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If there's one word that defines the ongoing legacy of Rabbi Alexander Schindler, it is outreach.

The man who led the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations for 23 years was the first to recognize publicly that all is not lost when a Jew intermarries.

"Let's not count the casualties before the battle is over," he said in a 1996 interview, in which he summarized his career. "Anything else is literally suicide."

It was Schindler who introduced the revolutionary concept that synagogues must apply "welcoming the stranger" to the intermarried Jew as well as to his or her non-Jewish spouse — and that partner should be fully incorporated into synagogue life.

It is to his credit that this policy — deemed so highly controversial in 1978 — is, 22 years later, now a given in the Reform movement. When the numbers of Jews affiliating with the stream's synagogues began to climb, it was compelling enough for the Conservative leadership to look into its own practices, recognizing that perhaps the rabbi was onto something.

Schindler was also behind the Reform movement's decision allowing patrilineal descent to determine who is a Jew.

He was a staunch advocate for the full participation of women in Jewish life. He also was a proponent of gay and lesbian equality, including the right for them to be ordained as rabbis.

And this does not even begin to do justice to his role in political and Jewish communal life. No matter which hat he wearing, he was not one to retreat from his opinions for the sake of Jewish unity.

Yet, perhaps that is why measuring Schindler's impact on Reform Judaism simply cannot be done. What should be noted, at his passing, is that by making such a mark on Reform Judaism, his influence was thereby felt throughout American Judaism as a whole.