Alexander Gendler

Alexander Gendler is a journalist, broadcaster, publisher, and Jewish public intellectual based in Chicago.

Born in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, Gendler came to Jewish identity through lived experience rather than upbringing. As a teenager under the Soviet system, he organized underground dissident activity, was detained by the KGB, subjected to psychiatric measures, and was forced to leave the Soviet Union in 1974. After Gorbachev came to power, he was allowed to return to see his widowed mother and was once again expelled, this time by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in April of 1988. This was done by the KGB at the initiative of Gorbachev's opponents. Things changed again, and on August 21st, 1991, he stood on the steps of the Russian White House during the coup against Gorbachev.

In 1989, when the sudden switch in American policy resulted in five thousand Soviet Jews being stranded in Italy — stateless, without passports, without legal right to remain, many with relatives in America — he organized their march of protest in Rome against a betrayal that left an entire community in limbo between the country that had brought them there and the country that had shut its doors.

He was at the time a commentator for NPR's Morning Edition, a contributor to the New York Times op-ed page, and a syndicated columnist.

Later, he was accepted as a PhD student in Jewish History at the University of Chicago and became the author of the popular Russian and Ukrainian Torah translations on Amazon. He led the team that prepared the Hebrew text of the JPS Tanakh. For seven years, he has hosted the Chicago Jewish Café, an English-language forum for serious engagement with questions of Jewish civilization, history, and ideas. He is also a commentator for Народная волна, a Russian-language radio station.