Moshe Halbertal ( he, משה הלברטל; born

Montevideo Montevideo () is the capital and largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . Montevideo is situated on the southern co ...

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del 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 ...

, 1958) is an

Israeli Israeli may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel * Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel * Modern Hebrew, a language * ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008 * Guni Israeli (b ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

, and

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, ...

, a noted expert on

Maimonides Musa ibn Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (); la, Moses Maimonides and also referred to by the acronym Rambam ( he, רמב״ם), was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah ...

, 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 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), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

Biography

Born in

, he made

aliyah Aliyah (, ; he, עֲלִיָּה ''ʿălīyyā'', ) is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel, which is in the modern era chiefly represented by the State of Israel. Traditionally descri ...

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

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

survivor from

Łańcut Łańcut (, approximately "wine-suit"; yi, לאַנצוט, Lantzut; uk, Ла́ньцут, Lánʹtsut; german: Landshut) is a town in south-eastern Poland, with 18,004 inhabitants, as of 2 June 2009. Situated in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship ( ...

Galicia (Central-Eastern Europe) Galicia ()"Galicia"
''

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

.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. 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 intell ...

. Halbertal has been a visiting professor at

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & World ...

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each c ...

, and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

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

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

, Israel. 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 The ''Jewish Review of Books'' is a quarterly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs from a Jewish perspective. It is published in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The magazine was launched in 2010 with an editorial board that ...

. 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, synagogues, and

mikvah Mikveh or mikvah (, ''mikva'ot'', ''mikvoth'', ''mikvot'', or (Yiddish) ''mikves'', lit., "a collection") is a bath used for the purpose of ritual immersion in Judaism to achieve ritual purity. Most forms of ritual impurity can be purif ...

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 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.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 People from Montevideo Philosophers of Judaism Israeli people of Polish-Jewish descent Harvard Fellows New York University faculty Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty 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 Yeshivat Har Etzion