The Making of the Modern Jew

Milton Steinberg was a well-known and influential Conservative rabbi in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Rochester, New York, he received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1928. After leading a congregation in Indianapolis for five years, he was appointed rabbi of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City in 1933, where he remained until his untimely death. He was greatly influenced by Mordecai Kaplan, although he was critical of Reconstructionism for its lack of philosophical attention to God. His historical novel As a Driven Leaf (1939), which examines tensions between religion and philosophy through the life of the second-century heretic Elisha ben Abuyah, has never been out of print.