Rubenstein, Richard L.

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Rubenstein has also been a newspaper columnist for a [[Japan]]ese newspaper and has written many books concerned with the [[Holocaust]], [[theology]], Jewish-Christian relations, [[ethics]], and politics.
 
Rubenstein has also been a newspaper columnist for a [[Japan]]ese newspaper and has written many books concerned with the [[Holocaust]], [[theology]], Jewish-Christian relations, [[ethics]], and politics.
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Rubenstein undertook a [[psychoanalysis|psychoanalytic]] study of [[Paul the Apostle]] in his book ''My Brother Paul''. He has continued with Holocaust themes in later writings and has adjusted some of his earlier views about God in light of the [[Kabbalah]].
  
 
== The Holocaust and Death of God ==
 
== The Holocaust and Death of God ==

Revision as of 23:20, 22 July 2021

Currently working onJennifer Tanabe May 2021.


Richard Lowell Rubenstein
Born8 January 1924
New York City, New York
Died16 May 2021 (age 97)
Bridgeport, Connecticut
OccupationRabbi, Professor
TitleRabbi

Richard Lowell Rubenstein was an educator in religion and a writer in the American Jewish community, noted particularly for his contributions to Holocaust theology. He was the first American Jewish theologian to address the impact of the events of the Holocaust in Europe on conventional Jewish thought.

Life

A Connecticut resident, he was married to art historian Betty Rogers Rubenstein (deceased 2013

Education

Rubenstein began his tertiary education at Hebrew Union College, an institution within the Reform Judaism tradition. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a B.A. degree. He then was awarded the Master of Hebrew Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Conservative tradition) and was also ordained as a rabbi by that institution. He then studied at Harvard Divinity School and was awarded a Master of Sacred Theology degree. Finally, he pursued doctoral studies and received a Ph.D. from Harvard University, in 1960.[1]


Career

Following his ordination in 1952, Rubenstein was the rabbi of two Massachusetts congregations in succession, and then in 1956 became assistant director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation and chaplain to the Jewish students at Harvard University, Radcliffe and Wellesley, where he served until 1958. From 1958 to 1970 he was the director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation and chaplain to the Jewish students at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie-Mellon University and Duquesne University.[1] At the University of Pittsburgh he also taught an upper division course on French Existentialism. Rubenstein taught in religious studies at Florida State University from 1970 to 1995 and held the professorial chair. He then became president and professor of Religion at the University of Bridgeport, where he served from 1995 to 1999.[2]

Rubenstein has also been a newspaper columnist for a Japanese newspaper and has written many books concerned with the Holocaust, theology, Jewish-Christian relations, ethics, and politics.


Rubenstein undertook a psychoanalytic study of Paul the Apostle in his book My Brother Paul. He has continued with Holocaust themes in later writings and has adjusted some of his earlier views about God in light of the Kabbalah.

The Holocaust and Death of God

Rubenstein emerged in the 1960s as a significant writer on the meaning and impact of the Holocaust for Judaism. His first book, After Auschwitz, explored radical theological frontiers in Jewish thought. Rubenstein argued that the experience of the Holocaust shattered the traditional Judaic concept of God, especially as the God of the covenant with Abraham, in which the God of Israel is the God of history. Rubenstein argued that Jews could no longer advocate the notion of an omnipotent God at work in history or espouse the election of Israel as the chosen people. In the wake of the Holocaust, he believed that Jews had lost hope:

[A]s children of the Earth, we are undeceived concerning our destiny. We have lost all hope, consolation and illusion.[3]

In After Auschwitz, Rubenstein argued that the covenant had died, and that the only intellectually honest response to the Holocaust was to reject God, and to recognize that all existence is ultimately meaningless. According to this view, there is no divine plan or purpose, no God that reveals His will to humankind, and God does not care about the world. Human beings must assert and create their own value in life. Since that time, Rubenstein moved away from this view; his later works affirm a form of deism in which one may believe that God may exist as the basis for reality and some also include Kabbalistic notions of the nature of God:

No man can really say that God is dead. How can we know that? Nevertheless, I am compelled to say that we live in the time of the "death of God." This is more a statement about man and his culture than about God. The death of God is a cultural fact ... When I say we live in the time of the death of God, I mean that the thread uniting God and man, heaven and earth, has been broken ...[3]

He stated that the "death of God" did not mean he was now an atheist, nor that religion had to be discarded as irrelevant. Rubenstein explored what the nature and form of religious existence could possibly be after Auschwitz, after the experience of the Holocaust. He suggested that perhaps the way forward was to choose some form of paganism. He presented in place of the transcendent God who creates and then stands separate from His creation, an understanding of God as the ground of being:

Terms like "ground" and "source" stand in contrast to the terms used for the transcendant biblical God of history who is known as a supreme king, a father, a creator, a judge, a maker. When he creates the world, he does so as do males, producing something external to himself. He remains essentially outside of and judges the creative processes he has initiated. As ground and source, God creates as does a mother, in and through her own very substance. As ground of being, God participates in all the joys and sorrows of the drama of creation which is, at the same time, the deepest expression of the divine life. God's unchanging unitary life and that of the cosmos' ever-changing, dynamic multiplicity ultimately reflect a single unitary reality.[4]

During the 1960s, the "Death of God" movement achieved considerable notoriety and was featured as the cover story of the April 8, 1966, edition of Time magazine. This movement was emerging in radical theological discussions among Protestant theologians such as Gabriel Vahanian, Paul Van Buren, William Hamilton, and Thomas J. J. Altizer. Theologians such as Altizer felt at the time that "as 'Death of God' theologians we have now been joined by a distinguished Jewish theologian, Dr Richard Rubenstein."[5] Among those Protestants, the discussions centered on modern secular unbelief, the collapse of the belief in any transcendent order to the universe, and their implications for Christianity. However, among theologians in Protestant circles, it had dissipated from its novelty by the turn of the 1970s.

Unification Church

Rubenstein was a defender of the Unification Church and served on its advisory council,[1] as well as on the board of directors of the church-owned Washington Times newspaper. In the 1990s, he served as president of the University of Bridgeport, which was then affiliated with the church.[6] Rubenstein said about the church's founder Sun Myung Moon:

I especially appreciated Rev. Moon's commitment to the fight against Communism. From his own first-hand, personal experience and out of his religious convictions, he understood how tragic a political and social blight that movement had been. I had been in East and West Berlin the week the Berlin Wall was erected in August 1961 and had visited communist Poland in 1965. Unfortunately, many of my liberal academic colleagues did not understand the full nature of the threat as did Rev. Moon. I was impressed with the sophistication of Rev. Moon's anti-communism. He understood communism's evil, but he also stood ready to meet with communist leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim Il Sung in the hope of changing or moderating their views.[7]

Legacy

Rubenstein was awarded two honorary doctorates: Doctor of Hebrew Letters (Jewish Theological Seminary) and Doctor of Humane Letters (Grand Valley State University).

Works

Autobiography

  • Power Struggle: An Autobiographical Confession. New York: Scribner, 1974.

Books

  • After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966.
  • After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism 2nd Ed. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
  • Morality and Eros. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970.
  • The Religious Imagination: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Jewish Theology. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971. ISBN 080701141X
  • My Brother Paul. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. ISBN 978-0060670146
  • The Cunning of History: Mass Death and the American Future. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. ISBN 0061320684
  • The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1984. ISBN 080704377X
  • Dissolving Alliance: The United States and the Future of Europe. New York: Paragon House, 1987. ISBN 0887022170
  • Spirit Matters: The Worldwide Impact of Religion on Contemporary Politics. Paragon House Publishers, 1987.
  • The Politics of Latin American Liberation Theology (with John K. Roth). Washington DC: Washington Institute Press, 1988. ISBN 0887020402
  • Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its Legacy (with John K. Roth). Westminster John Knox Press, 2003. ISBN ‎0664223532
  • Jihad and Genocide: Religion, History, and Human Rights. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011. ISBN 0742562034

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 A Finding Aid to the Richard L. Rubenstein Papers American Jewish Archives. Retrieved July 21, 2021.
  2. Richard L. Rubenstein University of Bridgeport, June 2003. Retrieved July 21, 2021.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Richard L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966).
  4. Richard L. Rubenstein, God after the Death of God New English Review, November 2014. Retrieved July 21, 2021.
  5. Thomas J.J. Altizer, The Altizer-Montgomery dialogue;: A chapter in the God is dead controversy (Inter-Varsity Press, 1967).
  6. Joseph Berger, U. of Bridgeport Honors Rev. Moon, Fiscal Savior The New York Times, September 8, 1995. Retrieved July 21, 2021.
  7. Richard L. Rubenstein, The Spiritual Leader Peace King: Essays on the Life and Work of Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon (Universal Peace Federation, 2007). Retrieved July 21, 2021.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Altizer, Thomas J.J. The Altizer-Montgomery dialogue;: A chapter in the God is dead controversy. Inter-Varsity Press, 1967.
  • Braiterman, Zachary. "Hitler's Accomplice"?: The Tragic Theology of Richard Rubenstein Modern Judaism, 17(1) (February 1997):75–89. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  • Braiterman, Zachary. (God) After Auschwitz. Princeton University Press, 1998. ISBN 0691059411
  • Jocz, Jakob. The Jewish People and Jesus Christ After Auschwitz: A study in the controversy between church and synagogue. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981. ISBN 0801051231
  • Morgan, Michael L. Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Thought in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0195148622
  • Rubenstein, Betty Rogers, and Michael Berenbaum (eds.). What Kind of God? Essays in Honor of Richard L. Rubenstein. Lanham: University Press of America, 1995. ISBN 0761800360

External links

All links retrieved

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