Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Gertrude Himmelfarb (1922-2019): The historian of moral revolution
Gertrude Himmelfarb (1922-2019): The historian of moral revolution
Mar 18, 2025 11:04 AM

I just heard some devastating news. Gertrude Himmelfarb, historian, moralist, wife, and mother, has passed. David Brooks has written a touching obituary detailing the life and legacy of this fascinating woman:

Economists measure economic change and journalists describe political change, but who captures moral change? Who captures the shifts in manners, values, and mores, how each era defines what is admirable and what is disgraceful? Gertrude Himmelfarb, who died at 97 last night, made this her central concern. She was a physician for the national soul.

Himmelfarb was born in 1922 and grew up with her parents and brother in a one-bedroom apartment in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Her parents immigrated from Russia and spoke Yiddish at home. Her father cut glass and sold engraved saucers and jars to department stores, going bankrupt a few times during the Depression. She made it into Brooklyn College, where she amassed enough credits to have majored in history, economics, and philosophy, while taking the subway at night up to the Jewish Theological Seminary and earning a simultaneous degree there. At a Trotskyite gathering, she met her husband, Irving Kristol.

She went to the University of Chicago for graduate school and was told that she would never get an academic job. She was a woman, a Jew, and a New Yorker. She didn’t care. World War II was raging; the Holocaust was her daily obsession and horror; the atmosphere was apocalyptic. “The future was not something I worried about, because I wasn’t sure I was going to have a future,” she toldThe University of Chicago Magazinedecades later. Kristol, who’d trailed out to Chicago with her, was drafted into the Army. So she found some roommates, including Saul Bellow.

The entire obituary is well worth reading. Himmelfarb authored many books on great Victorian luminaries from the scientist Charles Darwin to the novelist George Eliot. She was one of those rare thinkers and writers who were the total package: prolific, scholarly, and a virtuoso of the writing craft itself.

Her first book was the masterful, Lord Acton: A Study of Conscience and Politics.It was also the first book of hers I read and is still unmatched as a concise, lively, and insightful account of Lord Acton’s life and thought. When the book went out of print I worked on bringing it back into print in a new typesetting from the Acton Institute. It was my first major book project, my introduction to editing and the intricacies of book publishing, and an honor to work on.

When thinking of potential introducers and endorsers for my first named edited volume, Lord Acton: Historical and Moral Essays,she was the first e to mind. Himmelfarb’s biography had been an inspiration for the project from the beginning. She kindly offered her endorsement:

A new volume of essays by Lord Acton is more e than ever. In the present state of cultural and social disarray, his reflections on history and modernity are as perceptive and prescient today as they were over a century ago.

She also paid me one of the pliments I have ever received when she graciously declined to write the foreword saying:

Thank you for asking me to contribute to it. But your fine introduction would make any foreword by me redundant.

I keep this correspondence by my desk as a daily encouragement. The world has lost an unparalleled scholar, writer, and a generous spirit. Gertrude Himmelfarb, her family, and many friends will be in my prayers.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Acton Institute Selected as Templeton Freedom Award Finalist for Poverty Inc. Documentary
The Acton Institute has been named as one of six finalists for this year’s $100,000 Templeton Freedom Award for its documentary film, Poverty, Inc. The announcement of the finalists was made Monday by the Atlas Network, a Washington-based organization that advances the work of market-oriented public policy organizations all over the world. The winner will be selected Nov. 12 in New York. Atlas’ description of Poverty, Inc. says the documentary “provides prehensive perspective on the issue, giving voice to charity...
Catholicism’s tension with the Enlightenment
In a recent article for The Stream, Acton’s Director of Research, Samuel Gregg asks the question, “Is Catholicism Compatible with the American Experiment?” Gregg cites an article by political philosopher Patrick Deneen who suggested that “the main argument among American Catholics will concern the relationship of modern liberal democracies–and, at a deeper level, the American Founding–with Catholicism.” Gregg doesn’t necessarily disagree with this assertion, but argues that it “reaches further back to the early modern period often called the Enlightenment.”...
Subsidizing Subsidiarity: How Conservatives Failed New Orleans
This week marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall on the Gulf Coast. As always happens when remembering suchignominious events, we look back in hindsight to attempt to learn what could have been done differently. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we conservatives will admit that we share some of the blame for the disaster—just not in the way many of us realize. The colossal failures in leadership in the wake of Hurricane Katrina proved once again that,...
The Moral Dimension of Work
“The world is not a parsimonious place, in spite of the dogmas of the ecologists,” says James V. Schall in this week’s Acton Commentary. Our most unsettling economic problems are actually not economic but moral—moral ones that cannot be simply passed on from generation to generation. They need to be chosen and internalized by each person in each generation at the risk of deflecting material goods from their proper purposes. Work likewise is not exclusively for its own sake. Rather...
Psalm 19 and Human Flourishing
The mission of the Acton Institute is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. We seek to articulate a vision of society that is both free and virtuous, the end of which is human flourishing. That phrase—“human flourishing”—has e such a buzzword, though, that it’s in danger of losing any real meaning. As Scott Swain says, “Due to its widespread usage across our culture, its susceptibility to multiple meanings, and its...
Creation Care and Catholic Social Teaching
Pope Francis recently declared September 1 as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, an annual day of prayer begun by the Orthodox Church in 1989. In conjunction with the event, Catholic Relief Services and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have released “Care for God’s Creation,” the first of a seven-part video series on Catholic social teaching. (Via: Crux) ...
Court Rules March for Life Qualifies for Abortifacient Mandate Exemption Based on Moral, Not Just Religious, Objections
Imagine if the government were to tell an organization dedicated to veganism that, because of a new mandate, they must purchase a meat platter to serve at their monthly meetings and that the chair cushions in their conference room must be made of leather. Appalled by this governmental intrusion, the vegans ask to be excluded from the mandate since none of their members wish to eat bologna while sitting on dead cow skin. They also point out that a group...
Can Capitalism Save the Arts?
Capitalism is routinely castigated as an enemy of the arts, with much of the finger-pointing bent toward monsters of profit and efficiency. Other critiques take aim at more systemic features, fearing that the type of industrialization that markets sometimes tend toward will inevitably detach artists from healthy social contexts, sucking dry any potential for flourishing as a result. But what if the opposite is true? I offer the argument over at The Federalist. Free economies introduce their own unique challenges...
Video: Wayne Grudem And Barry Asmus On A Solution To The Poverty Of Nations
So far, 2015 has given us our busiest Acton Lecture Series ever, and we’re pleased to share more of it with you today on the PowerBlog. Back on April 16, Acton had the privilegeof hosting Wayne Grudem and Barry Asmus, who spoke on the topic of the book they jointly authored,The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution. First, the bios: Wayne Grudem is Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary; he is the author or co-author of...
Rev. Sirico on Francis’ ‘Year of Mercy’
Pope Francis recently announced a “year of mercy,” making it easier for the Catholic Church to forgive women for having abortions. Acton’s President and Co-founder Robert Sirico went on WSJ Live to discuss this. Watch below: ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved