Remembering R. Marshall Meyer

Rabbi Marshall Meyer was an American Conservative Rabbi who arrived at Buenos Aires around 1976 and founded the Congregacion Bet-El in the Barrio Norte, the better neighborhood. He was a sensation, Buenos Aires had never a modern American rabbi like him. 

He also organized a youth group and I was invited and went but soon left for the Socialist Zionist movement. Meyer was not Zionist, he was - I thought - Orthodox. I did not feel at ease, he spoke New York English (I did not) and his Congregacion aimed at the richer strata of Buenos Aires Jews while we were very poor, penniless new immigrants. I have the impression that had to pay to participate in some activities, that it was a club of rich kids, which triggered my overdeveloped inferiority complex. I joined the Zionist movements which were Socialist  (and anti-Imperialist i.e. anti-American) and never asked for money. 

Today Marshall Meyer is a national hero in Argentina for his courageous standing-up for Jewish (and non-Jewish) political prisoners under the Military Dictatorship. Well, as an American, we Socialist kids imagined that he was untouchable and protected by the CIA, but in those times everybody could just disappear. He spoke out, which the current pope did not dare to do. He was something.