Word: rubenstein
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...happens, Rubenstein, 44, is not a disaffected atheist but an ordained rabbi in good standing and a Jewish chaplain at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also teaches humanities. One of the most interesting of American Judaism's younger theologians, he is at least a spiritual cousin of Christianity's "death-of-God" thinkers, who are considerably more enthusiastic about his work than are Rubenstein's fellow Jews...
Ocean & Waves. Rubenstein, who has an M.A. from Jewish Theological Seminary and a doctorate in psychology of religion from Harvard, expressed his disbelief in Judaism's traditional deity in After Auschwitz, a collection of essays published in 1966. There he argued that Hitler's holocaust was deathly proof that the "transcendent, theistic God of Jewish patriarchal monotheism" was no more. Strongly influenced by the late Paul Tillich, Rubenstein nonetheless concludes that there is a "Holy Nothingness" as the source of all being. This Holy Nothingness is totally beyond human comprehension or categorization, and he compares its relationship with...
Although he has much in common with today's Christian radicals, Rubenstein is critical of them. He rejects the optimism voiced by William Hamilton and Thomas Altizer, who argue that God's death makes possible the freedom of man to achieve spiritual maturity. "The death of God as a cultural event is undeniable," answers Rubenstein, "but this is no reason to dance at the funeral," for man alone is incapable of eliminating tragedy from life...
...Rubenstein believes that religion still has a worthwhile social value in an age of atheism. He is convinced that it can help men live with "the cold, indifferent cosmos" by providing a form of fellowship and hope, primarily through spiritually satisfying liturgy and ritual. "The primary role of religion is priestly," Rubenstein argues. "It offers men a ritual and mythic structure in which the abiding realities of life and death can be shared...
Primal Crime. In a new book called The Religious Imagination (Bobbs-Merrill; $5.95), Rubenstein presents a historical and psychoanalytical study of how the Jewish religion has been a source of spiritual strength. The focus of his interest is the influences that shaped the Haggada-the body of legend and myth contained in the rabbinical Talmud. Rubenstein accepts Freud's thesis that the God of Genesis actually grew out of guilt felt for a "primal crime," in which primitive men cannibalistically devoured their fathers out of both jealousy and a desire to identify with them; in time, the father image...