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'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. The move to New York.(DeWittelirit6~~i~ my dreams done and then City College) also brought Steinpergunder the:j~:£.luence':ofRaPbi with their thumbing Jacob Kohn of A nshei Chesed, who educated Steinoerg' in.:Jewjsh'tridlti:~n/ through the yellow pages and Jewish thought. Having become convin~d that.,faithwascorppatibl!:LYi'i* of my body's directory re~son, Steinberg learned to .defend that conviction :ag~iri.sti.;pjti1osopbicat6n~:, ' slaught in spirited argument with his t.each~ Moiri~~~. Cohe!l~J¢Wislt",1i{e.;W:~', I lift your sweater from Jerusalem inconceivable to Steinberg wi.thout Jewish faith,and, alr~adYatthisstag¢is:h~t and fold it decided to enter the Jewish Theological. SeminarY~:Steinberg;Fddecidecl:th#, and put it on the chair Jewish faith was inconceivable without modificatl0nswbichw~,(l1dmake:;it' . I take thread and needle compatible with his philosophical integtity)f~r: ~~e,iilb~g:tl1~':'pi'o~leIll::o{' 'and sew the torn belt loop the Jews and the problem of Judaism weieinsep~rable~·i;· ......' ..• ;<" ,.... ' ..•....... ' I had noticed He tackled the former soon after assuming the· pulpit.' of ~ark AV~ll.e, .. when I bent over you "Synagogue in 1933. In The Making of the Modern' .Je:wStembeI.g.off7:~~.a:·. at evening. cogent etiology of what he and otherscanedwitlJ:qutir~:my :c'tlieJewlsh·p~o1?-. lem" in America, He, like many others oft1;le iime~ ~truneditup,asapro~lem.' of demorilization. Jew~ stood bet1Neen two· worlds,. one'mwhich;they.'could: not live the other of which would not accept them. "Onlya'people ofaerO oats.; , ..' .... ................... ' .. ,'·.I'·! could preserve a semblance of poise Qna fooimgso uIlstable," w:rote ~~eiIlb~!g, and while he denied the claim. bys~ID:e that~'menta1 abnc?rma1itte~~'vrererife .' lIlIll~~t'y,:~ ~eed that social rejection and economic ,question "What Can a Man Believe:'; Siemb,erg~d.lie .. ~~oilldi~~lie~.• ' ··disYri~tiOI1,<. ..•.... ".: .a loss of tradition's protective armor, had made . ~'because the universe as the. rilaItit:estatipn of.acreative'r?md'is\;.. the,co~~ · hlsgeneration, o(JeWs' vulnerable. The Nazis would exaCerbate' .ible basis for the order~f th~ sph~res."He-b'elieve,d:'~ i~~rf~it~ .• b~d~~ .. :that,'ofc()llrse,'andin of the Holocaust, Steinberg would ask e:xplic- was inconceivable" that consciousness is:nomoi:e·.than·tl~.e'reacti<>n~~~a~.e~ jtly theqUestfon whlch ! "haunted Jewish life like a ghost," Should the brain cells." He believ~din'a mo~·law·as~:~e.al. as the l~~'o{~atllJ;e'~~~in'~h' jews'continue in' their "iPstonc' enterprise" or undertake to liquidate' and ess,ential goodness of human hature~' AsaJew,h~'belie~ed.'in~~th~vallJe"()~' '~s~~fup.sIiop"? Jild,aism as a rich culture;as a w~y:.of life~as,acOritri~i1tio~.tO/tll~civili:~ti&ll :1'hepoint is not that Steinberg did not see the question as rhetorical. of the world." . ; .. ';' . ':<.;.' •.•.•....... ··'\":i.;;,'·. .i,· .. ,{·... :,·, l:!erlid,if'only because,he stood convinced that the Gentile world would not It is the modesty of this last claim.whjehstrilCes'us\so:forCiblyn()\V!::~ter ' per:mlt)arge-scale Jewish.assimilation into its midst. The problem was rather the ~g&inst both the high-blown rh~toric" b~~ ,~~tin.~,hears ff~m~a.ny J?lJJpit~,~·and. .' .. ~".' .vig()rolls. response needed if American Judaism w~s to survive the trauma just the other affIrmations made by Steinbergl'\Vlrlcb",to;opr'ey~~ageneJatio~l~t(lr' pasSed.on the one hand and the prosperity to come on the other. Steinberg seem so very daring. Steinberg sought 'to ground llis>bellefs':ip.'Te~S()r.:~¢'t~~ 'lo'okedaiound in A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem (1945), as he had in extent this is ever possible. Arguing that faitll!·like'al).y;otherh;y:p~tli~sis!i~ thee'arIier work, and found the range of options for American Jewish life bleak. subject to the' test of prOviding the simpleste~planatloIlcongiu~~l''Yitli;~L'' , Reform had abandoned too much, and harped on an idea of mission which "the facts as we know them in their infinite complexity.JewiSl1~eo~0g}1,~urt.h~y> Steiriberg could not take seriously. Conservatism had remained too close to demanded an intimate knowledge of 3Jid basi6~0ll:f().rJnity>to,~he'fo~matjve· OfthoaoxYi' and "left the mind' uninstructed." Steinberg had no patiencc for Jewish outlOOk, as well as 'a philosopher's openneSsjo Hall·wirids.'9f.d()ctritl~/~·~ Orthodoxy, which he would later caricature terribly in his influclltial b()()k Steinberg had that ope'nness: he knew well andoften·dre"T:;UP9n!bQ~~~rote$tan.t Bqsic 1udaism (1947). In short, there was only one movemcnt which he could t hcology and modern philosophy. However, Noyeck's.bi()gra'phY"CR~finns~,th~·,· suppOrt, and he did so vocally all his life . impression we receive from Steinberg's ~ork that he· w~n()t,'fir,lhly~r~~deq: . Steinberg's relation to Reconstructionisllland to Mordecai Kaplan has in traditional Jewish thought and experience. We, leaveth~.Nove?~~d?l(:rnot~;, been the subject of some controversy, and Noveck takes pains to delineate it puzzled than ever about why Steinberg chose to work in suc~a,m311if()l~;y~c,~~.' 'in detail. Kaplan was Steinberg's teacher, in fact the only teacher at the Sem­ urn: a theist among ReconstructioIusts, a philosophei'among~ab~iSi!lJ~eo~,. inary: w.ho in Steinberg's opinion addressed himself to the situation of modern logian unimmersed in the sources of his tradition; ';' . " " , American Jewry. When Kaplan founded the RCCOflstnl(,tiorzist alld asked Stein- Noveck cannot assuage our perplexity on these pow.is,':an.~',t~t~s~¢Ws:not '. · berg to serv.e as 'an editor, he agreetl: when Kaplan incoqmrated Steinberg's to have been his· purpose. He has written.a book;wbichYtillre-eyokC'f()~4.me~~ suggestions into the Reconstructionist prayer-book. Steinberg had it adopted ories in those privileged to have known Stei~berg'; and.sh6ul,d stirnul~te:ad~sir~' byPark Avenue Synagogue. What he could not accept was Kaplan's theology. to know the man and his work in those 'until nowunfantiliaf"V/ith,.tl1ern/BPt· "which~ to his eyes, lacking a metaphysics, was "'reaUy not a theology at all wh~lc the readcr more knowledgeable in Atp.eriC~. J:ttPiiisI!tJ4lJ,,~~g,'~QY~,~~':.:: ,~utan account of the psychological and ethical consequences of haVing one." helpful in providing a sketch of Steinberg's placeJn the comniu~itY':and:'a,: 'Kaplan, convinced we ,could know nothing about God anyway, conside,red only chronological summary of his activities ·.andWritingi,N.oveckh~;"n6t:'fea11y · the' functional consequences of belief, while for Steinberg one of the essential taken the measure of his subject. Perhaps availaple;materials: ~id:)not'P~r~t., fUriq~ns' ~f'~eligion was precisely to explain the world in a way which reason this; perhaps Milton Steinberg loomed too 1argefotNoyeck~hiS'~ssiStant::atJ>~k.: .. , ca:rihQt:/acting alone. Elisha ben Abuya, the hero of Steinberg's historical novel Avenue, to limn the man's complexities. .Juany eyent,: thefuiese;atl~Ysis:~L", .A~·_~aDriverz Leaf (1940), refused to accept the position of Rabbi Akiba, who Steinberg's writings remains Arthur Cohen's fu::i1u! Niltural~rid;s'~pernaiurat. ' . .ii)..:Steinoerg's rendering is a Kaplan suggesting that "doctrines in themselves Jew,. and Cohen's description of Steinberg as a:transitiopalfIgureV;:1i(), l'efieqted aIenot.~important to me, but their consequences are." Kaplan, Steinberg wrote the uncertainties of hiS era will have to stanct"for lack ofJurther eVidenCe; What ·ip.:19S0,·.9j4 not find it necessary to decide "whether God is an entity, a being, we would have wanted to learn fromNoveck·is.theextent'-.to,vVhi¥~St~~~e#'~; ~a~pect o{re.aIity;.'or a useful fiction," seeing that question as in effect "an 'achievement remained fragmentary' because he .IiV'ed- in aJmi~·whrn· itc911!d.' iIitelle.ctp;argame.:'~ To Steinberg it made all the difference in the world.
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