Louis Finkelstein - Scholarship

Scholarship

Even at his busiest, Finkelstein left time for scholarship. Friends said he rose every morning at 4 A.M. to study and write until he went to synagogue at 7 A.M. He was the author or editor of more than 100 books, both scholarly and popular.

Finkelstein authored a number of books, including Tradition in the Making, Beliefs and Practices of Judaism, Pre-Maccabean Documents in the Passover Haggadah, Abot of Rabbi Nathan, (a three volume series on The Pharisees), and Akiba: Scholar, Saint and Martyr. He also edited a three volume series entitled The Jews: Their History (vol 1), Their Religion and Culture (vol 2), Their Role in Civilization (vol 3).

His major scholarly pursuits were works on the Pharisees, a Jewish sect in second Temple times from which modern Jewish tradition developed, and the Sifra, the oldest rabbinic commentary on the book of Leviticus, which was completed in Palestine in the fifth century.

Among his other works were "New Light from the Prophets," published in 1969, and "The Jews: Their History, Culture and Religion," a three-volume work last published in 1971.

Even in his retirement he continued writing, working at the dining room table of his Riverside Drive apartment to complete several annotated volumes of the Sifra. When he became frail in his later years and had trouble walking to the synagogue, his former students turned his home into a synagogue on Saturday mornings, assembling the quorum of 10 needed for prayer. This group gradually evolved into Kehilat Orach Eliezer, which means "Congregation of the Way of Eliezer" (Eliezer was Louis Finkelstein's given name in Hebrew—and the congregation is popularly abbreviated as "KOE"). This synagogue is notable for being a large halakhic congregation that nevertheless strives to accommodate women's participation in public prayer services as much as possible within the parameters established by Jewish law as the group understands it. It meets on Manhattan's Upper West Side.