Reading Rabbi Irving Greenberg’s “Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism”
Rabbi Serge Lippe
Intermittent Wednesdays at 6:30pm, starting November 6^th.
(Library)

Brooklyn born, Yeshiva Beis Yosef (ordained), Brooklyn College (BA scl) and Harvard University (MA & PhD), Rabbi ‘Yitz’ Greenberg was a founder of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry; Jewish chaplain of Brandeis University; rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center; associate professor of history at Yeshiva University; founder, chairman, and professor in the department of Jewish studies of the City College of New York, past-President of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.
The Triumph of Life is Rabbi Greenberg’s magnum opus—a narrative of the relationship between God and humanity as expressed in the Jewish journey through modernity, the Holocaust, the creation of Israel, and the birth of Judaism’s next era. Greenberg describes Judaism’s utopian vision of a world created by a God who loves life, who invites humans to live on the side of life, and who enables the forces of life to triumph over death. The Bible proclaims our mission of tikkun olam, repairing the world, such that every human image of God is sustained in the fullness of our dignity. To achieve this ideal, Judaism offers the method of covenant—a realistic, personal, incremental partnership between God and humanity across generations in which human beings grow ever more responsible for world repair.
Greenberg calls on us to redirect humanity’s unprecedented power in modernity to overcome poverty, oppression, inequality, sickness, and war. The work of covenant requires an ethic of power—one that advances life collaboratively and at a human pace—so that the Jewish people and all humanity can bring the world toward the triumph of life.