Richard Lowell Rubenstein (January 8, 1924 – May 16, 2021) was a rabbi, theologian, educator, and writer, noted particularly for his path-breaking contributions to post-Holocaust theology and his sociopolitical analyses of surplus populations and bureaucracy.
While in Cincinnati, Rubenstein also studied for the rabbinate through the Reform-affiliated Hebrew Union College, where Abraham Joshua Heschel was a faculty member at the time.
Following his ordination in 1952, Rubenstein was the rabbi of two Massachusetts congregations in succession, and then in 1956 became assistant director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation and chaplain to the Jewish students at Harvard University, Radcliffe, and Wellesley, where he served until 1958.
Rubenstein argued that Jews could no longer advocate the notion of an omnipotent God at work in history or espouse the election of Israel as the chosen people.
As ground of being, God participates in all the joys and sorrows of the drama of creation which is, at the same time, the deepest expression of the divine life.
When his work was released in 1966, it appeared at a time when a "death of God" movement was emerging in radical theological discussions among Protestant theologians such as Gabriel Vahanian, Paul Van Buren, William Hamilton, and Thomas J. J. Altizer.
Among those Protestants, the discussions centred on modern secular unbelief, the collapse of the belief in any transcendent order to the universe, and their implications for Christianity.
"[7] During the 1960s, the "Death of God" movement achieved considerable notoriety and was featured as the cover story of the April 8, 1966, edition of Time magazine.
Rubenstein was a defender of the Unification Church and served on its advisory council,[3] as well as on the board of directors of the church-owned Washington Times newspaper.
He understood communism's evil, but he also stood ready to meet with communist leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim Il Sung in the hope of changing or moderating their views.