Reuven Hammer

Hammer was born in 1933.[1] He grew up in Syracuse, New York, in a Conservative Jewish family that kept a kosher home, observed Shabbat, and belonged actively to a local synagogue.[2] There was no Jewish day school in Syracuse, and Hammer later described his upbringing as traditional but never Orthodox.[2] Seeking additional Jewish learning before his formal seminary training, he briefly studied at Yeshiva University, an experience he described as text-based and superficial.[2] At the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York, by contrast, he encountered an environment in which religious ideas could be examined openly rather than treated as closed to scrutiny.[2]

Hammer's Bible teachers at JTS and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem included Yehezkel Kaufmann, Moshe Greenberg, Jacob Milgrom, Nahum Sarna, and Jeff Tigay.[2] He later credited their scholarship with demonstrating that the legal and religious principles embedded in Mesopotamian law, Egyptian law, and ancient mythologies differed from those expressed in the Torah.[2] He received rabbinic ordination and a Doctor of Hebrew Literature degree from JTS and subsequently earned a Ph.D. in Communicative Disorders from Northwestern University.[1][1] He pursued the second doctorate so that he could establish special-education programs in synagogue schools, which he described as essentially non-existent at the time.[1][1]

Before immigrating to Israel, Hammer served as a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force and then as a congregational rabbi.[1] His congregational work included a posting at Congregation Rodef Shalom in Denver, where his sermons addressed weekly Torah portions, holidays, and communal events.[3] An archival collection of those sermons also includes a talk titled "What the Eichmann Trial Should teach us," reflecting an early engagement with Holocaust memory alongside routine congregational life.[3] He subsequently served as a congregational rabbi in Illinois before making aliyah in 1973.[2]

In the early 1970s, Hammer was among a cohort of young Conservative rabbis and educators who immigrated from North America and helped build the institutions that became Israel's Masorti movement.[1] He helped establish Kehilat Moreshet Avraham, a Jerusalem congregation, and headed the Jerusalem campus of the Jewish Theological Seminary.[4][1] In 1984 he became director of the Seminary of Judaic Studies, an institution he developed over the following years into what eventually became both the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary—which trains Israeli Masorti rabbis—and the broader Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies.[1][4]

Within the Masorti movement, Hammer served as head of its Rabbinical Court for Conversion and chairman of its Public Affairs Committee.[1] He taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the David Yellin College of Education, and academic institutions in Argentina and Russia.[1] Through the Rabbinical Assembly he served as president of its Israel Region and then as president of the worldwide organization.[1][2] He also served as interim rabbi of New London Synagogue in London from October 2005 until July 2007.[5]

Hammer was a leading member of the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards and was credited by the organization with laying the halakhic foundations for the Masorti movement's bar and bat mitzvah program for children with special needs.[4] Approximately a decade after becoming director of the Seminary of Judaic Studies in 1984, he represented the Masorti movement on the Ne'eman Commission, a government-appointed body convened during a crisis over the definition of "who is a Jew" in Israeli law after courts demanded government recognition of non-Orthodox conversions.[1] He later served on the board of the Joint Conversion Institute as the Masorti movement's representative.[1] He also wrote a regular Jerusalem Post column on the weekly Torah portion, with his contributions continuing into 2019.[4][6]

Hammer's scholarly output spanned liturgy, biblical commentary, Midrash, Jewish law, and Jewish ethics. His translation of Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy was edited by Leon Nemoy and published by Yale University Press in 1986.[7] The Classic Midrash assembled Hammer's annotated English translations of tannaitic commentaries and other passages from Midrash.[1]

Published by Schocken in New York, Entering Jewish Prayer: A Guide to Personal Devotion and the Worship Service appeared on Hebrew Union College's suggested-reading list for rabbinical applicants.[8] A companion volume, Entering the High Holy Days: A Complete Guide to the History, Prayers and Themes, explored the theological architecture of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, framing those days around questions of human responsibility, divine judgment, repentance, and the possibility of atonement.[9] Hammer emphasized that the concept of divine remembrance implies freedom of choice: people are judged according to their deeds, and human beings themselves determine their fate.[9]

His commentary on the Siddur Sim Shalom prayer book, Or Hadash—described by Encyclopedia.com as his magnum opus—appeared in two volumes, the first covering Shabbat and festivals in 2003 and the second addressing weekdays in 2008.[1][10] These works presented the prayer text alongside extensive commentary, including treatments of contested passages such as the Aleinu's reference to other nations.[11]

The Torah Revolution: Fourteen Truths That Changed the World, published by Jewish Lights, argued that the Torah produced a fundamental transformation in human civilization, introducing concepts including universal monotheism, human equality, free will, limits on political authority, care for the vulnerable, limits on slavery, and a universal day of rest.[2] Hammer acknowledged that some of these ideals were only gradually realized in practice.[2] A later work, Akiva: Life, Legend, Legacy, examined Rabbi Akiva through tannaitic, Talmudic, and aggadic sources, distinguishing historical evidence from legend and arguing that even legendary material illuminates what later storytellers intended their narratives to convey.[12]

Hammer also contributed a chapter titled "Jewish Political Ethics in Israel" to The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality (Oxford University Press, 2012), edited by Elliot N. Dorff and Jonathan K. Crane. The chapter addressed the question of how Israel could sustain both its Jewish character and its democratic foundations.[13] His special-education handbook, The Other Child in Jewish Education, was described as having decades of use and influence, while Hammer recalled that special-education programs in synagogue schools had been non-existent when he entered the field.[1]

Hammer's approach to prayer was both scholarly and personally reflective. He described prayer as "a way of sensitizing ourselves to the wonder of life, of expressing gratitude, and of praising and acknowledging the reality of God," and argued that prayer retained its value even without a belief that God intervenes directly in the natural world. He linked awareness of God with moral responsibility and with the human capacity to improve the world.[14]

His commentary on the Shema drew a distinction between that declaration and conventional prayer: while prayer is addressed to God, the Shema's essential demand is to "hear" or "listen." Hammer characterized listening as at least as important as speaking—"perhaps more so"—and described Jewish worship as a dialogue that becomes pointless when either party stops listening.[15]

Hammer died on August 12, 2019, at the age of 86. Funeral plans called for his burial at Har Hamenuchot in Jerusalem.[5][4] The Rabbinical Assembly remembered him as a founder of the Masorti movement in Israel and a leading Jewish scholar, citing his work on liturgy and Midrash, his role in establishing the Schechter seminaries, and his halakhic contribution to inclusive bar and bat mitzvah programming for children with special needs.[4][4]

His archival papers, held at the National Library of Israel, include JTS diplomas, a testimonial from Beth Hillel Congregation, a chaplaincy appointment, recognition from Syracuse University for outstanding ability and evidence of future leadership, the JTS Rabbi Louis Finkelstein Rabbinic Award, and an official letter of thanks from President Bill Clinton.[16] A Jerusalem Post author profile described Hammer as a two-time winner of the National Book Award.[6] He left a body of work spanning translation, commentary, liturgical theology, Jewish education, and ethics.

Hammer's public and scholarly work addressed several contested religious and civic questions. On the Ne'eman Commission, he represented Masorti Judaism in discussions prompted by disputes over recognition of non-Orthodox conversions and the legal definition of "who is a Jew."[1] In his commentary on Aleinu, he noted that some prayer books omitted language about other nations while many Sephardi and Israeli siddurim retained it. He argued that the passage expressed gratitude for monotheistic faith rather than inherent Jewish superiority.[11] His political-ethics scholarship also examined the challenge of sustaining Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state.[13]