FRIEDMAN, THEODORE

FRIEDMAN, THEODORE (1908–1992), U.S. Conservative rabbi and scholar. Friedman was born in Stamford, Conn. He was a graduate of the City College of New York (1929) and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary (1931). He received his Ph.D. two decades later from Columbia University (1952). As was common in the rabbinate of his day, Friedman moved from congregation to congregation before finding his permanent prestigious pulpit. He served as rabbi of Beth El in North Bergen, N.J. (1931–42), Beth David in Bufflalo (1942–44), the Jewish Center of Jackson Heights, N.Y., during 1944–54, and from 1954 until his retirement in 1970 of Beth El of South Orange, N.J., then a growing suburb of Newark during the first great wave of suburbanization. He then moved to Jerusalem. A leader of the centrist group within Conservative Judaism, which advocates controlled change within Jewish law, Friedman served as chairman of the Law Committee, where he worked with the Jewish Theological Seminary on solving the problem of the agunah . The result was a joint Law Conference of the Seminary. He was co-chair of the Steering Committee and secretary of its bet din and of the Rabbinical Assembly for matters dealing with marriage and divorce and was president of the Rabbinical Assembly in 1962–64. During turbulent times he embraced the cause of civil rights and was an early participant in the effort to rescue Soviet Jewry. He coauthored with morris adler and jacob agus the responsum permitting the use of electricity on the Sabbath and allowing congregants to drive to synagogue on the Sabbath. He was managing editor of Judaism, a journal of Jewish thought, during 1953–61. He was coeditor with Robert Gordis of Jewish Life in America (1955), and wrote Letters to Jewish College Students (1965), relating Jewish teachings to the concerns of contemporary college students, and of Judgment and Destiny (1956), sermons. From Jerusalem, he wrote a "Letter from Jerusalem" published in Conservative Judaism. (Jack Reimer / Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)