About the Book

October 2026

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Volume 1

In Life Against Death, Volume 1, Rabbi Irving Greenberg curates, introduces, and reflects on the most important essays written over the course of his lifetime on the United States and Israel, from 1965 to 2025. These influential works recognized as classic in his oeuvre identify turning points in Jewish life, along with policies key to successful Jewish living in the modern world.

Greenberg begins by reflecting on the universal struggle of life against death in the world. Judaism and the Jewish people are meant to serve as an avant-garde in repairing the world by overcoming the enemies of life, including oppression and war. In Part 1, “America,” he champions an enrichment of Jewish life and an embrace of pluralism as necessary responses to Jews’ acceptance in open society and endangerment from totalitarianism. In Part 2, “Israel,” he offers vision and guidance on the religious significance of the State of Israel, on interactions of Israel and American Jewry, and on a new ethic of power that relinquishes purity for the opportunity to create real life in the real world.

New introductions to each essay narrate behind-the-scenes stories and breakthroughs formative to its contents, as well as Greenberg’s hindsight: evolving thoughts, recognitions of past errors, comparisons of his predictions versus realities, and insights on relevance of the core principles in our changed times.

Two essays have never been published before: “The Religious Significance of the State of Israel,” given as a conference paper in 1970, and “Israel and World Jewry After October 7,” written in 2025 as a needed response to the fundamental transformation of Israel’s image and world status.

Readers will get to know Greenberg as a thought leader, an activist, a man, and a Jew.

This book is also available as part of a two-volume set at the link below:

Life Against Death, 2-Volume Set

Praise

“A monumental work, and a must read! Yitz Greenberg’s two-volume set of essays chronicling fifty years of the Jewish condition and the human condition is a veritable Maimonidean Guide for the Perplexed for our troubled times. And more: it is a call to choose life, and thereby repair the Jewish condition and the human condition one good deed at a time.”—Irwin Cotler, founder and international chair, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights

“Life Against Death encapsulates Rabbi Yitz Greenberg’s moral clarity, theological daring, and relentless commitment to life even in the shadow of profound rupture. His voice is wise, demanding, and ever hopeful, and his humanity is felt deeply on every page.”—Rabbi Sharon Brous, senior and founding rabbi of IKAR

“When one of the most searching moral voices in modern Jewish thought reflects on the essays that have shaped generations of Jewish thinking through the lens of his lifetime, what emerges is a deeply humane theology—one forged in catastrophe, tested by power, and animated by responsibility and hope. At a moment when the Jewish future feels uncertain, Irving Greenberg offers not reassurance but courage: a clear-eyed insistence that renewal remains possible, and that choosing life is still our task.”—Abigail Pogrebin, author of My Jewish Year

“Yitz Greenberg has been my mentor, teacher, role model, and rabbi since we were teenagers in Boro Park, Jewish summer camp, and Brooklyn College. He is the wisest man I know. I read everything he writes and listen to everything he says. So should you.”—Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus, Harvard Law School

“Rabbi Dr. Yitz Greenberg’s Life Against Death is nothing less than a treasure of Jewish moral imagination—six decades of wisdom distilled into essays that challenge, uplift, and transform. My beloved teacher’s voice rings with courage and compassion, reminding us that covenantal hope can triumph over even the deepest fractures of our age. This collection is a gift to all who seek a Judaism that celebrates life and tirelessly elevates the world.”—Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, Valley Beit Midrash, Phoenix