In 1962, Rabbi Schneier became the senior rabbi at Park East Synagogue in New York City.
Francis, and Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew I to promote and facilitate interfaith dialogue. In 2012, the New York Senate passed a resolution in celebration of Rabbi Schneier's 50 years of service at Park East Synagogue. He is also the Founder and Dean of
Park East Day School, a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school. In 1965 he founded the
Appeal of Conscience Foundation Throughout his career, Rabbi Schneier has actively advanced the cause of peace and tolerance. He is known for his efforts to rebuild Jewish and religious life in Russia after the collapse of the USSR and was instrumental in the return of the Moscow Synagogue to the Russian Jewish community. Rabbi Schneier has led 68 interfaith missions in China, Russia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. In 1992, he convened the Religious Summit on the Former
Yugoslavia in
Switzerland, and in 1995, he convened the Conflict Resolution Conference in
Vienna to mobilize world religious leaders to stop the conflict in the
Balkans. For more than 20 years, Rabbi Schneier worked closely with Grand Mufti Ceric of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1992, they gathered together some of the top religious leaders from former Yugoslavia in
Bern, Switzerland, including Cardinal Vinko Puljic, Archbishop of Sarajevo, formally of Zagreb, Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church and Grand Mufti Jakub efendi Selimoski of Sarajevo to call for an end to the conflict. What emerged was
Erklärung von Bern in which they declared that "a crime in the name of religion is the greatest crime against religion." These efforts helped to forge a pathway to the
Dayton Accord. Throughout his career, Rabbi Schneier has convened six international conferences to ease ethnic and religious conflict and promote peace and tolerance. Rabbi Schneier also served as U.S. Alternate Representative at the U.N. General Assembly in 1988 and as a member of the U.S. Delegation for Return of the St. Steven Crown to Hungary in 1979. In 2006, he became a member of the
United Nations Alliance of Civilizations High-Level Group (UNAOC) and in 2008, he was appointed an ambassador to the UNAOC. In April 2015, Rabbi Schneier was conferred a Papal knighthood by The
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York's Cardinal
Timothy M. Dolan for the "good works that he’s done on behalf of religious freedom, international peace and justice.” Following the contentious dismissal of Park East's former assistant rabbi, Benjamin Goldschmidt in 2021, Daniel L. Kurtz, a former head of the Charities Bureau at the New York State Attorney General's Office accused Rabbi Schneier of concentrating power at Park East in violation of state law. He was the long time owner of the unique Bubble House brownstone at 271 E. 71st Street. ==Awards and recognitions==