Rabbi Polish was born in Ithaca, New York, and raised and schooled in Evanston, Illinois. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Northwestern University and attended Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio where he was ordained in 1967, receiving his B.H.L and M.A.H.L. degrees. He earned his Ph.D. in History of Religion from Harvard University in 1973. From 1973 to 1977, Rabbi Polish was the Director of Education for Inter/Met, an interfaith, interracial program for training clergy in Washington, DC. From 1977 to 1981, Rabbi Polish served as Associate Executive Vice President and Director of the Washington Office of the Synagogue Council of America, the umbrella agency for the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements in the United States. In that capacity, he helped develop policy on a number of issues critical to the Jewish community. He served as a delegate to the World Zionist Congress in 2002.
Rabbi Polish has taught at Harvard, Tufts University and the University of Maryland. While in Los Angeles he taught at Occidental College and at the Los Angeles School of the Hebrew Union College. He has served on the Executive Board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and on the Editorial Board of its Journal. The Rabbi has published numerous articles in journals of Jewish and general interest and his reviews appear regularly in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. He is a regular contributor to the Jesuit journal, America. His editorial, "A Painful Legacy: Jews and Catholics Struggle to Understand Edith Stein and Auschwitz" which appeared in Ecumenical Trends, was chosen as one of the best editorials in a Catholic publication by the Catholic Press Association. Rabbi Polish is the author of Bringing The Psalms to Life and Keeping Faith with the Psalms. His latest book is Talking About God,.
Rabbi Polish has been involved in interfaith dialogue at the highest levels on behalf of the Jewish community. In 2003, he was part of a delegation that met with Cardinals from The Holy See in Vatican City, to discuss a variety of issues of concern to the two communities. In 2004, he was invited to deliver a paper at a ground-breaking gathering in Thesalonika Greece that represented the first official meeting between representatives of the international Jewish community and the representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church. He is currently part of the dialogue between the American Jewish community and the leadership of the Presbyterian Church. In 2005, and again in 2008 Rabbi Polish was part of a team comprised of a prominent scholars of religion sponsored by the State Department that met with important Muslim religious leaders throughout South Asia for the purpose of promoting interfaith understanding. In October, 2008 Rabbi Polish was part of a delegation of Jewish leaders who met with Pope Benedict XVI to discuss current issues between the Jewish community and the Catholic Church.
Prior to his appointment as spiritual leader of Shir Chadash, Rabbi Polish has served as a congregational rabbi at Temple Israel in Los Angeles, Temple Beth-El in Birmingham, Michigan and at Vassar Temple in Poughkeepsie.
Rabbi Polish lives in Poughkeepsie with his wife Cantor Gail Hirschenfang and daughter Leah. Rabbi Polish's two adult sons, Jonathan and Ari, live in Chicago.

Rabbi Polish talks about Shir Chadash