of street-level Soviet Jewry activists.”He’s an access freak,”New York Rabbi Avi Weiss said of Schneier.”For him the ultimate is to hang out with the big boys and to rub shoulders with power. In the process, he’s prepared to compromise. … He’s a guy who fundamentally is hot air,”said Weiss, one of the more hawkish early leaders in the movement to force the Soviet Union to allow Jews to freely emigrate.

Because Schneier’s synagogue is located across East 68th Street from what was then the Soviet Union’s United Nations Mission (and today is the Russian Federation’s U.N. Mission), Weiss and others sought to prod Schneier into openly supporting their street protests.

But Schneier _ who as early as 1965 organized his own demonstrations on behalf of Soviet Jews _ distanced himself from the movement’s more radical elements.”(Schneier) felt he could accomplish more by being close to the Soviet leadership,”said Glenn Richter, another early New York Jewish street activist.”We felt he was playing footsie with the devil. There were times he brought Soviet Jews to the U.S. who were hand-picked by the KGB.” Countering the critics are the comments of Jewish leaders and others who see in Schneier a diplomatically skilled, effective advocate on behalf of the persecuted.

Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress _ Schneier formerly chaired the group’s American section _ said”Schneier choose to maintain links to the Soviet establishment (when) others wanted a harder line. I believe a division of labor was critical (to the Soviet Jewry movement) and his role was ultimately just as useful as others.” (BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)


As for Schneier’s reputation among critics as a self-promoter, Steinberg said:”He’s no shrinking violet, but I don’t think you get publicity unless you accomplish something. … Anybody who accomplishes something is disliked by some people. It’s only if you do nothing that you avoid criticism.” McCarrick, the Newark archbishop who has known Schneier for two decades, called him”extraordinarily effective because of three great gifts he possesses: a real faith in God, an extraordinary understanding of people, and an extraordinary persistence.”If the goal is to do good, and if by being confrontational you know you will not accomplish this, shouldn’t the road you take be one of dialogue?” Speaking in his own defense, Schneier said:”I never compromise on principles. It only weakens your position. So it’s not a matter of compromise when you go in with 12 requests and come out with two positive results. You’re ahead of the game. … Things don’t happen overnight. It’s a process.” (END FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

The Holocaust was the formative experience of Schneier’s life.

Born in Vienna, he fled with his mother in 1939 to Hungary (his father was already deceased), where he spent much of World War II alternately on the run or in hiding. Twice he fell into German hands; twice they let him go.

Not as fortunate were 80 members of his extended family who perished in the Holocaust.”Why am I an activist? Because I survived,”said Schneier, who in one-on-one conversation comes across as soft-spoken if intense.”I was not any better than any of my family members who perished. So I decided early on that if I did survive, there would have to be a reason for it.”All Holocaust survivors have a guilt complex about surviving. That could be my psychological motivation. But I also just believe we are all responsible for one another.” Schneier found his way to New York after the war (his mother joined him later), where he became an Orthodox rabbi. In 1962, he became the spiritual leader of Park East Synagogue, an imposing Byzantine-Moorish structure constructed in 1890.

It was, at the time, a dying congregation. Schneier soon made it a dynamic one.”I made up my mind I was not going to preside over a rich old-age home,”he said. Today, Park East has a membership of 1,000 and a 300-student religious day school started by Schneier. Two assistant rabbis help him lead the synagogue, now among New York’s most prominent.

Schneier calls Park East”my anchor. It allows me to meet daily the people who have to struggle daily with the existential realities of life. One tends to forget that when involved in the `big’ issues.” (BEGIN SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE.)

Just blocks away from Park East are the offices of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, the interfaith organization created by Schneier to fund and coordinate his human rights activities. In recent years those activities have also included the convening of international interreligious summits dealing with ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the Caucasus and Central Asia.


Schneier serves on the boards of a host of national and international Jewish organizations. But he said that his emphasis over the years on non-Jewish as well as Jewish concerns has been the key to his acceptance as a globe-trotting advocate of human rights.”I can do this because I’ve not been one-dimensional,”Schneier said.”I’ve not just focused on one religion or one offending government. That’s given me credibility.”

DEA END RIFKIN

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