Moshe Halbertal (; born

Montevideo Montevideo (, ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,302,954 (about 37.2% of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

, 1958) is an

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

, and

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles, genres and techniques to communicate ideas, to inspire feelings and emotions, or to entertain. Writers may develop different forms of writing such as novels, short sto ...

, a noted expert on

Maimonides Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and Jewish philosophy, philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah schola ...

, and co-author of the Israeli Army Code of Ethics. He currently holds positions as the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

and Gruss Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. In 2021 he was elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

Biography

Born in

, he made

aliyah ''Aliyah'' (, ; ''ʿălīyyā'', ) is the immigration of Jews from Jewish diaspora, the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel or the Palestine (region), Palestine region, which is today chiefly represented by the Israel ...

to Israel. Halbertal was reared in Israel in a modern Orthodox family. His father was a

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

survivor from

Łańcut Łańcut (, ; ; ) is a town in south-eastern Poland, with 18,004 inhabitants, as of 2 June 2009. Situated in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship (since 1999), it is the Capital (political), capital of Łańcut County. History Archeological investigat ...

, Galicia (Central-Eastern Europe), his mother an Israeli who had come to Uruguay to teach

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

.The philosopher, the Jewish State, its democracy and the future
He received his B.A. in Jewish Thought and Philosophy from Hebrew University, cum laude, in 1984, and his PhD from Hebrew University in 1989. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the topic '"Values as interpretative criteria in Jewish law" under the supervision of Menachem Elon and

Avishai Margalit Avishai Margalit (; born 1939) is an Israeli professor emeritus in philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 2006 to 2011, he served as the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Early life and ...

. From 1988 to 1992, he was a fellow at the

Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intellect ...

. Halbertal has been a visiting professor at

Yale Law School Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United ...

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

, and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

Law School. He is a faculty member at th
Mandel School for Educational Leadership
in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. He received the Rothschild Foundation's Bruno Award and the Goren Goldstein Award for the "Best Book in Jewish Thought" in the years 1997-2000. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Jewish Review of Books. He was married to Dr. Tova Hartman, and they have three daughters.

Positions

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 monopolize all of value, all of truth".

Religion and State

Halbertal believes that the Israeli government ought to finance and subsidize

religious education In secular usage, religious education is the teaching of a particular religion (although in the United Kingdom the term ''religious instruction'' would refer to the teaching of a particular religion, with ''religious education'' referring to t ...

synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...

s, and

mikvah A mikveh or mikvah (, ''mikva'ot'', ''mikvot'', or ( Ashkenazic) ''mikves'', lit., "a collection") is a bath used for ritual immersion in Judaism to achieve ritual purity. In Orthodox Judaism, these regulations are steadfastly adhered t ...

s, but not impose 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.

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."

Publications

* ''Idolatry'', co-authored with Avishai Margalit, translated by Naomi Goldblum (Harvard University Press, 1992) * ''Interpretative Revolutions in the Making'' (Hebrew) (Magnes Press, 1997) * ''People of the Book: Canon, Meaning and Authority'' (Harvard University Press, 1997) * ''Between Torah and Wisdom: Menachem ha-Meiri and the Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence'' (Hebrew) (Magnes Press, 2000) (Goldstein-Goren award for the best book in Jewish thought in the years 1997-2000) * ''Concealment and Revelation: The Secret and its Boundaries in Medieval Jewish Thought'' (Yeriot, 2001) * ''Esotericism in Jewish Thought and its Philosophical Implications (translated from Hebrew by Jackie Feldman as Concealment and Revelation'' (Princeton University Press, 2007) * ''By Way of Truth: Nachmanides and the Creation of Tradition'' (Hebrew) (Shalom Hartman Institute, 2006) * ''Judaism and the Challenges of Modern Life'', co-edited with Donniel Hartman (Continuum, 2007) * ''Maimonides'' (Hebrew) (Merkaz Zalman Shazar series, 2009) * ''On Sacrifice'' (Princeton University Press, 2012) * ''Maimonides: Life and Thought'' (Princeton University Press, 2013) * ''The Birth of Doubt: Confronting Uncertainty in Early Rabbinic Literature'' (Brown Judaic Studies, 2020) *''Nahmanides: Law and Mysticism'' (Yale University Press, 2020)

Awards

2013:

National Jewish Book Award The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1943, is an American organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature. The goal of the council, as stated on its website, is "to promote the reading, writing and publishing of qual ...

in the Scholarship category for ''Maimonides: Life and Thought''

References

External links

Hartman Institute Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Halbertal, Moshe 1958 births Uruguayan emigrants to Israel Uruguayan Orthodox Jews Uruguayan people of Israeli descent Uruguayan people of Polish-Jewish descent Academics from Montevideo Philosophers of Judaism Israeli people of Polish-Jewish descent Harvard Fellows New York University faculty Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Members of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Living people University of Pennsylvania Law School faculty Critics of Christianity Members of the American Philosophical Society Israeli Modern Orthodox Jews Anti-Christian sentiment in South America Yeshivat Har Etzion alumni Israeli philosophers