[2][3] Born in Poland, Shachter-Shalomi was raised an Orthodox Jew in a variety of countries as his family repeatedly moved to evade increasing antisemitism in 1930s Europe.

While awaiting a visa to the United States in an internment camp in Vichy France, Shachter-Shalomi met Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the later seventh Chabad rebbe.

Employed as an academic in his later years, Schacter-Shalomi continued to work in interfaith dialogue and spreading hasidut, and in the 1990s was part of a group of four rabbis who travelled to Dharamsala, India, to advise the Dalai Lama on how to retain religious traditions in exile and prevent assimilation.

After the Nazi conquest of The Netherlands, the Schacter family sought visas to the United States, and travelled to Marseille, but found themselves on the wrong side of the border of Nazi-occupied France.

In 1968, on sabbatical from the religion department of the University of Manitoba, he joined a group of other Jews in founding a havurah (small cooperative congregation) in Somerville, Massachusetts, called Havurat Shalom.

[10] In 1974, Schachter hosted a month-long Kabbalah workshop in Berkeley, California; his experimental style and the inclusion of mystical and cross-cultural ideas are credited as the inspiration for the formation of the havurah there that eventually became the Aquarian Minyan congregation.

[12] He eventually left the Lubavitch movement altogether and founded his own organization known as B'nai Or, meaning "Sons of Light," a title he took from the Dead Sea Scrolls writings.

[13] Schachter-Shalomi was among the group of rabbis, from a wide range of Jewish denominations, who traveled together to India to meet with the Dalai Lama and discuss diaspora survival for Jews and Tibetan Buddhists with him.

[14] Schachter-Shalomi's work reflects several recurring themes, including: He was committed to the Gaia hypothesis, to feminism,[17] and to full inclusion of LGBT people within Judaism.

Schachter-Shalomi encouraged diversity among his students and urged them to bring their own talents, vision, views and social justice values to the study and practice of Judaism.

[6] In 2012, the Unitarian Universalist Starr King School for the Ministry awarded Schachter-Shalomi an honorary doctorate of theology, and he gave a popular series of lectures on the "Emerging Cosmology".