'A WORTHY CAUSE America's ::PHICOSOPHER:-RAB~I, ."
. ~. ; . 'A WORTHY CAUSE REMEMBERING:... ~ :. AMERiCA's ::PHICOSOPHER:-RAB~I, ." I lift your sock from Tel Aviv , Milton Steinberg: Portl7ilt of a Rabbi,by Simor Nov~c~,,'NeINYorklK1AY~'~." 1978. " . ,. '., your poor shoe" covered with the dust and ,fine bone of Masada a grain of desert sand sticking to the sole . Milton Steinberg very much typified his gel}erattdn Q(~m~rlc~~~e&~h. copper sulfate from the Dead Sea thinkers, even as he towered above it in his considerablejnt.eUect~~·,,~lfts;~nd ' prulosoprucal passion. Like many ofhisconteJ11PoJad~s~,'~le, Jl~dyl:faitil'jri' A little stitching America and indeed in the perfectibility of mankind-wiuch":weflildiitdlffifw;t on ,behalf of Israel [0 embrace; unlike most in his gener~tion, he tookthe;ta*;of,J.e~sh.theol~gy A little mending seriously, and unlike even most of our :own Jewish thlnkers:soughtab,ovc.,hll' and folding , else to fashion a credible' synthesis of faith and ;e.ason:Tbe:,nlo~e,~'b~Qgr~phX;;. for our brethren in Israel such as tlus one' by SiillonNoveck brings U$ closer to Stcinpel'g, the~ore:we.,·~te; I " led 10 wonder why tl;e distance between him and us'· remains;:so:Hnmense.· . As you can seC' t-:x IraMdinarily perceptive as he was, Steinberg's questions';are:not'our,QwlJ.';~<>,tl,. J make my contributioll are we certain they should be. ••. ,.' ' ..•.... ' ".' , '. ", '<, He had in essence tw.o qu~stions, and Noveck's b6ok~akesjtclea~~b.a~ Like a Hadassah lady he asked both of them from the beginning. Born to an immigrant father·wJj() 1 rise had lost hjs faith to nineteenth-century rationalism, an'd,to.'an"Ameri~an~b9m in the dark Illother who hadn't, Steinberg was raised in th~ Je..w,i~Ply.obserYilnth01lle·,of.: his grandparents in Rochester.
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