Rabbi Marc Schneier is the American rabbinical leader who planted the seeds of the Abraham Accords. For more than 36 years, he has built the relationships across the Muslim world that made Gulf-Israel normalization possible.
He founded the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding in 1989 to rebuild the historic Black-Jewish alliance in the United States, and pivoted the Foundation in 2011 to make Muslim-Jewish relations its global mandate. Decades before the Accords had a name, Rabbi Schneier was personally introduced to the leadership of the Muslim world through a chain that began with the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who appointed him to the Steering Committee of the World Conference on Dialogue and opened every door that followed. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the UAE, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan have each followed.
He is the first rabbi hosted by the King of Bahrain at the royal palace in Manama and the first rabbi hosted by the Emir of Qatar at the royal palace in Doha. The King of Bahrain appointed him Special Advisor to the King Hamad Global Centre for Peaceful Coexistence. He is a trustee of the Baku Center for Interfaith Cooperation and served on the advisory forum of the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue. In 2019, he was part of the Bahraini delegation to the Peace to Prosperity Summit in Manama and was subsequently invited to witness the Abraham Accords ceremony at the White House in 2020.
In March 2022, Rabbi Schneier brokered the historic meeting between Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, the first visit by an Israeli head of state to Turkey since 2007. In 2023, Saudi and Turkish leadership hosted him and a delegation of prominent Jewish leaders in Riyadh and Istanbul, where the delegation delivered immediate aid following the deadliest Turkish earthquake in decades. He has participated alongside Pope Francis in two high-level interfaith conferences, in Kazakhstan and Bahrain, and was named by The National of the UAE as one of the five key religious figures present for the Pope’s historic visit to Abu Dhabi.
Rabbi Schneier was the first rabbi to lead a Jewish congregational mission to a Gulf country, bringing members of The Hampton Synagogue to Bahrain in 2018. The Hampton Synagogue, which he founded in 1990, broadcasts his weekly Shabbat services nationwide on JBS to 76 million homes.
His book “Sons of Abraham: A Candid Conversation About the Issues That Divide and Unite Jews and Muslims,” co-written with Imam Shamsi Ali, has been translated into Arabic, Azeri, English, French, Hebrew and Indonesian. President Aliyev personally commissioned the Azerbaijani translation. The foreword is by President Bill Clinton, and the book was sponsored by His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco. He is also the author of “Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Jewish Community.”
Rabbi Schneier writes a regular column for Arab News, the leading English-language newspaper in the Gulf, the first rabbi appointed to a regular column in a Saudi publication.
He has received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the Jewish Agency Award for his leadership in Muslim-Jewish and Gulf-Israel relations, and a 2014 honor from the United States Congress for his work on the Black-Jewish alliance. He has been named one of America’s 50 Most Prominent Jews by The Forward and one of America’s Top 50 Rabbis by Newsweek.
Rabbi Schneier is a native New Yorker, was ordained by Yeshiva University, and divides his time between New York City and Westhampton Beach.
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