Description: The historian behind the history of HUC: Michael Meyer takes us on a sesquicentennial journey of American Judaism.

Biography: Michael A. Meyer received his B.A. from UCLA and his doctorate from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. From 1964 to 1967, he taught at the Los Angeles campus of HUC. Since 1967 he has been on the faculty of HUC’s Cincinnati campus, where he is currently the Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Jewish History Emeritus. Professor Meyer also taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem campus of HUC, and the University of Haifa and Ben Gurion University.

Professor Meyer’s books have won three Jewish Book Awards, including The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749-1824 (1967); Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (1988); Jewish Identity in the Modern World (1990); and a collection of essays entitled Judaism Within Modernity (2001). He has published more than two hundred articles and longer reviews.

Professor Meyer was president of the Association for Jewish Studies, chaired the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History in New York, and served as international president of the Leo Baeck Institute. His two most recent books are Rabbi Leo Baeck: Living a Religious Imperative in Troubled Times (2021) and Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler (2025).