PART NINE Jacob B. Agus as Pulpit Rabbi Selections and Prefatory Remarks by Mark Loeb
25 The Covenant Concept—Particularistic, Pluralistic, or Futuristic?
Bibliography of the Works of Jacob B. Agus
PREFACE
Steven T. Katz
The present anthology, culled from the voluminous writings of Rabbi Jacob B. Agus, is intended to make available in one easily accessible work a sampling of Rabbi Agus’ large and important corpus of published and unpublished material. In addition, it serves as a compilation of primary materials that complements and runs parallel to a new set of original essays on the thought of Rabbi Agus published by New York University Press in 1996 under the title American Rabbi: The Life and Thought of Jacob B. Agus and edited by Steven T. Katz.
The selections of Agusana reprinted here were made by the distinguished contributors to the parallel volume of original papers. In each case the selector chose material that he felt would illuminate the particular subject matter of his contribution to American Rabbi. Thus the two publications are closely interconnected and readers will benefit from consulting both, though each stands on its own resources. A full table of contents for the second collection can be found at the end of this Preface.
AMERICAN RABBI: THE LIFE AND THOUGHT OF JACOB B. AGUS
1. Jacob B. Agus: An Introductory Overview Steven T. Katz
2. Jacob B. Agus: A Personal Portrait Norton D. Shargel
3. Jacob B. Agus as a Student of Modern Jewish Philosophy David Novak
4. Jacob B. Agus as a Student of Medieval Jewish Philosophy and Mysticism David R. Blumenthal
5. Jacob B. Agus and Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A View from the Christian Side Eugene J. Fisher
6. Jacob Agus’ Ideology of American Judaism: American Jews or Jewish Americans? Milton R. Konvitz
7. The Concept of God in the Theology of Jacob B. Agus William E. Kaufman
8. Jacob B. Agus on the Meaning of Jewish History and Experience Neil Gillman
9. Jacob B. Agus and the Conservative Movement Mordecai Waxman
10. Jewish Law as Standards Elliot N. Dorff
11. Jacob B. Agus as Pulpit Rabbi Mark Loeb Bibliography of the Works of Jacob B. Agus
SELECTORS
DAVID R. BLUMENTHAL is Jay and Leslie Cohen Professor of Judaic Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.
ELLIOT N. DORFF is professor of philosophy at the University of Judaism, Los Angeles, California.
EUGENE J. FISHER is director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Bishops, Washington, D.C.
NEIL GILLMAN is Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Associate Professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York City, New York.
STEVEN T. KATZ is director of the Center for Jewish Studies and professor of religion at Boston University.
WILLIAM E. KAUFMAN is rabbi of Temple Beth-El, Fall River, Massachusetts.
MILTON R. KONVITZ is professor emeritus at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
MARK LOEB is rabbi of Congregation Beth El, Baltimore, Maryland.
DAVID NOVAK is Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto and Vice President of the Union for Traditional Judaism.
MORDECAI WAXMAN is rabbi of Temple Israel, Great Neck, New York.
The Essential Agus
1
JACOB B. AGUS—AN INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW
Steven T. Katz
LIFE
JACOB AGUS (Agushewitz) was born into a distinguished rabbinical family in the month of Heshvan 5671—corresponding to November 2, 1911—in the shtetl of Sislevitch (Swislocz), situated in the Grodno Dubornik region of Poland. Descended through both parents from distinguished rabbinical lines (his mother being a member of the Katznellenbogen family), the young Agus, one of a family of seven children—four boys and three girls—early on showed signs of intellectual and religious precocity. After receiving tutoring at home and in the local heder, he joined his older brothers, Irving and Haim, as a student at the Mizrachi-linked Tachnemoni yeshiva in Bialystock. Here he continued his intensive talmudic and classical studies, winning high praise as an illui (a genius) from the faculty of the yeshiva, and also began to be exposed to the wide variety of Jewish lifestyles and intellectual positions—ranging from secularist and bundist to Hasidic—that existed among Eastern European Jews. Raised in an almost totally Jewish environment, he knew little Polish and had limited relations with the non-Jewish world.
In the mid-1920s, as economic and political conditions worsened in Poland, many members of the Jewish community of Sislevitch emigrated to Palestine. This migratory wave also included the Agushewitzes, who arrived in Palestine in 1925. Unfortunately, the economic conditions and the religious life of the Yishuv, the emerging Jewish community in the land of Israel, were not favorable, and the Agushewitz family, including Jacob, now sixteen, moved again in 1927. This time they traveled to America, where Jacob’s father, R. Yehuda Leib, had relocated one year earlier to fill the position of rabbi in an East Side New York synagogue. R. Yehuda Leib later became a schochet (ritual slaughterer).
The family settled in Boro Park (Brooklyn), and Jacob, who already was able to read and write in English at a high school level, attended the high school connected with Yeshiva University. This marked a turning point in his personal life, for in this American yeshiva not only did students pursue a talmudic curriculum but—on the ideological presumption that all true human