Rabbi Arthur Schneier has served as the Rabbi of the historic Park East Synagogue in Manhattan since 1962. He founded and serves as the dean of the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Park East Day School and the Minskoff Cultural Center, and is the founding president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation. A Holocaust survivor, Rabbi Schneier is know for his pioneering role in the struggle on behalf of Soviet Jewry and the rebuilding of Jewish religious life in Russia, the Ukraine and Eastern Europe. He successfully negotiated the return of the Moscow Synagogue to the Jewish community and was instrumental in the restoration of the Ohel Rachel Synagogue in Shanghai.

Rabbi Schneier was appointed US Alternate Representative to the United Nations by President Reagan and chairman of the US Commission for the Preservation of the America's Heritage Abroad by Presidents Bush and Clinton. He successfully negotiated with the governments of Eastern Europe for the return and protection of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. In 1998, Clinton appointed him to be one of the three US religious leaders to examine the life of religious communities in China and (SAR) Tibet.

Rabbi Schneier was actively engaged in energizing leaders of the world in halting the bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia. He convened the Religious Summit on the Former Yugoslavia where the participants called for an end to the ethnic war and later on the Conflict Resolution Conference in Vienna which planted the seeds of the Dayton Accord.

Rabbi Schneier is honorary president, Religious Zionists of America; honorary chairman, World Jewish Congress - American Section; member, Executive Committee, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations; board member, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He is also a member of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Committee on Conscience, and has worked closely with Israeli government and rabbinic leaders to advance the cause of the State of Israel. Rabbi Schneier is married to Elisabeth Nordmann Schneier and has two children, Rabbi Marc Schneier and Karen Schneier Dresbach.