Rabbi Israel Gerber, for the better part of two decades one of Charlotte's leading Jewish voices on the public affairs of a largely Christian city, died Tuesday in Atlanta.

He was 92.

Boxer, World War II chaplain, psychologist, college professor and an inexhaustible defender of Israel, the New York native was rabbi at Temple Beth El in Charlotte from 1959 to 1972.

Gerber was the first rabbi to earn a doctorate in psychology and the first to be elected to Harvard University's Institute of Pastoral Care. While in Charlotte, his congregation tripled in size.

He chose a spiritual life despite a 19-0 record as a middle-weight.

"After much consideration and the help of my father, I decided staying with studies is far more productive than staying in the sports field and getting yourself beat up," he said during an interview in Atlanta last May.

While at the pulpit of the Charlotte congregation, Gerber rarely backed away from a debate, jabbing away at the conventional wisdom of the day during his sermons, numerous speeches around the city, and a steady stream of letters and columns that appeared in both of the city's daily papers.

"It is not true that growth belongs only to the young," he wrote in a sermon shortly before he announced his departure from Temple Beth El. "Growth is the law of life and life is revealed by growth. We live as long as we grow and when we cease to grow, we stop living."

Keeping to that oath, Gerber penned his autobiography not long before he died. He called it "The Rebel Rabbi."

Gerber came to love the South, coming to Charlotte after leading a congregation in Dothan, Ala. Soon, his voice stood out in a time of great change across the city.

In 1965 he criticized high school baccalaureates that represented only the Protestant point of view. That led to the creation of an interfaith committee, including Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Jewish members, to run the ceremonies with a broader sensibility.

During a 1971 sermon pulled from the Biblical story on the Tower of Babel, Gerber lashed out at his adopted home's penchant for valuing its construction booms over its humanity. "The people?" he wrote. "Well, they don't count. Our crime rate? That's nothing. But look at our building program. Magnificent, isn't it?"

In another sermon that year, he said he was "sickened" by his fellow Americans' support of convicted Vietnam War criminal William Calley. "Are our consciences that stunted; our sensibilities that shriveled?"

And during a speech to a Charlotte service club, he tore into Christians' role behind the "degeneration of Christmas," describing it as a "heathen holiday, devoid of profounder spiritual significance."

More than a few of Gerber's positions were controversial. In one newspaper contribution in the late '70s, Gerber blamed the Holocaust on centuries of Christian teachings that held Jews accountable for the death of Christ.

He also authored a book on how he had "cured" a homosexual, and wrote in one of his newspaper contributions that most gay men were "miserable."

Gerber left Temple Beth El to do more writing and expand his teaching duties at Johnson C. Smith University. The guests at his retirement service included U.S. Sen. B. Everett Jordan and Mayor John Belk, who had appointed Gerber to a committee designed to help the city recapture its soul.

For years, the rabbi had applied for membership in the Mecklenburg Christian Ministers' Association but was turned away. Eventually the organization was replaced by another group and Gerber was admitted as a member. At Gerber's retirement, Episcopal minister Robert Ladehoff said Gerber "has taught the Christian clergy a very significant lesson about human rights, human worth and dignity."

Gerber and his wife, Sydelle, were world travelers. He left teaching after she developed cancer in the mid-1980s. She died in 2001. He moved to Atlanta two years later to be with his children.