(1903-1950). U.S. Jewish philosopher, theologian, and rabbi. Born in Rochester, New York, Steinberg studied at City College, New York, where he encountered the philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen, whose critical methods and emphasis on reason influenced him, as did Bergson and Schopenhauer, the subjects of his master's dissertation. He also studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was particularly influenced by Mordecai M. Kaplan with his emphasis on Jewish peoplehood, the need for change, the use of one's critical faculties, and naturalistic approaches to belief. As a congregational rabbi, Steinberg first served in Indianapolis and then, from 1933, at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York. He was actively involved in communal and educational affairs and in Zionism. His first book, The Making of the Modern Jew (1934), was followed by A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem (1945) and Basic Judaism (1947). He also wrote the novel As a Driven Leaf (1939), about the heretical tanna Elisha Ben Avuyah.
Following his early death, notes and articles that he left were collected by Arthur A. Cohen in a posthumous volume, Anatomy of Faith (1960). Steinberg was active in Jewish Reconstructionism, believing in much of its program and ideology, but disagreed with Kaplan's theological position. He called for an enlightened modern faith, a belief in God which took into account science and modern knowledge, one far removed from simple, fundamentalist concepts but which left room for God as an active force in the world of men. Reason could not be the sole criterion of judgment, nor could it enable man to penetrate the realm of faith, since God is more than the world he perceives---the essence of all being.
