Steinberg, Milton, 1903-1950

Milton Steinberg, American author, philosopher, rabbi, teacher, and theologian, was born in Rochester, NY on November 24, 1903. His father Samuel was born in Seraye, Lithuania and educated at the yeshiva in Volozhin, Lithuania. His mother Fannie, nėe Sternberg, was born in Rochester, NY to a family that managed a boarding house. Milton had two sisters, Florence and Frieda. In 1919, the Steinberg family relocated to the Bronx so that his older sister Florence might pursue a singing career. After moving and attending DeWitt Clinton High School, he excelled in his studies and graduated valedictorian. He then attended City College of New York to study philosophy and there too he graduated first of class with additional prizes in history, philosophy, Greek, and Latin in 1924. He went on to attend the Jewish Theological Seminary and was ordained a rabbi in 1928. While attending seminary he also attended Columbia University where he earned a Masters degree in Philosophy.

His rabbinical career began in Indianapolis, Indiana where he would serve at Congregation Beth-El Zedeck starting in 1928. In June of 1929, Milton married Edith Alpert. Despite his good work and efforts at ministering to that community, the distance from family and familiar surroundings in New York City put a strain on the Steinbergs. It was with much delight in 1933, when he and Edith were able to return to New York City as Milton had been made Rabbi of the Park Avenue Synagogue. The following year their first son, Jonathan was born. Their second son, David, was born in 1937. Park Avenue Synagogue grew under his administration and teaching and grew from 120 families to over 700. The Steinbergs made their home at the synagogue and Milton remained its rabbi until his death. In addition to his rabbinical career he worked with Hadassah, the American Jewish Congress, and the Rabbinical Assembly-Committee on Social Justice, B’Nai B’rith’s Hillel Commission, Jewish Publication Society’s Publication Committee, the Board of Jewish Education, Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, and served as editor of The Reconstructionist . He taught classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Teachers Institute, and at the 92nd Street YMHA. And In 1942, while serving at Park Avenue Synagogue, Milton joined the New York State National Guard as a chaplain and was given the commission of Lieutenant Colonel. His first mission was to tour various Army bases throughout the country, mostly in Texas, to determine the spiritual needs of the soldiers there. His busy schedule and work load eventually took its toll on his health and while on tour in 1944 he suffered a heart attack. Due to the remoteness of his location he was unable to receive immediate medical attention which affected his ability to recover. While severely limiting his physical capabilities and restricted his propensity to do as many things in one day as possible it allowed him to focus on his family and his writings. Following the war his activities were limited mostly to writing, although he still served as rabbi and worked with Christian clergy seeking their support for the establishment of the state of Israel.

Throughout his life three men left their mark on the intellectual identity of Milton Steinberg and influenced his work: Morris Raphael Cohen, Jacob Kohn, and Mordecai Kaplan. He met Morris Raphael Cohen while a student at the City College of New York. Cohen’s teaching instilled in Steinberg intellectual discipline and a commitment to philosophical rationalism. Jacob Kohn was Steinberg's rabbi at the Ansche Chesed synagogue, where his family attended after moving to New York in 1919. Under the guidance of Rabbi Kohn, Milton came to believe that any philosophical understanding required faith in an absolute truth. Lastly, there was Mordecai Kaplan, who was Steinberg's homiletics professor and mentor at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Kaplan and Steinberg developed a significant and lasting relationship. Despite differences of opinion between Steinberg and Kaplan, Steinberg strongly believed that Kaplan’s Reconstructionism an acceptable ideology for American Judaism and a solution to what Steinberg believed were the problems facing modern Jewry.

Steinberg was convinced that faith is an essential component and compliment to modern Jewish life and elaborated on this philosophy in his works. In his first book The Making of Modern Jewry (1934), he examined the causes of what he and others called the “Jewish Problem,” that is how can the tenets of Judaism fit into modernity. Based on his philosophy and the ideas put forth in the above mentioned work he set out to describe his ideas in fiction. In his first novel, As A Driven Leaf (1939), he tells the story of the heretic Elisha ben Abuyah, who betrayed the Jews to the Romans during the Bar Kochba Revolt. In the novel Steinberg attempts to reconcile Judaism with Greek philosophy in order to demonstrate the interdependence between reason and faith. Between the writing of As A Driven Leaf and his next book A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem (1945), much in Judaism had changed and he had suffered a heart attack. In this new work he laid out his frustration at the lack of answers and offered his solutions to the many problems besetting the Jewish world. His Basic Judaism (1947), he returned to his topics of theology and offered synoptic description of the Jewish faith that would be approachable to Jews, believing and indifferent, and non-Jews. This was the last work published during his lifetime. When he died suddenly he had been already at work on two more works on theology and another novel. In 1950, Edith, his wife and assistant, published a collection of his sermons and papers called A Believing Jew (1951). The other Anatomy of Faith (1960), edited by Arthur A. Cohen, was an attempt describe Steinberg's theology in a systematic fashion. Following the Holocaust, Steinberg’s theology had grown increasingly relational and mystical as he read the works of Christian Neo-Orthodox writers such as the Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr and Karl Barth. The manuscript for his second novel, A Prophet’s Wife (2010), tells the account of the of Hosea and Gomer, in which God's compassion, mercy, and forgiveness are demonstrated. The novel was published sixty years after his death, in March 2010.

In March 1950 at the age of 46, Milton Steinberg passed away being survived by his wife, Edith, and sons Jonathan and David. Despite only having been in the rabbinate for two decades Steinberg's ideas, work, and writings, left a profound mark on American Jewish thought.

Sources: Noveck, Simon. Milton Steinberg: Portrait of a Rabbi . New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1978.

Steinberg, Jonathan. "Milton Steinberg, American Rabbi - Thoughts on his Centenary." The Jewish Quarterly Review 95.3 (2005): 579-600.

From the guide to the Milton Steinberg (1903-1950) Papers, undated, 1883-2003, 1923-1950, (American Jewish Historical Society)