The Triumph of Life

A Narrative Theology of Judaism

by Rabbi Irving Greenberg

In The Triumph of Life, Rabbi Greenberg—one of the most original Jewish thinkers in a generation—addresses many of the central questions we all ask: Why be Jewish? What is our role in this world? How do we reconcile our understanding of God with the evil that we observe in the world? What gives us hope?

It’s an inspiring and informative book, one you’ll want to have in your library, to pull off the shelf and consult with at different points in your Jewish journey.

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award's Lifetime Achievement Award

2024 Natan Prize Winner

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Reviews

Greenberg’s culmination of nearly a lifetime of effort is a must-read
Tamar Ross Bar-Ilan University

Rabbi Irving Greenberg is a sage for our time. We Christians have much to learn from him, both to deepen our understanding of Jewish traditions and to reanimate our commitment to participate in the common call to engage in world repair.
Mary C. Boys Union Theological Seminary, New York City

The Triumph of Life is exhilarating. It offers us a stunning portrait of the Jewish tradition as a grand drama in which God and the Jewish people dream together of a perfect world and work painstakingly to bring it about. Read this book and you will never see the Jewish tradition the same way again.
Rabbi Shai Held President and Dean at Hadar

Readers will be inspired.
Publishers Weekly

The Triumph of Life is a brilliant, complex, sophisticated, and accessible guide to becoming a better person…
Rabbi Asher Lopatin Former President of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah

With its combination of maturity and freshness, The Triumph of Life reminds one of such late-in-life masterpieces as Verdi's Falstaff or Monet's Water Lilies murals. Dazzling in its breadth and sweep...
Lawrence Kaplan McGill University

For more reviews, visit the book’s Amazon page.

Excerpt From the Book

All Jews alive today are essentially Jews-by-choice … Any person who opts to be identified as a Jew, regardless of the level of commitment to Jewish life, is choosing to be a Jew…

The choice to be a Jew is an act of faith and courage. Philosopher Emil Fackenheim wrote that, after the Holocaust, every Jewish parent expresses more heroism than the greatest biblical patriarch, Abraham …

In many ways, this book is driven by the impact of the Holocaust on me personally … I could not comprehend how such a cruel and catastrophic fate could have been inflicted on Jewry without any visible Divine intervention to stop it. This was an all-out assault on the Jewish body and on the religion that taught the sacredness and infinite value of life. If the world was ultimately to live by a moral order, how could God have not intervened? … Was my former belief – that Judaism offered an ethical vision of a repaired world – an illusion that had to be rejected if Jews were to survive in a harsh real world?

My loving wife and family saved me from nihilism and despair by showing me the incredible tenacity and unspent power of embracing life …

For full excerpt, visit the book’s Amazon page.

About the Author

Rabbi Irving Greenberg—known widely as “Yitz”—is a leading Jewish thinker and activist.

He was ordained by Beth Joseph Rabbinical Seminary of Brooklyn, New York and has a PhD in history from Harvard University. He served in the rabbinate, notably at the Riverdale Jewish Center in the 1960s, and as professor and chairman of the Department of Jewish Studies at CUNY (City University of New York). Together with Elie Wiesel, he founded CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, which offered pluralistic Jewish learning for Jewish communal leadership and programs of intrafaith dialogue for rabbis of every denominational background. He served as founding president of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation, which created such programs as Birthright Israel and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. Rabbi Greenberg was one of the activist/founders of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in the movement to liberate Russian Jewry and served as the chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Rabbi Greenberg has written extensively on post-Holocaust Jewish religious thought, Jewish-Christian relations, pluralism, and the ethics of Jewish power.

He is currently president of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life and senior scholar-in-residence at Hadar.