Milton Steinberg

As a Driven Leaf

Milton Steinberg's As a Driven Leaf is no literary masterpiece.  But the novel, with its story of a notorious 2nd-century, C.E. heretic, has been in print for 75 years.  What accounts for the book's appeal to generations of modern Jews? 

The Conscience of a Jewish Conservative

A Jewish thinker is normally someone devoted to the study and interpretation of Jewish texts, Jewish history, Jewish issues, Jewish ideas. The late Irving Kristol (1920–2009) was, for the most part, something else: a consummate American intellectual.

Milton Steinberg

A different sort of book launch took place yesterday at New York's Park Avenue Synagogue, a flagship of the Conservative movement. Being celebrated was the release of a long-lost novel left unfinished at the time of the author's death 60 years ago. The author was Milton Steinberg, who once served as the synagogue's rabbi and was among the most influential American Jews of the 20th century.   Steinberg's early thought was molded by three teachers. At City College, the philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen imbued in him a commitment to philosophical rationalism. Rabbi Jacob Kohn taught him that the life of the...