Editing Arthur Hertzberg

{{short description|American rabbi, historian, and activist}}
[[Image:72Hertzbergrescan.jpg|thumb|right|Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg in 1972]]
'''Arthur Hertzberg''' (June 9, 1921 – April 17, 2006) was a [[Conservative Judaism|Conservative rabbi]] and prominent [[Jewish-American]] scholar and activist.

==Biography==
Avraham Hertzberg was born in [[Lubaczów]], Poland, the eldest of five children, and left Europe in 1926 with his mother and grandmother to join his father in the United States, where he took the name Arthur. Hertzberg recalled that as a teenager in an [[Orthodox Judaism|Orthodox]] [[Jew]]ish neighborhood in [[Baltimore, Maryland]], he would not accept the notion that the literary world of [[talmud]]ic learning, the [[kabbalah|kabbalistic]] books and the writing of the [[Hasidic Judaism|chasidim]] were less worthy as compared to the ''[[Iliad]]'', the ''[[Odyssey]]'' or [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s ''[[The Divine Comedy|Inferno]]''. His father was an Orthodox [[rabbi]] trained in [[Eastern Europe]], who taught Arthur to appreciate the richness of the Talmud and the other great works of [[Judaism]]. Although Hertzberg would later stray from his Orthodox upbringing and be ordained as a [[Conservative Judaism|Conservative]] rabbi, he "never used my 'heresy' as the excuse to prefer the majority culture to my own." Hertzberg was a student of [[Ernst Cassirer]] at [[Columbia University]] in the winter of 1944-1945. After Cassirer's death there, he conducted his funeral service as a young rabbi.<ref>Arthur Hertzberg: ''A Reminiscence of Ernst Cassirer'' The Leo Back Institute Year Book, Volume 15, Issue 1, January 1970, pp.245-246, [https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/15.1.245]</ref>
He was married to the former Phyllis Cannon from 1950 until his death. They are the parents of two daughters, Dr. Linda Beth and Susan Riva, and they have four grandchildren named Rachel, Mike, Michelle, and Derek.

Hertzberg's love of Judaism and the Jewish texts was at the core of his life as a rabbi, scholar, educator and Jewish communal leader. Over the course of his 50-plus year career, Rabbi Hertzberg served as a congregational rabbi, president of both the American Jewish Policy Foundation and the [[American Jewish Congress]], vice president of the [[World Jewish Congress]] and a leading representative of world Jewry in the historic [[Christian–Jewish reconciliation#The Catholic Church|Catholic–Jewish dialogue]] that commenced during the papacy of [[Pope John XXIII]].  Hertzberg was at the center of crucial events shaping American Jewish life after World War II.

A resident of [[Englewood, New Jersey]], Hertzberg died on April 17, 2006, of heart failure en route to [[Pascack Valley Hospital]] in [[Westwood, New Jersey]], at the age of 84. He was survived by his wife, daughters, brothers Rabbi Isaiah and Rabbi Joshua, and a sister, Eve Rosenfeld.<ref>[[Joseph Berger (author)|Berger, Joseph]]. [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/nyregion/rabbi-arthur-hertzberg-scholar-and-blunt-advocate-for-civil-rights.html "Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, Scholar and Blunt Advocate for Civil Rights, Dies at 84"], ''[[The New York Times]]'', April 18, 2006. Accessed November 24, 2017. "Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, a provocative scholar of Judaism whose contrarian religious and political views and dedication to civil rights found prolific expression in books, articles and essays, died yesterday. He was 84 and lived in Englewood, N.J."</ref>

===Social activism===
Hertzberg participated in the 1943 [[Rabbis' march (1943)|Rabbis' march]], walked with [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] in both the 1963 [[March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom]] and the 1965 [[Selma to Montgomery marches#"Bloody Sunday" events|"Bloody Sunday"]], during the first of the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]], at the height of the [[American civil rights movement]]. Hertzberg also served as an intermediary between the American Jewish community and Secretary of State [[Henry Kissinger]]. Hertzberg played a major role in significant issues faced by world Jewry community in the decades following World War II, including discussions with the [[Roman Catholic Church]] over the Vatican's refusal to release documents pertaining to [[Pius XII]].

==Views and influences==
[[Mordecai Kaplan]] was  an influence on  Hertzberg when he attended the [[Jewish Theological Seminary of America|Jewish Theological Seminary]] in New York City. Kaplan proved to him that with talent and guts, you could be your own man even in mainstream America. He agreed with Kaplan and  [[Salo W. Baron]], that cultural and religious identity in America would continue to exist  "only if they were redefined and reconstructed." After the [[Six-Day War]] in 1967, he proposed  the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and debated  with [[Golda Meir]] and [[Menachem Begin]] over their policies.

Hertzberg challenged the wisdom of what he viewed as banking the future of Jewish continuity on the twin pillars of unquestioned support for Israel and the veneration of the Holocaust. Referring to the [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] in Washington, D.C., as "the national cathedral of American Jewry's Jewishness", Hertzberg questioned whether the memory of the Holocaust was sufficient to keep Jews "on the reservation." Citing demographic studies, he contended that the proliferation of courses on the Holocaust would not be sufficient to stop a large number of Jews from leaving the Jewish community.

==Academic career==
Hertzberg graduated from [[Johns Hopkins University]] in 1940, received rabbinic ordination from the [[Jewish Theological Seminary of America]] in 1943 and a Ph.D. in history from [[Columbia University]] in 1966. He began his career as the director of the [[Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life|campus Hillel]] for [[Amherst College]] and the [[University of Massachusetts Amherst]], and taught at [[Princeton University|Princeton]], [[Rutgers University|Rutgers]], [[Columbia University|Columbia]], [[Hebrew University]], and [[Dartmouth College|Dartmouth]]. He was the Bronfman Visiting Professor of the Humanities at [[New York University]] from 1991 until his death in 2006.

==Rabbinic career==
In addition to his academic posts, Hertzberg was a rabbi for congregations in [[Philadelphia]] and [[Nashville, Tennessee|Nashville]], served as a chaplain in the [[United States Air Force]] from 1951 to 1953. He lived in [[Englewood, New Jersey]], where he served as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El from 1956 to 1985, and remained as rabbi emeritus until his death. He also served as president of the American Jewish Policy Foundation since 1978, president of the American Jewish Congress from 1972 to '78, and vice president of the World Jewish Congress from 1975 to 1991.

==Meeting with John Paul II==
During Pope John Paul's March 2000 Jerusalem visit, he asked the Pope numerous questions about his activities during the Second World War.<ref>[http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/05/11/news/world/doc4a07ad8806522679405054.txt A Rabbi And The Pope In Jerusalem] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303181225/http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/05/11/news/world/doc4a07ad8806522679405054.txt |date=2016-03-03 }}</ref>

==Jewish scholarship==
Hertzberg also made his mark in Jewish scholarship. His landmark book, ''The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism'' (1968), argued that the source of modern antisemitism could be traced to the ideas of such [[Age of Enlightenment]] philosophers as [[Voltaire]]. Similarly, his ''The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader'' (1959) pioneered the study of Zionism and provided generations of students with the understanding that modern Zionism was a secular movement to remake Jewish identity into one of the many modern secular nationalisms. Finally, although a self-styled pragmatic liberal, Hertzberg saw no contradiction between his political convictions and his reverence for a Jewish tradition shorn of its religious fundamentalism.

Hertzberg wrote, edited or co-edited over thirteen books. Hertzberg had planned to write two more books and had partially completed one at the time of his death, entitled ''This I Believe'', an exploration of his personal theology. He had also intended to write a book explicating the Talmud to an educated but non-Orthodox Jewish audience, preserving the integrity of the source material but also demonstrating its relevance and accessibility to modern readers.<ref>[http://www.jstandard.com/articles/933/1/A-JEW-IN-AMERICA Herzberg and Theology]</ref>

In his memoir ''A Jew in America'', Hertzberg frequently referred to American poet [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]]. Emerson, a descendant of American Puritans who revolted against his heritage and became a Unitarian, wrote that "every man is a conveyance on which all his ancestors ride." Hertzberg said he may not have opted to agree with every word of his Jewish forebears but wrote "my respect and reverence for them is the foundation of my being."<ref>[http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.10.04/arts1.html Herzberg and Poetry]</ref>

==Published works==
* ''Essays on Jewish Life and Thought'' (1959) (co-editor)
* ''The Zionist Idea'' (1959)
* ''The Outbursts That Await Us'' (1963)
* ''The French Enlightenment and the Jews'' (1968) – won the first Amran Award as the best work of nonfiction in the Jewish field.
* ''Judaism'' (1961)
* ''Being Jewish in America'' (1978)
* ''The Jews in America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter'' (1989), {{ISBN|0-231-10841-9}}
* ''Jewish Polemics'' (1992)
* ''At Home Only with God'' (1993)
* ''The Zionist Idea'' (1997)
* ''Jews: The Essence and Character of a People'' (1998) (co-authored with Aron Hirt-Manheimer)
* ''A Jew in America: My Life And a People's Struggle for Identity'' (2002)
* ''The Fate of Zionism : A Secular Future for Israel & Palestine'' (2003).

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
* [http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/results.cfm?Authored=Arthur-Hertzberg&AuthorID=255 Articles by Arthur Hertzberg] on the Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ NYU Wagner
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/nyregion/18hertzberg.html ''New York Times'' Obituary, April 18, 2006]
* [http://www.jstandard.com/articles/933/1/A-JEW-IN-AMERICA ''Jewish Standard'' Obituary, April 21, 2006]
* [http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2606 Association for Jewish Studies Obituary] focusing on his work in Jewish education, Fall 2006.
* [https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Hertzberg%2C%20Arthur/102-1145875-1634547 Amazon's Listing]
* [http://www.ajcongress.org American Jewish Congress]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20031209000506/http://www.interfaithalliance.org/ReligiousResources/ReligiousResources.cfm?ID=4532&c=32 Arthur on 9-11]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20031223172325/http://www.beliefnet.com/author/author_57.html Beliefnet Entry]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20031224014440/http://www.wzo.org.il/en/resources/view.asp?id=161 New Age Zionism: Holding On as the World Turns] Arthur Hertzberg. January 1, 1998
* [http://www.nybooks.com/authors/1262 New York Review of Books entry]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20050318100922/http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/2005_02_28.htm The Day the Rabbi Rescued Rashid] by [[Martin Kramer]]
* {{C-SPAN|39382}}
* {{YouTube|DW8VqIF0Nto|Book Interview "A Jew in America: My Life And a People's Struggle for Identity"}} by [[Leon Charney]] on The Leon Charney Report
* {{YouTube|R_6wH-Pb7js|Book Interview "The Fate of Zionism, A Secular Future for Israel and Palestine"}} by [[Leon Charney]] on The Leon Charney Report

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