Moshe Halbertal
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Moshe Halbertal, a Jewish philosppher, is a professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Hebrew University. He is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. From 1988-92 he was a fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows (1988-92.) Halbertal has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and New York University Law School.
B.A. (Jewish Thought and Philosophy), Hebrew University, cum laude, 1984 Ph.D., Hebrew University, 1989
Halbertal was reared in Israel in a modern Orthodox family. He was born in Uruguay. His father was a Holocaust survivor, his mother was Israeli who had come to Uruguay to teach Hebrew. [1]
Halbertal was awarded the Bruno Award of the Rothschild Foundation, and the Goren Goldstein award for the best book in Jewish thought in the years 1997-2000.
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[edit] Positions
[edit] Orthodoxy
According to Halbertal, what “distinguishes between the so-called ultra-Orthodox point of view and a modern Orthodox or modern approach (is) that tradition doesn’t monopolise all of value, all of truth.” [2]
[edit] Religion and State
Halbertal believes that the Israeli government ought to finance and subsidize religious education, synagogues and mikvahs, but not impost doctrinal tests on these institutions. In his view, individuals should have an equal opportunity to form orthodox, reform, or other kinds of congregations with the same access to state funding. [3]
[edit] Democracy
Halbertal is profoundly committed to the democratic process. “Democracy is a non-violent form of adjudicating different ideologies. It’s very easy to be non-violent when stakes are low; in Israel we are in a condition where the stakes are very high. It’s a tribute to Israel that it has managed to maintain democracy under such conditions of diversity and high political stakes. I would like to see other western states deal with this condition without becoming fascistic.” [4]
[edit] Publications
- Judaism and the Challenges of Modern Life , co-authored with Donniel Hartman (Continuum 2007)
- Between Torah and Wisdom: Menachem ha-Meiri and the Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence (Magnes Press, 2000)
- Interpretative Revolutions in the Making (Magnes Press, 1997)
- People of the Book: Canon, Meaning and Authority (Harvard University Press, 1997)
- Idolatry : (1998) co-authored with Avishai Margalit and Naomi Goldblum
- Concealment and Revelation: The Secret and its Boundaries in Medieval Jewish Thought (Yeriot, 2001)
