As we noted last week, Rabbi Irving (“Yitz”) Greenberg has been, for well over half a century, one of the most courageous, creative and influential voices in the American Modern Orthodox world. For me, personally, he has been a teacher and an inspiration for many, many years—as I told him in Part I of our conversation, I remember those days when the first early drafts of portions of his new book were making their way around the Jewish world, and how I read and re-read them, marking them up, and always kept them in a place where I knew I could find them.
Rabbi Greenberg and his wife, Blu—in her own right an accomplished author, poet, speaker, institution builder and more—now live in Jerusalem, where we conducted this two-part conversation about his new book, THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.
In today’s episode, which we’d planned on running the day after Part I (until the news cycle got in the way with the firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant), we move closer to the events of the day, the present war and Israel’s challenges in this, the most difficult period of its entire history. As Rabbi Greenberg mentions, one of his grandsons was grievously wounded in the war—so Rabbi Greenberg’s reflections on the events of this year are not just theoretical, but personal and, still, filled with hope and belief.
In days like these, another opportunity to hear Rabbi Greenberg in any form is a gift to us all. This is Part II of our conversation, which we’re making available in full to all our readers and listeners.
Part I of our discussion with Rabbi Greenberg can be found here.
And our conversation with veteran Israeli journalist and author, Ari Shavit, about the Yoav Gallant firing, “"November 5th was the worst day of the war since October 7th. By far,” a conversation which has arouse much passionate response, can be found here.
Rabbi Greenberg was ordained by Beth Joseph Rabbinical Seminary of Brooklyn, New York and has a PhD in history from Harvard University. He has had a long and notable career in the service of the Jewish people. He served in the rabbinate, notably at the Riverdale Jewish Center in the 1960s. He served as professor and chairman of the Department of Jewish Studies of City College of the City University of New York in the 1970s. Together with Elie Wiesel, he founded CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership and served as its president until 1997.CLAL offered pluralistic Jewish learning for Jewish communal leadership and programs of intra-faith dialogue for rabbis of every denominational background.
From 1997 to 2008, he served as founding president of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation which created such programs as birthright Israel and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education.
Rabbi Greenberg was one of the activist/founders of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in the movement to liberate Russian Jewry. He was a pioneer in the development of Holocaust education and commemoration. When Elie Wiesel served as chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, Rabbi Greenberg served as its (Executive) Director. The Commission recommended and drew the blueprint for the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the National Mall in Washington. He served as the Museum’s chairman from 2000-2002.
He is a leading Jewish thinker and has written extensively on post-Holocaust Jewish religious thought, Jewish-Christian relations, pluralism, and the ethics of Jewish power. In his book, Interpreters of Judaism in the Late Twentieth Century, Professor Steven T. Katz wrote: “No Jewish thinker has had a greater impact on the American Jewish Community in the last two decades than Irving (Yitz) Greenberg.” In his new book, The Triumph of Life, he argues that the Holocaust and the Jewish assumption of power in creating the state of Israel are the beginning of a new era in Jewish history. Together, these two events usher in a third stage of Jewish religion.
The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read.
Rabbi Irving Yitz Greenberg serves as the President of the JJ Greenberg Institute for the advancement of Jewish life and as a senior scholar in residence at Hadar. Rabbi Greenberg was ordained by the Beth Joseph Rabbinical Seminary of Brooklyn, New York, has a PhD in history from Harvard University. He's had an incredibly notable career in the service of the Jewish people. He served in the Rabbinate, most notably in the Riverdale Jewish Center in the 1960s, and as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Jewish Studies at City College, at the City University of New York in the '70s.
As if that was not enough, together with Elie Wiesel, Rabbi Greenberg founded CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and served as its President until 1997. CLAL was one of really the first organizations to do what is now not as uncommon as it was back then, thankfully, but you spearheaded it. It offered pluralistic Jewish learning for Jewish communal leadership and programs of interfaith dialog for rabbis of every denominational background. From 1997 to 2008, Rabbi Greenberg served as the founding President of Jewish Life Network of the Steinhart Foundation, which created such programs as birthright Israel and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, PEJ, as it was lovingly known back in the day. Yitz is really one of the world's leading Jewish thinkers, and he has written extensively on post Holocaust Jewish religious thought, Jewish Christian relations, pluralism, and the ethics of Jewish power. In his book, Interpreters of Judaism in the Late 20th Century, Professor Stephen Katz wrote, and I quote here, "No Jewish thinker has had a greater impact on the American Jewish community in the last two decades than Irving Yitz Greenberg."
So, Yitz, in the first part of our conversation, we were really treated to a magnificent overview of your theological development. And the first era, the biblical era, God's all in charge. Second year, the rabbinic era, God takes a step back. And in your really revolutionary theory, we're now in this third era of Jewish life, Jewish relationship with God, in which God is absent, really, from day-to-day history. Our job is to make Godliness present in the world, but God's not pulling strings. God's not expecting us to do this because we're going to get punished or whatever. And you said it much more articulately than I ever could.
And towards the end of our conversation, you said a few things that brought us to Israel. You talked about Judaism being a religion of hope, and that in the modern era, Zionism was the expression of that hope. You talked a bit about the Haredi decision to say, well, I don't have to defend this thing, which you described as being contrary completely to your understanding of what it means for Jews to have responsibility for our lives, for our welfare.
We didn't say this in the first half of our conversation, but you and I are actually having this conversation on October 7th. It's an unbearable day. And you and I said before we went on and started recording the first part of the conversation, you said to me, you have complete confidence that we're going to see our way through this. It's not going to be easy. I think a lot of people in this era are struggling to be sure that we're going to see our way through this. I mean, there are people who would say, come on, Rabbi Greenberg, it’s a year, exactly. And on this anniversary, we got soldiers moving into Jabaliya for the third time. Why are we going in the Jabaliya for the third time? Because Hamas is reconstituting itself. And we have the whole north getting pounded with missiles and rockets today, including people hurt. In Haifa, there were sirens in parts of Tel Aviv, and soldiers were killed today. And we're waiting to see what happens with Iran.
When I went out to get us some water before we started recording, and I saw somebody here in the little kitchenette area, we were talking briefly, and she said, I just don't see how we get out of this. It struck me that a lot of people are going through now what you went through in the early '60s when you were studying the Holocaust so intently. That was your break. That was your crisis of faith. This was the man who had grown up in an Orthodox world, and you knew that there were crusades, and you knew that there were pogroms, and you'd known that there was a Holocaust. But somehow meeting it face to face, sitting hour and hour, day and day, week and week at Yad Vashem, is what brought to this creative explosion of incredible thought.
I think there's a lot of people going through in 2024, what Rabbi Yitz Greenberg went through in 1961. They knew that there were crusades, and they knew that there were pogroms, and there was a Shoah. But now we're living through something not quite like that, but it's different, but it's horrible. And the end is nowhere in sight. And victory is either guaranteed or not guaranteed, depending on who you ask. And I don't think there's a lot of thoughtful people who could listen to that. And the listeners to this podcast, I've known from the feedback that I get, very thoughtful people who can't ask themselves, I want to hear Rabbi Greenberg talk about the meaning of the State of Israel and the meaning of this horrible year. And he himself now lives in Israel. What is the meaning of after a lifetime of serving American Judaism to live in Israel?
So, on October 7th, 2024, what can Rabbi Greenberg say to us about this era in which we're living now?
If I was truly respected, I'd probably be silent now. Let me also, but nevertheless, apologize for backing up just a half a minute because I find this the most confused or misunderstanding of what I'm trying to say, which is in summarizing the third year, we say God isn't absent from day to day. And I'm trying to get across this paradox. God is not controlling everything. But God is totally present every day. In fact, more so, in other words, my argument, again, is in the second stage, doesn't compare the third stage to the closeness, literally everything you do God is present, except that you have to tune in. Otherwise, you don't get it.
But to me, that's important. Again, because a lot of the so-called secular activity, in my judgment, that's the place where God is most present. But you just have to tune in. Okay, so just get that background. I'll come back to the state of Israel. Israel, as I would say, describing the creation of Israel I'd say there are two fundamental truths about the creation. We'll talk about the function in a minute.
One is the idea of Zionism is the indigenous people going back to their homeland. It infuriates me, and it's outrageous, the attempt to destroy Israel in the name of, say, it's a colonial settler state. This is unlike the Indigenous Eskimos in Canada and the Indians in America, and the Aborigines in Australia… the amazing miracle, the Jewish people after being exiled and heavily killed and persecuted, they survived, and they came back. They should have been greeted… These people who are speaking as colonial Israel should be celebrating it as the classic case, which only happen all over the world, that the Indigenous people rebuild themselves.
So, I start with that. Why? Because It's the idea of, it's one of the ideas of the Torah, the fundamental ideas, that every human being is entitled not only to the dignity or value of their own life, but they live in a place where they are there by right. That's what a homeland is. It's a place we don't have to apologize, where even if you misbehave, no one can throw you out saying, only good behavior, go. That was the first point of coming in the homeland in the first place. And yes, the Jewish dream, the covenantal dream is you build us a model society of justice and of human relationship and presence. That was a dream. That dream, obviously, far from fully successful, was full of errors and oppression and Jewish leaders.
Then, of course, terminated by exile in the first period, and then again, the long exile after the destruction of the Second Temple. But nevertheless, the idea of coming back represents the reassertion of the fundamental belief. Zionism is a model for everybody. Now, that's my argument. What Zionism simply said was that every people is entitled to self-expression, self-rule, representation, and therefore, the Jewish people also, not just because everybody else had it, we did not. The answer is a lot of people got it after World War II because Israel and India revolted against the imparts. So, on that basis, Zionism.
Second basis, no less important, the Holocaust was the most vicious total assault on the life of the Jewish people ever. Of any people. Again, they have been massacres, they have been mass murders. But the idea of literally trying to wipe out every last Jew in the world, and they're trying to carry it out. Again, in 1944, when they were losing the war, they had a meeting in Budapest, Nazis, reviewing all the Jews around the world who are still left. What can we do to them when we get to them? So that is the total assault of death, and it represents the triumph of death.
And here, instead of collapsing or instead of doing what I think, after the war, it's estimated 25,000 French Jews hid the fact that they are Jewish, they came back to live, but they tried to pass as non-Jews. That's how dangerous and how threatening and how awful was the impact…
So why didn’t every Jew run away? Why did 25,000 run away? The answer is Jewish people are heroic people. They're incredible people. I think we'll talk about it. I think God doesn't deserve such people, sometimes, given how they perform. Be that as it may, the Jewish people did not collapse, just the opposite. It said, I still believe in life. I still believe in God. I still believe in the covenant. Some said God, some said covenant, some said life.
The most incredible outburst of Israel, creating the state of Israel, it's the affirmation of life. It's creating children. It's bringing in Jews and giving them haven. It's building an incredibly rich cultural life, an incredibly rich artistic life. Literary, Israel has a very high rate of book readings. In other words, not a perfect society, yes, and it still has a long way to go to become a perfect democracy. It has a long way to go to give the Arab population full equal dignity, but although it's made amazing strides, in my judgment. So again, that's the second dimension of Israel's validation, that it is the affirmation of life, the creation and the nurturing a renaissance, a blessing of life on the part of the Jewish people.
Eichmann disappeared, running away in 1946, got to Argentina. He was hiding with Sliczny, who was his partner in wiping out Hungarian Jewry. So essentially, he was caught. He said, my last conversation, he said, you know, if they catch us, they will put us to death. We committed this incredible crime. So, Eichmann says to him, if they catch me and they execute me, I will leap into my grave laughing. Why? Because he said, I didn't kill every last Jew, but they'll never recover. It hit such a destructive blow to the heartland of Jewry, the Eastern European Jewry was the biological heartland. They'll never recover. So, he said, I feel I succeeded even if I didn't get all the way.
He was right, except it was wrong. Israel is what made him wrong. Israel is where the Jewish population has grown, where it has the highest birth rate of any developed country in the world, things of that sort. So, Israel is biological the renewal of Jewish life. It's culturally... One other example, Ravid Tamar, who at that time, was the Director General of the Chief Rabbinate, did a study. In 1939, 30% of the Jews of the world, between 1939 and 1945, were killed. But if you look at rabbis, full-time students of Talmud, 80% were wiped out, because most of them were in Eastern Europe, where 90% of the Jews died. Yet, and this is already 1960, now we're talking 50 years later, it's even much more. There are more people studying Talmud full-time. There are more people learning, teaching Torah than ever before in Jewish history, period. In Israel.
So, what are we saying? What we're saying is that life is stronger than death. That's the ultimate Jewish claim. Or as I put it sometimes in the Shira Shiva, it says, that love is as fierce as strong as death. And yes, that love, that love that creates children, the love that rebuilds the life, the love that builds Torah, that love is proving that it's stronger than death.
Now, I have to say, of course, October 7th is a tremendous shock. It's a shock, and the people are desperate. There are several elements. One, of course, is, and I say, in a way, we almost say we got spoiled by Israel's successes. Israel built a new life, and it was the victory, like in '67, was so one-sided that people sort of began to be spoiled. In other words, you expect it. We're going to have Israel, and we're going to fight for it, but it's not going to be very costly. What October 7th was the shock was, number one, it killed more Jews in one day than any day since the Holocaust. The second shock was the realization that Hamas, it says so in its charter, we just didn't take it seriously.
Hamas is only one wing of a whole major movement within jihadi Islam that literally believes it has the right to and wants to wipe out every last Jew. That shock was that we were naive, and we were not protected, and they succeeded for a day.
Now, I tell people there's an overreaction to say, well, Zionism failed. A lot of people say that. But why? Because the whole state was created so that Jews would be safe, and their life should be... You can't have a pogrom. And then we have a pogrom. My answer is that's not... The difference in here in the Holocaust is the Holocaust killed 6 million. You know why? Because it went on every day for six years, and there was no army to stop them. There were no fighters to stop them. There's no country to escape from them. This is exactly what Israel accomplished. A terrible catastrophic and the kidnapping and so on is terrible. But within a day, the Israeli army, which was blew this the first day and was not properly prepared, but within a day, it landed and it killed most of the fighters who were still, Hamas fighters who were still left in Israel.
It's not the Holocaust. It's we live in a world which the Holocaust could be inflicted again. Yes, I think one of the transformative insights is that we're not going to go back to simply say, well, we'll live with rockets in Gaza or rockets in the north because you can live as a….They're not going to agree with that. No other country in the world would agree with that.
They, meaning Israelis.
Israelis, right. It's hard, very hard-earned wisdom, and it's hard at wisdom at the expense of all these people who were killed and hurt and the families that are bleeding, and there are soldiers who are dead. I understand that. Nevertheless, number one, as I say, again, it's not the Holocaust. In fact, it's a living illustration that that we have repaired or at least reconstructed Jewish life so that the Holocaust cannot happen.
Now, unlike the biblical period where God says so, then it can’t happen. We're living in the age of free human freedom. And yes, just as the Nazi use their freedom to build power to destroy us, so is Iran using their freedom to try to build a power that destroys us. So has Hezbollah built up its arms and its rockets in order to destroy Israel. So, in a sense, we're living with a much less complacent, much less guarantee. But to me, that only expresses it more deeply the heroism of the Jewish people. That in fact, and that's the maturity from the stage one to stage three. In stage one, when anything went wrong, they said a lot of people panicked and said, well, there's something. Either God rejected us, and there's no covenant, or maybe we're just... Maybe God is not really the powerful God.
In this stage, we are much more realistic. We say we are committed. We choose life. I said hope before. What's the difference between hope and a dream? I tell people. A dream is you have this wonderful vision. It doesn't matter if it actually comes realized. Maybe it won't get realized. Some dreams are better not realized because in the real life, it doesn’t work so well. A hope is a vision and a dream that has accepted the discipline of becoming a fact in the real world.
In the real world, the task of building a good society, which are full of flaws, and the hardest, most painful thing which we're realizing, and that's the shock of October 7th, is that we're going to have to fight, and we're going to have to sacrifice our children's lives, and we're going to have to... But again, to me, it's painful. It's devastating. And yes, I have friends, families, not just our own, which have lost children or have wounded children. It's an extraordinarily painful and difficult. And it's very frightening the thought that it's still out there as a country that can get an atomic bomb that would be happy to use it against us.
So, it's very frightening. But to me, that only underscores the heroism of the Jewish people. First of all, it's love of life. Otherwise, why, just give up? I mean, in the Warsaw ghetto at the end, they estimated that there were 40 deaths for every birth because people stopped having children. What's the point? There's no future, no hope. The choice to have children, there's a baby bom going on right now in Israel in case you didn't know. And so, these are statements, A, of embrace life, whatever the risks, and the heroism of, I accept this mission. I accept this vision, and I'm going to make it happen. Hope is a dream-backed by a program. The program is building a state, building an army, building a culture, building a religious framework. All these things, again, and my judgment is, religious framework is rather poor, but that's the challenge ahead of us.
So, number one, I say, again, when we made Aliya, and I spent my lifetime working for an American Jewry because I still believe that wherever Jews are, they should have a vital life, and that Jews in diaspora can make an extra contribution to the countries they live in. Jews in diaspora also can help Israel not become so closed in that it becomes totally self-centered or nationalist. I think these are all constructive, and vice versa. You mentioned before about being involved with Birthright Israel. The excitement and the power of Birthright Israel, and this is when we set it up, I was convinced in that, but a living proof. The American Jewish youth who are at risk, and many of them are attracted and the potential for assimilation and so on. The belief was if they go and experience Israel, the reality of Israel, what's the reality? It's a Jewish reality which Jews created in which the national holidays are the Jewish holidays in which the Jewish language, Hebrew is this, that simply meeting that reality and seeing how well it works, how dynamic and how wonderful and powerful it is, will inspire them to want to be more Jewish.
To me, one of the most moving things, I know, Birthright has 40, 50,000 people at its peak, or temporarily. It's down because of all these issues. But this has been researched and tracked. They come back from Israel. Again, in Israel, they don't just visit Masada and the war. They visit the nightclubs of Tel Aviv. The most powerful experiences that they have, travel at the end of the bus with soldiers their age, and they meet living Israelis. The experience is transformative in the most positive way. They suddenly realize Judaism is not just a theory or a marginal culture. It's a center of life, and it has tremendously powerful and wonderful religious experience and human experiences. They come back, and the research shows their priority to marry a Jew jumps at a time when there's very high rate of intermarriage in America, 70% nationally. Those who say, I must marry a Jew, their percentage is almost the opposite, 70, 80%, say, I realize now I have... What's the connection between being proud of Jewish religion or Jewish history, and out of visiting a Bedouin camp or going swimming in the Kineret? But the answer is no. It's the experience of a living reality. That's what you experience in Israel, a Jewish reality. The life is so vital and so humanly fulfilling with all its flaws and all its failures that you want to be like that. You want to live like that.
So, is Israel the center of the Jewish world now?
Well, it's interesting because for many years, I fought that. I always felt it's bad for the Israelis because then they have shlila to the gola [shlilat hagalut: the negation of the Diaspora]. They say, well, we're the center. You guys are not important. It's bad for the diaspora Jews, that it sets them up to feel resentment or competition. I was against that. It remains my ideal. That's not a question of who's the center. The point is, each of these polls, each of these communities, attracts and holds the other as well as itself. For people to tell me, I said, you want to know how to increase Aliyah? I said, how? I said, improve Jewish, religious, and educational life in America. Because the richer it is, more people will say, being a Jew is my priority. I want to go to Israel where you can maximize it.
Well, that sort of does imply that there's a center.
No, but vice versa. There was an argument, if you want to make Israel a more Jewish, a more… You know what you do? Create a positive Diaspora Jewry when they visit. One of the most powerful impacts of the mifgash (meeting) in the Birthright is that the Israeli soldiers become, first of all, they become much more aware that they are fighting and leading for the Jewish people at large. When we first started, the army didn't want to give us people because they needed them. Or they gave them a handful at the beginning. Then when they started getting the feedback from the soldiers, they suddenly realized this is the best morale building because they suddenly realized I'm a hero. I'm on the front lines of the Jewish people. I'm protecting everybody in the world. The army then said, blank check. As many soldiers as you need, we'll give you. Now, so I say it's that paradox. Ideally, they should feed each other, and ideally, they should inspire each other.
In the real world now, that having been said, I think it's very clear that Israel has become the center of Jewish life for a number of reasons, including demographic, just plain. Zionism was started the first Yishuv, it was like 4% of the Jewish people. It is now 48, 49% of the Jewish people. And it's growing because it's demographically and culturally growing, including Aliyah. The diaspora, unfortunately, has a lower birth rate and has a higher assimilation rate. It's becoming the majority. But it's not just a question of numbers. It's a question of quality. Israel is an inspiration. I have to say, and I admit that, too, this is a wonderful model. But it's also true that this war has cost Israel standing, moral respect in the world. Part of it is unfair, really unfair. And it's the systematic belittling and lying and distorting. It's claiming genocide and all these false accusation. I have to say, again, unfortunately, the present government and the extreme right wingers in the government have really, they have not, they have blocked Israel from expressing the moral behavior that it actually shows. Israel is still making an enormous effort to minimize civilian casualties.
Why couldn't it say so? Why didn't the Prime Minister every day say, today, 300 Palestine children died in the fighting, and we are heartbroken. Why didn't he say that? He said, you know what? We tried. If we wouldn't have evacuated, they would have killed 10,000. He never said it. Why didn't he say it? Because he's afraid he'll lose his coalition. So, in a very irresponsible way, Israel began to feed... Again, this is unique. In most of history, you want to crush the enemy, particularly if he's out to kill you. You want to crush the enemy and be damned the civilians. Israel started to send in food to prevent its salvation. But he didn't say it. It couldn't say it because Ben-Gvir would be insult and walk out.
So, the result is when the UN came out and claimed salvation is about to hit us, a, the false representation, International Court of Justice accepted this case against Israel. The claim was practicing mass salvation. Not true. So, I admit there has been a serious setback to the image and to the standing. And yes, there is some evidence in the younger generation, in Diaspora in America that there is an erosion of the respect and love for Israel. Again, my answer is, that's life and that's history. All you can do is fight. And the way you fight it is by telling the truth and by rebuilding and by reconnecting. I think that's exactly my point in general, that it is intimidating. It's frightening not to have the guarantee. It's frightening to face the possibility of death. Most frightening and not frightening and most shocking, and to me, I say, and this is the transformation of October 7th. It's the realization of parents and of children.
I tell people the Akedah, this is everybody, the Akedah, Isaac being bound to the altar by Abraham. Emil Fackenheim said one of the great lines of modern Jewish theology. He once said, he said, every parent, after the Shoah, every Jewish parent who has a child and is a Jew, chooses to be a Jew after the Shoah is as great, as heroic as Abraham, because the peak of Abraham's life was that he was willing, out of faithfulness to his mission, to his covenant, to his God, to take his child and bind him to the altar. Well, every person who has a Jewish child knows that they are binding not just their children, but their grandchildren. Grandchildren of Jewish grandparents were persecuted and killed by the Nazis.
So, I say the same thing here. The shock is the realization that my grandchildren, my grandchildren, are going to have to fight, and X number of them God forbid, will be killed or badly wounded. But when I visited the shivas of the parents, when I met and talked to young people, they were trying to get into Gaza. They were trying to get into the army. And to me, what it said was, I look back now, I say, you know the Akedah? I never accepted it. I was always upset by it as a test. It's not at all. It's God's full disclosure. It's God's admitting that when you join this covenant, you're taking on risk. You're taking on danger. You're taking on binding your children. What's worse than that? The fear of losing one's child. But the Jewish people, far from backing away, has taken it on. And that's why I say, I don't know how it gets through the next few months, the next few years or two, because there's still high loss and high danger. But I believe that the past record gives us good reason to believe that the Jewish people will come through again.
If the Holocaust didn't break them, October 7th is not going to break them. If the past tragedies were overcome by life and by love and by all these things, we have every reason to believe this is, too. Now, that doesn't take away the risk and the pain in the interim. I do admit there are people who have become depressed and given up. But my answer is that we have to be witnesses and tell them it's too soon to give up. Don't underestimate the Jewish people, really. Don't underestimate this incredible record in itself. When people want to say, is this a good investment person? What's the test? I say, well, what's his past record? How much has he succeeded in the past?
Given the past record of the Jewish people, as I say, I think this should be a moment of sadness and of pain, but also of hope and of real expectation. I say, again, I can't wait. I look forward to it. It's a good joke. After of the Exodus, the greatest revolution of our history, came the Bible out of that experience. After the destruction of the Temple, the greatest destruction of our period, came the Talmud, the second greatest creation of Jewish people.
Now I say to myself, our in time, we have an exodus state of Israel greater than the biblical, and we have a destruction of the Holocaust greater than… what's going to come now? I hope it'll be greater and more transformative for the whole world than ever before.
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, this book, “The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism”, really does give a picture of a Judaism that transforms the world and has a message for Jews, has a message for non-Jews, invites non-Jews to be part of the building of the world with us, and to be having a conversation with you on October 7th about God, about the Jewish people, about history, about Torah, mitzvot, and halakhah, which you brought up via Rabbi Soloveitchik.
And then to have in the second part of our conversation this discussion of October seventh and the really grave danger that you're grandchildren, my children are still facing. But your determination to see this in the larger context of Jewish history and to see it as an expression of the Jewish people's vitality is, I think, an incredible gift. As you were just talking, and you mentioned the Fackenheim comment about the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, and your own take on the Fackenheim comment. I thought to myself, I wish we had this conversation before Rosh Hashanah, so then when I was sitting in shul and reading about the Binding of Isaac, I would have your voice ringing in my ears. But the truth of the matter is that everybody that's had the privilege of listening to you or studying with you, and now, thank God, the thousands of people who are going to have the privilege of hearing your voice through this book, “The Triumph of Life”, are going to hear you and your voice and your image and your vision for Judaism ringing in their ears.
And for your taking the time at such a fraught period and such a busy period for you with the book to have this conversation with all of us. I'm very, very grateful. I was deeply grateful for all of those years of study with you 30 years ago. Consider you to be my teacher all these many decades through. Mazel Tov, once again, on the appearance of the book, and wishing you great success with it, and to you and Blu, many years of health to come.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Music credits: Medieval poem by Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gvirol. Melody and performance by Shaked Jehuda and Eyal Gesundheit. Production by Eyal Gesundheit. To view a video of their performance, see this YouTube:
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