Philip Reis Alstat (July 15, 1891 – November 29, 1976) was a well-known American Conservative rabbi, teacher, chaplain, speaker and writer.

Born in Kaunas (formerly, Kovno), Lithuania, he came to the United States in 1898,[1] studying at City College of New York (A.B., 1912), Columbia University (A.M., 1915), and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), where he received semikhah, rabbinic ordination, in 1920,[2] and the Doctor of Divinity degree (honoris causa), in 1966.

In 1935, he spoke to a combined meeting of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and Hadassah, declaring that "the solution of the problem of world Jewry lies in the rebuilding of the national Jewish homeland in Palestine."

He stated that World Jewry is now wrestling with a complexity of major problems, such as the combating of anti-Semitism which is rearing its ugly head in various lands; finding a refuge for the persecuted and exiled Jews of Germany; widening the ever-narrowing channels of economic opportunities for Jews; and preserving and transmitting the spiritual heritage of the Jewish people.

"[15] However, while his column and some of his presentations focused on oddities—issues that were "strange to relate" – Alstat was also well known for speaking his mind on the most serious of issues, delivering important messages in eloquent ways.

Rabbi Alstat's address to the 1929 annual RA convention was especially noteworthy because he shared such concerns in a public forum, when he delivered the presentation, Observations on the Status of the Rabbinate.

... How much respect can they have for the authority of their spiritual leader whose position is precarious, whose bread and butter they control, whose brief tenure of office and fear of the annual re-election make him the football of contending factions, an impotent creature whom they can bully, intimidate, and abuse with impunity?

All of them together agree that he is poor in sincerity of principle and constancy of policy, except in his coarse opportunism ... and his insatiable hunger and vulgar striving for publicity.

When I tried to persuade the promising sons of wealthy traditional Jews to enter the Jewish ministry, I was rewarded for my efforts with polite scorn.

The parents, remembering how they regarded and treated their own rabbi, resented the suggestion that their sons voluntarily condemn themselves to lifelong martyrdom.Alstat was an early champion of the rights of women, including their education and their place in academia.

"As an intellectual feminist," Weiss-Rosmarin promoted the study of the liturgy, learning the meaning and history of the prayers, "to stimulate attendance of women at synagogue."

Alstat lived in a JTS dormitory for forty-three years,[6][11] serving as a counselor and mentor for generations of rabbinical students.

When rabbinical students were having a hard time putting together a eulogy for a funeral, he would advise them to ask the relatives, "What kind of a report card do you think this person would have received from God?"

In his talks and even in the eulogies he delivered, he would teach that the way to "appraise and evaluate the life achievements of a rabbi" come from the Talmudic verse,[20] where it is taught that we will be asked two questions: the second, whether we engaged in studies that were "Jewishly cultural and creative?

"[6] Alstat was small in physical stature, 5' 2" tall,[14] but he was a fiery and "towering" orator, whose sermons often created quite a stir among his congregants, and attracted the attention of the media.

It quoted the sermon almost in its entirety, which described ways some Jews were celebrating Christmas by exchanging gifts and singing carols, and concluded as follows: It is not our wish to stir up religious rancor, or to engage in theological disputations or to draw odious comparisons between two faiths.

There is no convenient compromise between the "Mogen Dovid" and the cross, between "Adonai Echod" [note: these are the words, "One God," from the verse that begins with Shema Yisrael] and the Trinitarian conception of the deity.

It is this faith, born of racial experience and wisdom, which gives the oppressed the strength to outlive the oppressors and to endure until the day of ultimate triumph when we shall "be brought forth from bondage unto freedom, from sorrow unto joy, from mourning unto festivity, from darkness unto great light, and from servitude unto redemption.This theme of remembering pain in the past in a way that helped build hope for the future was the focus of a 1938 sermon that was quoted in the New York Times,[24] "Undaunted, we confidently expect that some day, somehow, the present low ebb of liberty and democracy will be followed by a rising tide whose onrush will irresistibly wash away the ramparts of tyranny."

From the fact that the story of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah is recorded in the Catholic Bible's Book of Maccabees, but not in the Hebrew Bible; to the way the ancient Jewish prayer for the New Moon had to be changed after the first lunar Moon landing—taking out the phrase, "but we have never touched you"; to the fact that, after World War II, German money helped print a 17-volume edition of the Talmud – when the Survivors' Talmud (also known as the U.S. Army Talmud, because it was dedicated to the U.S. Army) was published, based on the realization that many Jews in the displaced persons camps were as hungry for Jewish books as they were for food; to scientific theories offered by a Russian about the way an unusual alignment of the planets caused the splitting of the Red Sea; to the way Talmudic rabbis, not Benjamin Franklin, invented the lightning rod,[26] his articles were read by lay people and Jewish leaders alike.

Additionally, in letters to the editor and personal correspondence, readers would write about "their indebtedness to him for their revived interest in Torah and the people of Israel.".

He wanted to meet Pope Nicklaus III on the eve of the Jewish New Year and persuade the leader of the world's Roman Catholics to become a Jew.

Abulafia was jailed for 28 days and then released.In addition to this column, he wrote frequent book reviews, including one of the first for The Earth is the Lord's, by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

He was a gifted spiritual mentor, a masgiach ruchani, whose wisdom kindled light when we were in darkness, whose counsel brought direction when we were lost in confusion, whose encouragement offered hope when we were caught in despair.