Wurzburger, Walter 1920-2002

views updated

WURZBURGER, Walter 1920-2002

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born March 29, 1920, in Munich, Germany; immigrated to the United States, 1938; naturalized citizen; died April 16, 2002, in New York, NY. Rabbi, educator, and author. Wurzburger came to the United States as Nazi attacks on Jews were intensifying and enrolled at Yeshiva University, from which he graduated and was ordained an Orthodox rabbi. He followed with both a master's degree and doctorate from Harvard University. He served congregations in Massachusetts, Toronto, Canada, and New York, retiring in 1994 from Congregation Shaaray Tefila in Lawrence, New York. From 1962 until 1988 Wurzburger was editor of Tradition, an Orthodox journal, and from 1967 until March of 2002 he was part of the philosophy faculty at Yeshiva University. Wurzburger wrote Ethics of Responsibility: Pluralistic Approaches to Covenantal Ethics in 1994 and God Is Proof Enough in 2000. His first book considers whether Halakhah (Jewish law) allows people to make choices based on other ethical systems, which Wurzburger argued it did if such systems were based on "religiously significant issues." His second book focuses on belief. For many years Wurzburger was president of the Synagogue Council of America, an umbrella agency for Conservative, Orthodox, and Reform Jewish groups.