, 1958), is a noted Israeli Jewish philosopher, professor and writer.

Biography

He is a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute

Shalom Hartman Institute

Shalom Hartman Institute is a Jewish research and education institute based in Jerusalem, Israel, that offers pluralistic Jewish thought and education to scholars, rabbis, educators, and Jewish community leaders in Israel and North America...

 in Jerusalem, Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Hebrew University, and a faculty member at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem, Israel. From 1988-92 he was a fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows

Harvard Society of Fellows

The Harvard Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginning of their careers by Harvard University for extraordinary scholarly potential, upon whom distinctive academic and intellectual opportunities are bestowed in order to foster their individual growth and intellectual...

 (1988-92). Halbertal has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

, the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 Law School, and New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 Law School. 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.

Halbertal was reared in Israel in a modern Orthodox family. His father was a Holocaust survivor from Łańcut, Galicia (Central-Eastern Europe), his mother an Israeli who had come to Uruguay to teach Hebrew.

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

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 New York City....

.

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

Mikvah

Mikveh is a bath used for the purpose of ritual immersion in Judaism...

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)

translated from Hebrew by Jackie Feldman as Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and its Philosophical Implications (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)