Neil Gillman (September 11, 1933 – November 24, 2017) was a Canadian-American rabbi and philosopher affiliated with Conservative Judaism.

Early life and education

Neil Gillman was born on September 11, 1933, in Quebec City, Canada, then home to a small Jewish community. Raised in a household without access to a yeshiva or kosher butcher, he was strongly influenced by his grandmother's dedication to Jewish traditions. He studied philosophy and French literature at McGill University, where a lecture by sociologist Will Herberg sparked his interest in Jewish philosophy. Advised to deepen his grounding in Jewish texts, he enrolled at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, studying under Rabbis Mordecai Kaplan and Abraham Joshua Heschel. Ordained in 1960, he began teaching at the seminary while earning a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 1975. He was a professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in Manhattan for 46 years and served as dean of its rabbinical school for a decade. Beginning in the 1980s, he published widely during a period of identity crisis within Conservative Judaism, which he once described as "an Orthodox faculty teaching Conservative rabbis to minister to Reform Jews." His theological work helped shape the movement's evolving approach to Jewish belief and law (Halakha).

Gillman wrote a regular "Sabbath Week" column for The Jewish Week and served on the advisory committee of Sh'ma, a prominent newsletter focused on emerging trends in Jewish thought and practice.

Books

  • Believing and Its Tensions: A Personal Conversation about God, Torah, Suffering and Death in Jewish Thought, Jewish Lights, 2013.
  • Doing Jewish Theology: God, Torah and Israel in Modern Judaism, Jewish Lights, 2008.
  • Traces of God: Seeing God in Torah, History and Everyday Life, Jewish Lights, 2006.
  • The Jewish Approach to God: A Brief Introduction for Christians, Jewish Lights, 2003.
  • The Way into Encountering God in Judaism, Jewish Lights, 2000.
  • The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought, Jewish Lights, 1997 (see book abstract).
  • Conservative Judaism: The New Century, Behrman House, 1993.
  • Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew, Jewish Publication Society, 1992.
  • Gabriel Marcel on Religious Knowledge, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1980.

Festschrift

  • Plevan, William (ed.), Personal theology : essays in honor of Neil Gillman. Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2013.

Awards

  • 1991: National Jewish Book Award in the Jewish Thought category for Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew

See also

  • American philosophy
  • List of American philosophers

References

  • The Problematics of Myth
  • Torah From Terror (Edited with Rabbi Jason Miller)
  • Neil Gillman at the Jewish Theological Seminary.