Name Reeve Brenner | Role Rabbi | |
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Books The faith and doubt of Holocaust survivors, The Jewish Riddle Collection: A Yiddle's Riddle | ||
Rabbi Brenner in The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg-01
Reeve Robert Brenner (born 1936) is an American Reform rabbi, inventor and author.
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Biography
Brenner is a native of New York City. Since his ordination at the New York campus of the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in 1964, he has been a U.S. Army chaplain stationed in West Germany, senior staff chaplain at the clinical center of The National Institutes of Health(NIH), and served a number of congregations, including Bet Chesed in Maryland. As the first rabbi on the faculty of St. Vincent College and Seminary in Latrobe, PA, he taught Jewish religious thought and philosophy. His first major work, American Jewry and the Rise of Nazism, received the YIVO Jewish Scholarship Prize. His book, The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors, is the result of nine years of research conducted among survivors in Israel in order to explore the ramifications of the Holocaust upon their own personal belief and practice as Jews. This book was a finalist for the 1981 National Jewish Book Awards. Brenner is also the author of The Jewish Riddle Collection: A Yiddle's Riddles, and the books Jewish, Christian, Chewish, and Eschewish: Interfaith Pathways for the New Millennium an outgrowth of his extensive work with interfaith couples, and his defense of the reality of the Exodus entitled While the Skies were Falling.
Inspired by his young cousin, Janis Furmansky, who uses a wheelchair after an automobile accident, Brenner came up with a new sport called Bankshot while living in Israel in 1981. He wanted to develop a non-exclusionary basketball contest that entire families, including those with disabled members, could play. Sports Illustrated featured him in an article called "The Rabbi of Roundball; Rabbi Creates a new sport". He also serves as foundation president and founder of the National Association for Recreational Equality (NARE) and serves as the commissioner of the National Association of Bankshot Operators (NABO).