Description
Book Synopsis“This is a loving, sophisticated, illuminating, outstanding depiction of a brilliant intellectual/spiritual/moral leader who deserves just such a treatment. This book will serve as testimony and inspiration for the new generation… a tour de force articulation of a truly great life.” – Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg
A comprehensive biography about the life and work of Rabbi Harold Shulweis who was essential in the renewal of Jewish life in post-war America.
Harold Schulweis was a dominant figure in the renewal of Jewish life in the post-war generation of American Jewry. Widely regarded as the most successful and influential pulpit rabbi of his generation, he shaped an extraordinary career as pulpit rabbi, theologian, public intellectual, and communal leader. His innovations in synagogue practice reshaped congregations across the continent introducing synagogue-based havurot, “para-rabbinics” and para-professional counseling programs, outreach to alienated Jews and “unchurched” Christians, opening the traditional synagogue to gay and lesbian Jews and their families, and welcoming families of children with special needs. With Leonard Fein, Schulweis founded Mazon, the Jewish communal response to hunger. He launched The Foundation for the Righteous – recognizing Christians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust – an effort chronicled on the CBS news program “60 Minutes.” In the closing years of his career, he initiated the Jewish World Watch – a communal response to the incidence of genocide worldwide.
Trade Review“A must-read, extraordinarily important book for any Jewish leader looking for practical strategies for communal growth and engagement from the remarkable Harold M. Schulweis, the most innovative rabbi of our time. His devoted disciple, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, has written a highly readable account of Rabbi Schulweis’s thought and action that will inspire, inform, and uplift you.” —Dr. Ron Wolfson, Fingerhut Professor of Education, American Jewish University, author of Relational Judaism.
“This is a loving, sophisticated, illuminating, outstanding depiction of a brilliant intellectual/spiritual/moral leader who deserves just such a treatment. This book will serve as testimony and inspiration for the new generation… a tour de force articulation of a truly great life.” – Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg
“Feinstein puts Schulweis into an intellectual and philosophical context that draws deeply on Jewish values and wisdom and, at the same time, challenges the reader to consider new ways of understanding what has gone before… intellectually commanding and yet so deeply heartfelt.” –The Jewish Journal
Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgements Introduction Part One: The American Jewish Experience Chapter 1 The American Rabbi, a Brief History 1.1 The First American Rabbis 1.2 The Golden Age of the American Rabbinate, 1918–1950 1.3 The New Rabbinate, the New Synagogue, the New Judaism 1.4 Zionism and Power 1.5 Political Power 1.6 The Dynamic Rabbinate Chapter 2 Three Languages, Three Voices 2.1 Identity: Speaking Three Languages 2.2 Formation 2.3 Family 2.4 Oakland, California, 1952–1970 The Theological Voice The Prophetic Voice The Voice of Community Building New Narratives 2.5 Transition Chapter 3 Encino, 1970 3.1 The Resurgence of Los Angeles Jewry 3.2 A Congregation of Newcomers 3.3 The Suburban Paradise 3.4 Hear Me Roar 3.5 Is That All There Is? 3.6 Encino Jews Part Two: Three Rabbinic Voices Chapter 4 The Theological Voice 4.1 The Rabbi as Theologian 4.2 The Theologian as Rabbi 4.3 The Failure of Theodicy Classical Metaphysical Theologies: Aquinas and Maimonides Hartshorne’s Process Theology Personalist Theologies: Buber and Barth The Eternal Question—Why Me? 4.4 Predicate Theology Sources Answering Evil Revelation Oneness Prayer Godliness or Goodness? I Seek a God I Can’t Believe In 4.5 Two Names for God 4.6 God and the Holocaust Chapter 5 The Prophetic Voice 5.1 The Rabbi as Prophet 5.2 The 1970s: The Holocaust Dybbuk 5.3 The 1980s: Out of the Cave 5.4 The 1990s: The Stenosis of Halachah 5.5 2000: The Duty to Obey, the Duty to Disobey Chapter 6 The Voice of Community Building 6.1 The Psychological Jew 6.2 Mediating Structures: The Synagogue Havurah 6.3 Mediating Structures: Para-Rabbinics 6.4 Poetry 6.5 Reinventing the Rabbinate 6.6 Shaping New Narratives Epilogue A Note on Sources Works Cited
