To the Editor:
The review of Milton Steinberg’s Anatomy of Faith by Ben Halpern [June] is a shameful travesty. The reviewer confesses his contempt for theology, insisting that the notion that “this or any other age need look to theology for its regeneration is entirely unfounded.” With such a conviction, is he qualified to judge a theological work? . . .
For an honest estimate of the volume, I refer your readers to the Saturday Review for June 4. The writer, Dr. Joseph D. Huntley, minister of the Broadway Congregational Church, concludes with these words: “Steinberg’s book is a Te Deum to hope, courage, and rationalism in an age where these qualities are not easily found.”
Is there not something basically wrong when a Christian minister finds a book by a rabbi on religious thought and on Judaism inspiring, and a Jew ridicules and lampoons it, and does so in a magazine published under Jewish auspices, and which should have an affirmative approach to Judaism?
(Rabbi) Theodore N. Lewis
Progressive Synagogue
Brooklyn, New York
[Mr. Halpern—who is the author of The American Jew—called the essays collected in Anatomy of Faith “superb examples of religious teaching” but contested the claim (made by Arthur A. Cohen and Will Herberg) that Steinberg was an important Jewish theologian.—Ed.]
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