RABBI DR. ELIEZER BERKOVITS was born in Transylvania in 1908. He received his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg at the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin and his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Berlin in the 1930s. After escaping Germany in December 1938, Berkovits served as a communal rabbi in Leeds, England, Sydney, Australia and Boston, before assuming the chair of the philosophy department at the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago in 1958. He moved to Jerusalem in 1975, where he lived and worked until his death in 1992. Berkovits wrote over 50 articles and 19 books, which, while demonstrating an unflagging devotion to Halakhah, nevertheless reflected a sharp dissatisfaction with the dramatic changes that Orthodoxy had undergone during his lifetime. He defines Halakhah as “the wisdom of the application of the written word of the Torah to the life and history of the Jewish people.” His influential books include Not in Heaven, Faith after the Holocaust, With God in Hell, and God, Man and History.
