Rabbi Peter H. Schweitzer

Rabbi Peter H. Schweitzer, rabbi emeritus of The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism and the first Humanistic Rabbi in New York City, died Wednesday, December 20 after a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was a collector of Jewish Americana, social justice activist, mountain climber and hiking enthusiast, and Humanistic thinker and author. He was deep, brilliant, and funny, a dedicated husband, father, grandfather, cousin, and friend. He is survived by his wife, Myrna Baron, son Oren Schweitzer, step-daughter and son-in-law Blair Baron and Yannick Moise, grandchildren Dylan and Frederik, and cousins Carol O. Cummins, Elaine Gibberman, and Michael Ostheimer, and their families, and many other cousins, friends, and congregants. He was the son of Ulrich and Florence Schweitzer of Edgemont, NY and the great-grandson of the constitutional and civil rights lawyer Louis Marshall.

Rabbi Schweitzer was the rabbi of The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism for more than 25 years and a nationally recognized leader in Humanistic Judaism. He was the author of The Liberated Haggadah: A Passover Celebration for Cultural, Secular and Humanistic Jews (The Center for Cultural Judaism, 2006); The Guide for a Humanistic Bar/Bat Mitzvah (The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, 2003); and Let There Be Lights! A Secular, Cultural, Humanistic Celebration of Chanukah (The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, 2007). He was a regular contributor to Moment Magazine’s “Ask the Rabbi” column from the Humanistic perspective.

Most recently, he authored Dear Uli: A rare glimpse of a German Jewish family through the letters they wrote their son, sent alone to America at age 16, and the new lives they built (Xlibris, 2023). Dear Uli, which is over 900 pages long, is a detailed reconstruction of his own family’s story of being stuck in Europe during World War II, told primarily through the letters they sent his father, Uli, a teenage refugee from Nazi Germany. In addition to Dear Uli, before his death, he had completed two additional book manuscripts which are currently being edited.

Throughout his life he was deeply committed to social justice, beginning his many decades of activism as an undergraduate in Oberlin protesting the Vietnam War, and organizing within the feminist movement. As Rabbi, he helped imbue The City Congregation with a social justice ethos, emphasizing the Jewish imperative to speak out against all injustice. He led contingents of City Congregation members at marches and protests, for AIDS research, the fight against climate change, and in more recent years, against Trump’s Muslim Ban and Family Separation policies. At protests against the Muslim Ban, he carried with him a sign that read, “my father was a refugee too.” For many years he served on the board of Theater of the Oppressed NYC.

For 25 years, Rabbi Schweitzer also amassed one of the most significant collections of Jewish Americana, with more than 10,000 items and artifacts, that he donated to the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia in 2005. Main items from the collection went on display in 2010 with the opening of the museum’s new building.

He came from a family lineage of naturalists, and enjoyed and supported protecting the remaining forests and national parks. He loved hiking the Adirondack Mountains, near his family summer home Knollwood on Saranac Lake. He visited the wilds of Alaska twice, and explored the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana on horseback, named after his great uncle. He also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and in 2019 visited Bhutan and Nepal, a lifelong dream of his.

He received his B.A. from Oberlin College, his ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and his M.S.W. from New York University. Throughout his career he continued to foster and study Jewish identity.

A funeral service for Rabbi Schweitzer will be held Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 11:30 AM at Schwartz Brothers-Jeffer Memorial Chapels, 114-03 Queens Blvd, Forest Hills, NY 11375. Following the funeral service will be a burial for family only at 1:00 PM at Salem Fields Cemetery, 755 Jamaica Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11208.