19 Facts About Will Herberg

William Herberg was an American writer, intellectual, and scholar.

Will Herberg was a conservative thinker during the 1950s and a contributor to the National Review magazine.

Will Herberg's father, Hyman Louis Herberg, and mother, the former Sarah Wolkow were themselves born in the same provincial village.

The family's economic position deteriorated in America and Will Herberg's parents were divorced about ten years after arriving in the United States, with Will Herberg and his younger brother raised by his mother, who earned money as a housekeeper and small-scale manufacturer of knit fabric belts.

Will Herberg attended public school in Brooklyn, entering the prestigious Boys' High School in February 1915.

Will Herberg graduated from Boys' High School in June 1918 and entered the tuition-free City College that same fall.

Will Herberg was suspended from City College in the fall of 1920 due to frequent absences from military science class, accentuated by an altercation with the officer in charge of the course.

Will Herberg finished his career at City College having completed 94 of the 131.5 credits needed for graduation.

The exact timetable of Will Herberg's radicalization is unclear; according to his brother, Ted Herberg, Will's difficulty with the military science officer, his subsequent dismissal from college, and the troubled financial situation of his family led him to the ideas of revolutionary socialism.

Will Herberg was named a member of a four-member editorial committee for The Young Worker, taking over as chief editor of that publication for acting editor Max Shachtman effective with the issue of November 7,1925.

In 1925, Will Herberg married a YWL comrade, the former Anna Thompson, a resident of Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Thereafter Will Herberg joined the so-called Lovestoneites, remaining with that organization until its termination at the end of 1940, serving as editor of the group's weekly newspaper, Workers Age.

Will Herberg later turned away from Marxism and became a religious conservative, founding the quarterly Judaism with Robert Gordis and Milton R Konvitz.

Will Herberg demonstrated how immigration and American ethnic culture were reflected in religious movements and institutions.

Will Herberg wrote that anti-Catholicism is the antisemitism of secular Jewish intellectuals.

For some time, Will Herberg has mistakenly been credited with coining the phrase "cut-flower culture" to describe the spiritual rootlessness of modern European and American societies.

Will Herberg's final published work saw print in the middle of 1973.

Will Herberg died on March 26,1977; he was 75 years old at the time of his death.

Will Herberg was buried in Morris Plains, New Jersey, next to the grave of his previously departed wife, Anna.