Bernie Steinberg, Former Harvard Hillel Director, Remembered As ‘Tremendous’ Teacher, Listener

Late last year, Bernie Steinberg had been watching a crisis at Harvard unfold from his home in Chicago. As outrage over then-President Claudine Gay’s leadership and accusations of antisemitism on campus sparked national headlines, Steinberg — the director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010 — decided to take action.

On Dec. 29, as he battled cancer, Steinberg published an op-ed in The Crimson calling for Harvard affiliates and donors to “stop weaponizing antisemitism,” and voicing support for Gay, who resigned on Jan. 2.

In the piece, which racked up nearly 150,000 pageviews, Steinberg directly implored Jewish Harvard students to “be boldly critical of Israel — not despite being Jewish, but because you are.”

“There is no tradition more central to Judaism than prophetic truth-telling, no Jewish imperative more urgent than bravely criticizing corrupt leadership, starting with our own,” Steinberg wrote.

“Let me speak plainly: It is not antisemitic to demand justice for all Palestinians living in their ancestral lands,” he added.

Avi S. Steinberg ’02, his son, said this op-ed was part of a larger project that his father never got to finish.

“It was definitely the most technically impactful piece that he wrote,” Avi Steinberg said.

Bernie Steinberg died on Jan 21. He was 78.

He is survived by his wife, Roz, a son Avi, a daughter Adena, and a granddaughter.

A ‘Marvelous Listener’

Avi Steinberg said people were often surprised to find out that his father, whom he described as an “incredibly earnest person,” had been “kind of a jock” when he was younger, even becoming a state champion wrestler in high school.

“He really could hang back and listen and could be very gentle,” Avi Steinberg said. “So I think people were always surprised to hear that he was this competitive athlete.”

Richard Parker, a former lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, met Steinberg when they both arrived at Harvard in 1993. Parker later moved into Quincy House — right across the street from Harvard Hillel — and he became friends with Steinberg through mutual acquaintances, shared meals, and worship services.

One year, at an annual Yom Kippur celebration thrown by Parker at Quincy House, Steinberg sat near Parker’s young son Tom, whom Parker said was a picky eater and very hesitant to eat the ritual dishes.

Steinberg told Tom that he had also disliked the ritual foods when he was younger, and that if he didn’t like a dish he could just “pass it on.”

“It drew Tom — who if I remember was six or seven — into Bernie's world,” Parker said. “It made Bernie an authoritative adult who gave Tom permission to not do what the adults and other older children are doing and therefore not feel left out of the ceremony that was attached to the eating of the food.”

Bernie Steinberg arrived in Cambridge to work with Harvard Hillel, the University's Jewish center, in 1993. By Courtesy of Avi S. Steinberg '02

Avi Steinberg said a favorite memory of his father was watching him interact with his four-year-old granddaughter.

“He was a very cerebral guy — people would tease him for how cerebral his style of communication was — and seeing him have to boil stuff down for this four-year-old was extremely entertaining and lovely for me to see,” Avi Steinberg said.

Parker called Steinberg “the most marvelous listener.”

“I have seen him put that attentive gaze of his on students — he put it on me a number of times — and you had this authentic sense of connection with him, that he was really in a very deep way, trying to listen and hear what you say,” Parker said.

Eva Gumprecht, who served as program director at Hillel for several years Steinberg, also said she was impressed by the “tremendous amount of time” he spent listening to people.

“I’d say for the first six months he didn’t give his opinions,” she said. “He just really listened intently to get a sense of what was going on, which I think is what most people should do when they come into the job, but they usually don’t.”

‘His Legacy Is His Students’

Steinberg’s students and colleagues remembered him as an excellent and caring teacher who had a knack for drawing his students in for difficult Jewish texts.

Before coming to Cambridge, Steinberg lived in Israel for 13 years, where he led the Wesleyan University Israel Program and taught at Hebrew University.

Once he joined Hillel, Steinberg created Netivot — the Hebrew word for pathways — a year-long leadership development program for students Harvard, Yale, and New York University that included a trip to Israel.

Tally Zingher ’99 first met Steinberg in 1996 on one of the Israel trips. She immediately recognized that Steinberg was a “tremendous teacher.”

“He really had a way of connecting texts — Jewish, philosophical — with real life, and helping undergrads and students connect to Jewish texts and to find interests,” she said.

Zingher said that talking with Steinberg was “never just a simple conversation.”

“It always turned into something that was a little more interesting,” she said. “And you left feeling like you, yourself, were a little bit more interesting, and deep and thoughtful than you may have thought from the beginning.”

“And really that was part of his magic,” Zingher added.

Bernie Steinberg served as director of Harvard Hillel for 17 years, from 1993 through 2010. By Ryan N. Gajarawala

Dan J. Libenson ’92, who served as the director of new initiatives at Hillel for three years during Steinberg’s leadership, remembered weekly meetings where the Hillel staff would gather to read a Jewish text.

“Bernie was an extremely learned person who probably knew these texts cold,” Libenson said. “But when people would have an insight about the text in these meetings, he would always be so excited about what you said and make it seem like you came up with some insight that nobody in the world had ever thought of before.”

In 2010, Steinberg was awarded the prestigious Covenant Award which is awarded annually to “three exceptional Jewish educators” who “have made an impact on Jewish life through innovative and educational practices and models.”

Steinberg also received the Benjamin J. Shevach Award for Distinguished Leadership in Jewish Education from Boston Hebrew College and served on the White House Conference on Interfaith Service in Higher Education.

Parker said that when he met Steinberg 30 years ago, Steinberg emanated a “warmth with his faith and his posture.”

“I think the most important thing was the kindness with which he directed questions to the students,” Parker said. “It was almost never confrontational, as I remember, never critical or in any way an attempt to shut down a student's voice.”

“I always loved hearing him teach,” Avi Steinberg said. “So I often would be in the crowd whenever he taught. I never missed an opportunity.”

“His legacy is his students,” he added. “His medium was face to face teaching, and that’s where he thrived.”

‘Bernie is Light’

Steinberg’s colleagues and friends said not only did he deepen their insight into Judaism, but that he also inspired them to explore other religious traditions.

Through her interactions with Steinberg, Gumprecht said she better understood her “own sense of meaning and the transcendent” when it came to interpreting Jewish texts.

“I studied Torah with him and some Talmud,” she said. “These are never things that I would have had access to from my background, and I felt too ignorant to really know how to approach them.”

“He showed me a way in,” Gumprecht added

Social Studies Lecturer Kiku Adatto, a friend and colleague of Steinberg’s, said he was “an extraordinary teacher, scholar and philosopher with an energy I can express as light — that Bernie was light.”

“It’s so rare at academia to find somebody who transcends disciplines — and the narrowness, sometimes, of disciplines and academic jargon — to speak with eloquence, clarity and depth about the great questions, or rather a better way to say it is, the big questions that face us in the world,” Adatto said.

She added that Steinberg’s belief in the “interpretive quality” of religions inspired him to understand faith traditions outside of Judaism.

“He was also deeply engaged in interfaith dialogues, and understanding other religious perspectives and points of view,” Adatto said.

Diana L. Eck, a professor of comparative religion who co-taught a class at HKS with Steinberg, praised his ability to connect with students across a range of religions.

“He was, as a Jewish person, very deeply committed to pluralism, to recognizing that there are different voices — not only among religious traditions, but within religious traditions — and taking care to listen to those voices,” Eck said.

Government professor Michael J. Sandel, Adatto’s husband, called Steinberg a “beloved moral and spiritual presence in the Harvard community” in an email.

“For him, Talmudic learning was not only a guide for Jewish life; it was also a way of thinking and being together — reasoning together, arguing together, listening to one another — across differences of politics and faith,” Sandel wrote. “We need his teaching now more than ever.”

Parker, the former HKS lecturer. said that he was “tremendously moved” by Steinberg’s op-ed.

“I so appreciated Bernie's voice — as the former head of Hillel — in speaking up as he did when he did,” Parker said. “And he was dead from cancer within two weeks after that, so knowing further that he was in the last stages of his life makes the power of that letter even greater for me.”

Libenson, the former Hillel staffer, said that Steinberg’s influence extends past the walls of Harvard Hillel.

“There are a lot of very prominent Jewish leaders around the country who attribute their whole career to Bernie,” Libenson said. “In terms of looking at who are some of the people in the most prominent positions in the Jewish community today of a certain generation, it’s hard to imagine that there’s anybody who mentored more of them than Bernie did.”

—Staff writer Madeleine A. Hung can be reached at madeleine.hung@thecrimson.com.