It's More Than L'chaim: Judaism Is a Celebration of Life. With Rabbi Irving Greenberg

First, this modern Orthodox rabbi was one of the first rabbis to really touch my life and to engage me in what my Protestant colleagues would call “formation.”

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg was a congregational rabbi in Riverdale, NY; the founder of the Jewish studies program at City College of New York; the creator of CLAL, the Center for Learning and Leadership – which is a think tank for Jewish pluralism and intra-Jewish conversation.

I first met Rabbi Greenberg and his wife, Blu, the major Jewish feminist leader, when he engaged me to work with a bunch of modern Orthodox teenagers on a CLAL retreat.

That encounter with Rabbi Greenberg, whom I would come to know as Yitz or Rabbi Yitz, changed my perception of Orthodox Jews and Orthodox Judaism. It made me more open to seeing the Jews as a unified people, and not just a discrete collection of ideologies.

Yes: this Orthodox rabbi helped shape the world view of this Reform rabbi. His vision of an observant Judaism that was open to the world and freely encountered the world moved me – so much so, that decades later, I would become a regular participant in the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, founded by Rabbi Greenberg’s colleague, the late Rabbi David Hartman – also an Orthodox rabbi, and like Yitz, also a rebel.

The second way in which Rav Yitz is my oldest friend in the rabbinate: he is 91 years old, and he has just published his magnum opus, his master work, the culmination of everything that he has taught for so long -- "The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism."

This is the book that Yitz's students -- and frankly, the Jewish world -- has been waiting for for more than a half century.