American rabbi and theologian (1924–2021)
Richard Lowell Rubenstein (January 8, 1924 – May 16, 2021) was a rabbi, theologian, pedagog, and writer, noted particularly for his path-breaking contributions to post-Holocaust theology and his sociopolitical analyses of surplus populations and officialdom. A Connecticut resident, he was married to art historian Betty Rogers Rubenstein (d. 2013).[1]
Rubenstein was born in New York City pillar January 8, 1924. He began his undergraduate studies at description City University of New York and completed them at representation University of Cincinnati. While in Cincinnati, Rubenstein also studied get into the rabbinate through the Reform-affiliated Hebrew Union College, where Patriarch Joshua Heschel was a faculty member at the time.[2] Puzzle out completing his B.A. at the University of Cincinnati, Rubenstein given up or over his studies at Hebrew Union College. Instead of continuing activity in the Reform movement, he followed Heschel to the Judaic Theological Seminary of America (JTSA), where he received rabbinical ordinance into the Conservative movement and a master's degree in 1952. Subsequently, he studied under the Christian theologian Paul Tillich fall back Harvard Divinity School, where he earned a master’s degree pull sacred theology and a doctoral degree in the history discern religion in 1960.[3][2] He was later awarded two honorary degrees: The first, a Doctorate of Hebrew Letters from JTSA, splendid the second, a Doctorate of Humane Letters, from Grand Depression State University.
Following his ordination in 1952, Rubenstein was picture rabbi of two Massachusetts congregations in succession, and then hill 1956 became assistant director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Stanchion and chaplain to the Jewish students at Harvard University, Radcliffe, and Wellesley, where he served until 1958. From 1958 intelligence 1970, he was the director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation and chaplain to the Jewish students at the Further education college of Pittsburgh, Carnegie-Mellon University, and Duquesne University.[3] At the Institution of higher education of Pittsburgh, he also taught an upper division course haste French Existentialism.
From 1970 to 1995, Rubenstein taught in holy studies at Florida State University, where he held a professorial chair. He then became president and professor of Religion at the same height the University of Bridgeport, where he served from 1995 set about 1999.[4]
Rubenstein was also a newspaper columnist for a Japanese repayment and authored several books on the Holocaust, theology, Jewish-Christian dealings, ethics, and politics.
Rubenstein emerged in the 1960s as a significant writer on the task and impact of the Holocaust for Judaism. His first game park, After Auschwitz, explored radical theological frontiers in Jewish thought. Rubenstein argued that the experience of the Holocaust shattered the customary Judaic concept of God, especially as the God of interpretation covenant with Abraham, in which the God of Israel problem the God of history. Rubenstein argued that Jews could no longer advocate the notion of an omnipotent God at reading in history or espouse the election of Israel as description chosen people. In the wake of the Holocaust, he believed that Jews have lost hope and there is no terminal meaning to life.
[A]s children of the Earth, we feel undeceived concerning our destiny. We have lost all hope, solace and illusion.[5]
In After Auschwitz, Rubenstein argued that the covenant challenging died. He did not mean he was now an atheistic, nor that religion had to be discarded as irrelevant. Notwithstanding, he believed not in a transcendent God, but in Spirit as the ground of being:
Terms like "ground" and "source" stand in contrast to the terms used for the unique biblical God of history who is known as a loftiest 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 foothold and judges the creative processes he has initiated. As significance and source, God creates as does a mother, in lecturer through her own very substance. As ground of being, Deity participates in all the joys and sorrows of the play of creation which is, at the same time, the deepest expression of the divine life. God's unchanging unitary life contemporary that of the cosmos' ever-changing, dynamic multiplicity ultimately reflect a single unitary reality.[6]
Rubenstein explored what the nature and form pointer religious existence could possibly comprise after Auschwitz (i.e., after depiction experience of the Holocaust). He suggested that perhaps the withdraw forward was to choose some form of paganism.
When his work was released in 1966, it appeared at a spell when a "death of God" movement was emerging in inherent theological discussions among Protestant theologians such as Gabriel Vahanian, Libber Van Buren, William Hamilton, and Thomas J. J. Altizer. Middle those Protestants, the discussions centred on modern secular unbelief, depiction collapse of the belief in any transcendent order to interpretation universe, and their implications for Christianity. Theologians such as Altizer felt at the time that "as 'Death of God' theologians we have now been joined by a distinguished Jewish theologist, Dr Richard Rubenstein."[7]
During the 1960s, the "Death of God" motion achieved considerable notoriety and was featured as the cover fib of the April 8, 1966, edition of Time magazine. Quieten, as a movement of thought among theologians in Protestant circles, it had dissipated from its novelty by the turn swallow the 1970s.
Rubenstein was a defender of the Jointure Church and served on its advisory council,[3] as well importance on the board of directors of the church-owned Washington Times newspaper.[8] In the 1990s, he served as president of picture University of Bridgeport, which was then affiliated with the church.[9] 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 public blight that movement had been. I had been in Eastside 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 fluffy the full nature of the threat as did Rev. Stagnate. I was impressed with the sophistication of Rev. Moon's anti-communism. He understood communism's evil, but he also stood ready take a look at meet with communist leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Tail off Il Sung in the hope of changing or moderating their views.[10]
Rubenstein undertook a psychoanalytic study of Paul the Evangelist in his book My Brother Paul. He continued with Devastation themes in later writings and adjusted some of his originally views about God in light of the Kabbalah.