JosepI SoIoveilcIiI LoneI Man oJ FailI

AulIov|s) Bavid Singev and MosIe SoIoI

Souvce Modevn Judaisn, VoI. 2, No. 3 |Ocl., 1982), pp. 227-272
FuIIisIed I OxJovd Univevsil Fvess
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David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
JOSEPH
SOLOVEITCHIK:
LONELY MAN OF FAITH
Creation
springs
from
primordial
chaos;
religious profundity springs
from
spiritual
conflict. The
Jewish
ideal of the
religious personality
is
not the harmonious individual determined
by
the
principle
of
equi-
librium,
but the torn soul and the shattered
spirit...
-Joseph
Soloveitchik,
"Sacred and Profane"
I
Rabbi
Joseph
Soloveitchik is
undoubtedly
the most
respected
intellectual
figure
within Orthodox
Judaism today.
His Orthodox
admirers,
found
mainly
in the "modern Orthodox"
camp, always
refer to him
reverentially
as "the
Rav,"
the teacher
par
excellence. As for non-Orthodox
views,
we
have the
testimony
of novelist Mark
Mirsky
that Soloveitchik is "the
greatest storyteller
I have ever
heard,"'
and the
prediction
of Reform
theologian
Arnold Wolf that
"people
will still be
reading [Soloveitchik]
in a thousand
years."2
In
large part,
Soloveitchik's
reputation
is built on a firm foundation
of talent. His
strengths
are
many,
and in combination
they
make him a
truly
formidable-and
quite unique-intellectual figure.
As
Eugene
Borowitz has
put
it: "He is more halakhic that
Baeck,
more
sophisticated
than
Kaplan,
more erudite than
Buber,
more rationalistic than Heschel."3
Those in a
position
to
judge
the
matter state
unreservedly
that Solo-
veitchik is the
outstanding
talmudic dialectician of our time. Since most
Orthodox talmudists
today
show little interest in
theology,
it comes as a
pleasant surprise
to discover that Soloveitchik is
centrally
concerned
with it. His
theological writings,
characterized
by great sensitivity
to the
problematics
of human
existence,
insightful
reference to both classical
Jewish
sources and Western
philosophical
ideas,
and the creative use of a
typological methodology,
hold out the
promise
of
something
rare in
Jewish thought-an explication
of the
theology implicit
in halakhah.
Finally,
Soloveitchik
is,
in the words of Arnold
Wolf,
a "midrashist of
inordinate
power
and skill."4 Whether
expressing
himself in
English,
Hebrew,
or
Yiddish,
he has an unusual
ability
to make
ideas,
even those
most
abstract,
come alive.
MODERN
JUDAISM
Vol. 2
pp.
227-272
0276-1114/82/0023-0227 $01.00
o
1982
by
The
Johns Hopkins University
Press
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
If the factor of sheer talent
goes
a
long way
toward
explaining
the
adulation which surrounds
Soloveitchik,
it is most
certainly
not the whole
story.
The other element which has to be considered here is his im-
portance
as a
symbolic figure
within the American Orthodox
community.
For
virtually
all modern Orthodox
Jews,
i.e.,
those who seek to combine
a commitment to traditional
Jewish
law with an
openness
to modern
secular culture and
society,
Soloveitchik,
or more
precisely
Dr. Solo-
veitchik,
is the one
recognized religious authority
who can serve to
validate their
way
of life.
Authority
within
Orthodoxy
rests funda-
mentally
on
prodigious
talmudic
scholarship,
and the
contemporary
masters of the Talmud are
nearly
unanimous in their
rejection
of
"modernist"
tendencies,
most
particularly
advanced secular education.
At the
least,
they regard university training
as a waste of
precious
time
that could otherwise be devoted to the
study
of
religious
texts;
at
worst,
they
see it as a
dangerous exposure
to heretical ideas.
Soloveitchik,
on
the other
hand,
holds a Ph.D. in
philosophy
from the
University
of
Berlin,
and maintains a
strong
interest in such diverse
subjects
as
mathematics,
philosophy
of
science,
Christian
religious thought,
and
literature. This does not mean that Soloveitchik himself
is,
necessarily,
a
modern Orthodox
Jew.
On the
contrary,
as we shall
see,
he is in
many
ways
an Orthodox
figure
of the old school. The
very
fact, however,
that
he has a doctorate in
philosophy,
and that he is
willing
to function within
a modern Orthodox framework at New York's Yeshiva
University,
the
leading religious
institution of the Orthodox
modernists,
makes Solo-
veitchik a
crucially significant figure
for countless numbers of Orthodox
Jews.
Were it not for
him,
they
would have to bear an
extremely heavy
burden of
guilt
over their involvement in the secular world. Small
wonder, then,
that
they put
Soloveitchik on a
pedestal.
Given the nature of the
relationship
between the various
Jewish
religious
denominations in the United
States,
Soloveitchik has also
become
something
of a hero to non-Orthodox
Jews.
The
key
factor here
is the
willingness
of modern Orthodox rabbis to work on a
cooperative
basis with their Conservative and Reform
colleagues, something
which
the Orthodox traditionalists
resolutely
refuse to do. Since Soloveitchik is
the
acknowledged
leader of the
former,
the
etiquette
of
Jewish
ecumenism
has dictated that he be elevated to the
position
of a
leading
"official"
religious spokesman
for all of American
Jewry. Perhaps
more im-
portantly, many
non-Orthodox
Jews,
who tend to think of Orthodox
rabbinic leaders as
Yiddish-speaking patriarchs
with
long
white beards
and black
coats,
are
quite
taken with Soloveitchik as a man of Western
ways
and obvious
sophistication; they
find him both
charming
and
intriguing. Finally,
Soloveitchik's
"modernity"
functions to
quell any
lingering
doubts that Conservative and Reform
Jews might
have about
their own involvement in secular
society.
228
Joseph
Soloveitchik
What is troublesome about the adulation that surrounds Soloveit-
chik is that it has stood in the
way
of efforts to assess
critically
his
thought.
Precious little has been written about his
theological position,
and what little we do have tends toward mindless
praise.5
Almost
always,
Soloveitchik is cast in a Maimonidean
mold,
as a
systematic philosopher
centrally
concerned with the
interrelationship
between
Jewish
and
Western
thought.
While this
image jibes
well with the
symbolic
role that
Soloveitchik has been
assigned by
modern Orthodox
Jews (indeed,
it is
they
who have created the
image),
there
is,
in
fact,
little evidence to
support
it. On the
contrary,
a
reading
of Soloveitchik's oeuvre makes it
clear that his
theological
concerns are
quite
selective in
nature;
that
they
are characterized
by
tensions,
polarities,
and
outright
contradictions;
and that
they
are not
shaped
in
any
fundamental
way by
Western intel-
lectual sources. The one consistent element in Soloveitchik's
thought
-and the one which
requires
most careful delineation-is his
preoccupa-
tion with a
religious problematic uniquely
his own.
Any attempt
to set forth the main elements of Soloveitchik's
thought
must
begin
with a frank
acknowledgement
that the
largest part
of his
intellectual
output
is
simply
not available for assessment.
Soloveitchik,
after
all,
is first and foremost a
talmudist;
as
professor
of Talmud at
Yeshiva
University,
he has
guided
several
generations
of rabbinic stu-
dents
through
the thickets of talmudic
argumentation.
While all of his
hiddushe torah have been
carefully
recorded on
tape,
it will be several
decades,
or even
longer,
before
they
see the
light
of
day
in a usable
form.6 At the same
time, however,
it is
important
to bear in mind that the
glamour
and excitement which surround Soloveitchik have their source
in
precisely
those
aspects
of his intellectual
enterprise
which are reflected
in his
published essays:
his interest in
theology
and his involvement with
Western culture. Were Soloveitchik
only
a
talmudist,
he would be far less
known and admired.
Moreover,
part
of the
importance
of Soloveitchik's
theological writings
is that
they
enable us to understand the role that he
assigns
to Talmud
study
within the overall context of
Judaic
life and
faith. Not since Rabbi
Hayyim
of Volozhin in the
early
nineteenth
century,
has a
major Jewish
thinker been so
preoccupied
with this issue.
Finally, studding
all of Soloveitchik's
published
works are small
samples
of his hiddushe
torah,
which offer at least a hint of what is contained in the
larger body
of talmudic
scholarship.
All in
all, then,
Soloveitchik's theo-
logical essays provide
a
significant opening
into his world of
thought.
II
Given Soloveitchik's
family background,
it seems
likely
that he would
have achieved
significant prominence
within
Orthodoxy
even if he had
229
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
never set foot in a
university.
Soloveitchik is the scion of an illustrious
rabbinic
dynasty
which
played
a crucial role in
promoting
the "Litvak"
or
"Mitnagged"
outlook of Lithuanian
Jewry.
The
symbolic godfather
of
the Litvaks is the Vilna
Gaon,
but the man who did the most to
give
their
point
of view
ideological expression
and institutional form was the Gaon's
chief
disciple,
Rabbi
Hayyim
of Volozhin. In
1803,
he set
up
a
yeshivah
which became the
prototype
of all the
great
talmudic academies of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The
dynamic
behind the Volozhin
Yeshivah
lay
in Rabbi
Hayyim's
stress on the
cognitive purpose
of Torah
study,
as
distinguished
from the functional
(religious practice)
or the
devotional
(communion
with
God).
In his view the
proper
focus of
Jewish
life was the
study
of Torah in
general,
and of Talmud in
particular,
"for
its own
sake," i.e.,
for the sake of
knowing
and
understanding.
It was at Volozhin and its various
outposts
that the members of the
Soloveitchik
family
made their
signal
contributions in
strengthening
Litvak
religiosity.
Soloveitchik's
great-grandfather, Joseph
Baer
(1820-
1892),
served as co-head of the Volozhin Yeshivah for some
years
and
produced
several volumes of novellae on the Talmud. An article in the
Encyclopedia
Judaica
characterizes him as a
"dynamic personality, sharp-
witted,
preferring
acumen to erudition."7 The same
description applies
with even more force to Soloveitchik's
grandfather, Hayyim (1853-1918),
known
universally
in the world of traditional
Jewish learning
as Rabbi
Hayyim
Brisker. He
spent
close to
twenty years
at the Volozhin Yeshivah
(settling,
thereafter,
in Brisk
[Brest-Litovsk],
where he served as com-
munal
rabbi),
and
developed
a
unique, highly analytical
method of
Talmud
study emphasizing
"incisive
analysis,
exact
definition,
precise
classification,
and critical
independence."8 Hayyim
was,
quite simply,
a
talmudic
genius;
he attracted thousands of students who
promoted
the
"Brisker" method until it became
predominant
in
European yeshivot.
After
Hayyim's
death,
the Brisker
approach
to Talmud
study
was carried
to Palestine and the United States
by
his two
gifted
sons,
Isaac Zeev
(1886-1960)
and Moses
(1876-1941)-respectively,
Soloveitchik's uncle and
father. The former
(after
serving
for
many years
as communal rabbi in
Brisk,
in succession to
Hayyim)
settled in
Jerusalem
in 1941 and
quickly
became the
leading figure
in
yeshivah
circles
there,
while the
latter,
who
arrived in New York in
1929,
was
appointed
head of the Talmud
faculty
at Yeshiva
University.
Soloveitchik himself was born in
Pruzhan,
Poland on
February
27,
1903. He was initiated into the Brisker method of Talmud
study by
his
father,
who was his one and
only
teacher until his late teens. When the
Soloveitchik
family
took
up
residence in Warsaw in
1920,
Joseph began
to
engage
in secular
pursuits;
he studied with a series of tutors until he
attained the
equivalent
of a
gymnasium
education. In
1925,
Soloveitchik
enrolled as a
philosophy
student at the
University
of
Berlin,
specializing
230
Joseph
Soloveitchik
in
logic, metaphysics,
and
epistemology.
Soloveitchik remained at Berlin
for six
years, capping
his academic work with a doctoral dissertation on
the neo-Kantian
philosopher
Hermann Cohen.
In
1932,
Soloveitchik
emigrated
to the United
States,
becoming
"chief
rabbi" of the small Orthodox
community
in Boston. He must have been a
striking figure
at that
point,
since he was a man who was
fully
at home in
two
very
different intellectual worlds-the worlds of Torah
learning
and
Western culture.
Thus,
the traditionalist
rabbi,
Abraham
Kahane-Shapiro
of
Kovno,
could state of Soloveitchik
(in
a letter written in
1931):
The
spirit
of his illustrious
grandfather,
the
leading
rabbi of his
time,
Rabbi
Hayyim
Soloveitchik,
rests
upon
Rabbi
Joseph
Dov Soloveitchik.
Just
like his
grandfather,
he, too,
is a master of the entire
range
of
Talmudic literature....
Happy
is the
country
that will be
privileged
to
be the home of this
great sage.
The
sages
have ordained him to be the
true
interpretor
of all
religious problems,
and the halakhah shall
always
be in accordance with his
rulings.9
At the same
time,
Soloveitchik was able to
join
with such
prominent
academics as
Harry
Wolfson and Solomon Zeitlin in a 1935 lecture series
celebrating
the Maimonides
octocentennial;
the
subjects
on which he
spoke
were
nothing
less than "Maimonides and Kant on the
Conception
of Freedom of the Will and the Problem of
Physical Causality
in the
Modern
Theory
of
Knowledge"
and "Maimonides'
Philosophic
and
Halakhic View on Homo
Sapiens
and the Modern
Philosophy
of Value"!
Upon succeeding
his father as the senior talmudist at Yeshiva Uni-
versity
in
1941,
Soloveitchik
quickly gained
renown
among
modern
Orthodox
Jews.
To
them,
the "Rav" was a
full-fledged
cultural hero who
had
bridged
the
gap
between
Orthodoxy
and
modernity.
But had Solo-
veitchik,
in
fact,
done so?
Indeed,
did he wish to do so? These are
important questions
which need to be clarified. And there are still other
questions: why
did Soloveitchik seek to obtain a secular
education?;
why,
having
earned a
doctorate,
did he remain a talmudist in the
yeshivah
world,
rather than
pursue
an academic career in
philosophy?;
how did
an
exposure
to Western culture affect his
self-understanding
as a talmudist
and,
more
generally,
as a
religious Jew?;
and,
finally,
how did he seek to
harness his secular
learning
so as to advance
Judaism's
as well as his own
religious
ends? The answers to all these
questions-or
at least the be-
ginnings
of answers-are to be
sought
in Soloveitchik's
theological
writings.
III
It is a
commonplace
in discussions of Soloveitchik to bemoan the fact that
he has
published very
little.
Certainly
one would wish to see much more
231
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
from his
pen, particularly
so,
since it is
reported
that he has a
large
quantity
of material
ready
in
manuscript
form but is reluctant to release
it. At the same
time, however,
it is
important
to note that Soloveitchik's
list of
publications
has
steadily grown
over the
years. By
now,
the total
number of items in
print
stands at over
twenty-five. Many
of these
essays
are
short,
but others are
quite lengthy,
and three-"Halakhic
Man,"
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
and "But if You Search There"--could well
be considered small books.10 In
addition,
there are three volumes avail-
able which
present
summaries or reconstructions of a
large
number of
Soloveitchik's
public
lectures.I" Caution is
clearly
called for in the use of
the latter
materials,
but
they
do
help
to round out the
picture
of Solo-
veitchik's
thought.
Soloveitchik's first
weighty publication,
and the one which
played
a
crucial role in
establishing
the
regnant image
of him as the
"philosopher
of
halakhah,"
was "Halakhic Man." This
essay, exuding
intellectual
sophistication
and
touching upon
issues fundamental to
religious
life,
is
a
pioneering attempt
to
explain
the inner world of the talmudist in terms
drawn from Western culture.
Indeed,
it
may fairly
be said that
only
Soloveitchik could have written "Halakhic
Man,"
in that it
employs
the
concepts
and
vocabulary
of neo-Kantian
philosophy
to
give expression
to the Litvak
religiosity
of Rabbi
Hayyim
Brisker. There is not the
slightest exaggeration
in this
statement;
having
Brisk
speak
in the
language
of Berlin is the
very
essence of the
problematic
in "Halakhic
Man." Small
wonder, then,
that the
essay
radiates excitement.
To
fully appreciate
the
ground-breaking
nature of "Halakhic
Man,"
it is
necessary
to bear in mind that
virtually
all modern efforts at con-
structing
a
Jewish theology
have been based on the
non-legal
sources of
Judaism-aggadah, philosophy,
Kabbalah,
etc.
Yet,
it is the
Law,
in
fact,
which stands at the center of
Jewish
life.
Quite clearly,
then,
the
very
first
task of
Jewish theology
as an
enterprise ought
to be to
theologize
about
the
Law,
its nature and
significance.
But to
speak
of the Law is to
speak
of
the
talmudist,
the man for whom the halakhah is the breath of life. What
is the nature of his endeavor?
Why
is he drawn to the Law? What does the
talmudist
experience
as he labors over an intricate halakhic
problem?
Why
is he convinced that in
studying
the details of often obscure
laws,
he
is
dealing
with matters of ultimate
religious importance?
"Halakhic Man"
is in a class
by
itself in the modern literature of
Judaism
in
being centrally
concerned with
just
these
questions.
It is the one
major study
we have
which
gives halakhocentricity
its
proper theological
due,
and
clearly
sets
forth the
program
and rationale of talmudism.
At first
glance,
it would
appear
that the
philosophical
abstractions of
neo-Kantianism are
absolutely
irrelevant to an
understanding
of the
nature of the talmudist's endeavor. What
possible
connection could there
be between talk about
Being,
a
priori
ideas,
mathematics and
science,
and
232
Joseph
Soloveitchik
an
appreciation
of the labors of a man who
pores
over ancient texts in
order to better understand the details of
religious
laws?
Yet,
quite
amazingly,
Soloveitchik
manages
with a
single-brilliant-interpretative
twist to make neo-Kantianism
fully
relevant to the
analysis
of talmudism.
How does he do so?
By arguing
that the
talmudist,
no less so than the
mathematician-scientist,
makes use of an a
priori system
of ideas in
approaching reality.
In the case of the
mathematician-scientist,
the a
priori
system
consists of the theorems and laws which he
brings
to bear in
his research efforts. For the
talmudist,
the
equivalent system
is the
halakhah,
which is not
only
a set of behavioral
norms,
but also-and
more
importantly-a logical, conceptual
structure. As Soloveitchik ex-
presses
the matter:
When he
approaches reality,
halakhic man comes with his
Torah,
re-
vealed to him at
Sinai,
in hand. He
engages
the world with set laws and
established
principles,
A
complete
Torah of
precepts
and laws
guides
him to the road which leads to existence. Halakhic man
approaches
the
world well furnished with
statutes, laws,
principles,
and
judgments,
in
an a
priori
relation. His
approach
is one which
begins
with an ideal
creation and concludes with a real one. To what can this be
compared?
To a mathematician who fashions an ideal
world,
and uses it for the
purpose
of
establishing
a
relationship
between it and the real world ....
The essence of the
halakhah,
which was received from
God,
lies in the
creation of an ideal
world,
and in
recognizing
the
relationship
which
holds between it and
reality....
There is no
phenomenon
or
object
for
which the a
priori
halakhah does not construct an ideal standard.12
Thus,
in a
flash,
is the halakhah converted into a series of
epistemological
and
ontological principles;
the Law is endowed with
cognitive signifi-
cance;
it
speaks
to the intellect.
Having posited
a basic
identity
between the mathematician-scientist
and the talmudist in terms of the
methodologies
that
they employ,
Solo-
veitchik seeks to show that their
general
intellectual orientations are also
strikingly
similar.
Thus,
he
argues
that the
talmudist,
no less so than the
theoretical
physicist,
is
engaged
in
"pure"
research;
he is a
speculative
thinker who is little interested in the
practical consequences
of his
studies.13 The "ultimate" for the
talmudist,
Soloveitchik tells
us,
is "not
the realization of the
halakhah,
but the ideal construction which was
given
to him at
Sinai,
and which stands forever."'4 Or
again:
"Theoretical
halakhah-not
action;
ideal creation-not
reality represent
the
longing
of the master of halakhah."15
Carrying
his
comparative analysis
a
step
further,
Soloveitchik maintains that the mathematician-scientist and the
talmudist share a
this-worldly
outlook. The
latter,
for his
part,
has no use
for a
separate
transcendental
realm,
since his beloved a
priori
halakhic
principles
exist
specifically
in order to be
applied
in the "real"
(natural-
sense)
world. At the same
time, however,
Soloveitchik insists that the
233
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
talmudist,
again
like the
mathematician-scientist,
is interested in natural-
sense
phenomena only
insofar as
they
relate to his
unique
a
priori
categories
of
thought.
In this
context,
he
presents
a near
parody
of the
Psalmist's "the heavens declare God's
glory":
When halakhic man lifts his
eyes
to the western or eastern horizon and
sees the
light
of the sun while it
sets,
the dawn when it
arises,
or the
rays
of the sun as it
shines,
he knows that this
shining
or
setting imposes
upon
him anew
obligations
and commandments. The
rising
of the dawn
or the
appearance
of the sun
obligate
him to fulfill those commandments
that are
performed during
the
day:
recitation of the
morning
shema,
fringes, phylacteries, morning prayers, etrog,
shofar.... Sunset
imposes
upon
him those
obligations
that are
performed
at
night:
recitation of
the
evening
shema,
eating
matzot,
counting
the
omer,
. .
16
Finally,
Soloveitchik
points
to a
passion
for
quantification
as a common
characteristic of the talmudist and the
mathematician-scientist;
both
types
of scholars seek to translate
infinity
into "finite
creations,
delimited
by
numbers and mathematical measures."17
Given Soloveitchik's
portrayal
of the talmudist as the intellectual
twin of the
mathematician-scientist,
it is not
surprising
that he focuses on
creativity
as the
defining
characteristic and
supreme
virtue of his hero.
That,
of
course,
is
exactly
what the neo-Kantians did in
dealing
with the
mathematician-scientist.
And, indeed,
how could it be otherwise when
one is
seeking
to underscore the role of autonomous reason in
developing
bold
systems
of
thought?
In the case of the
talmudist,
Soloveitchik
argues,
creativity
is manifested in
every aspect
of his existence. On the intellectual
side,
he is a
great conceptualizer,
who frames all
reality
within the a
priori
categories
of the halakhah. As a
byproduct
of this
process,
Soloveitchik
points
out,
the talmudist becomes the master of the
objects
of his
thought:
The
mysterious relationship
which obtains between the
subject
which
cognizes
and the
object
which is
grasped,
even
though
it is
logical
and
not
psychological,
nevertheless causes man to
regard
himself as
sovereign
and master with
respect
to the
object
which stands
ready
to be
grasped.
The
subject
rules over the
object,
the
person
over the
thing. Cognition
is to be
explained
as the
subjugation
of'the
object
to the
mastery
of
the
subject.18
On the behavioral
side,
the talmudist is a
self-determining personality
who uses halakhic norms to
shape
the direction of his life. The
process
that
is at work here is
neatly
summarized
by
Soloveitchik in the
following
equation:
"the realization of halakhah = the concentration of transcend-
ence in the world = holiness =
creation."19 All in
all, then,
the talmudist
exemplifies
a life based on the
assumption
that "the most fundamental
principle
of all is that man must create himself."20
234
Joseph
Soloveitchik
Quite obviously,
the
talmudist,
as he is
portrayed
in "Halakhic
Man,"
is an exalted
religious figure.
Yet even this statement fails to do
justice
to
the full extent of the claim that Soloveitchik
puts
forward on his behalf.
The
key point
here is that Soloveitchik's discussion of talmudism is
developed
within the framework of a
typological analysis
of human ex-
perience.
He is
dealing,
in the first
instance,
not with
things
as
they
are,
or even as
they might
be,
but rather with
pure possibilities
of existence.
Specifically,
Soloveitchik
posits
two basic universal human
types,
"intel-
lectual man" and
"religious
man." The former is characterized
by
a
boundless zeal for
explanation, by
a vast determination to remove the
unknown from the cosmos. The
latter,
in
contrast,
is held
spellbound by
the
mystery
of the universe which
points obliquely
to the
presence
of a
transcendental realm. It is in the talmudist-or as he is referred to
typo-
logically,
"halakhic man"-Solovietchik
argues,
that these two
types
come
together.
Thus he states:
On the one
hand,
. . . his
[the
halakhic
man's]
countenance and
expres-
sion are
comparable
to that of intellectual
man, who,
with the
joy
of dis-
covery
and the thrill of
creativity, occupies
himself with ideal construc-
tions,
and
compares
his ideal
concepts
to the real world ...
Yet,
on the
other
hand,
halakhic man is not a
secular,
cognitive type,
whose mind is
not at all concerned with
transcendence,
but is bound
only
to
temporal
life. God's Torah has
planted
in halakhic man's consciousness both the
idea of
everlasting
life and the
yearning
for
eternity....
He is
religious
man in all his loftiness and
splendor,
for his soul thirsts for the
living
God,
and these streams of
yearning surge
and flow to the sea of tran-
scendence.
The
only
difference between
religious
man and halakhic man is that
...
they go
in
opposite
directions.
Religious
man
begins
with this world
and ends
up
in
supernal
realms;
halakhic man starts out in
supernal
realms and ends
up
in this world.
Religious
man
longs
to ascend from
the vale of
tears,
from concrete
reality,
to the mountain of God. He at-
tempts
to extricate himself from the narrow straits of the
perceptible
world and
emerge
into the
wide-open spaces
of a
pure
and
pristine
transcendental existence. Halakhic man
longs
to
bring
down transcend-
ence to the vale of distress that is our
world,
and to transform it into the
land of the
living.21
Halakhic
man, then,
as a
type, represents
a
synthesis
of the hardheaded
thinking
of intellectual man and the
passionate spirituality
of
religious
man;
halakhic man uses the intellectualism of the former to achieve the
spiritual
ends of the latter. If intellectual man and
religious
man are
"ideal"
types
in terms of human
potential,
then halakhic man is the ideal
"ideal"
type!
Could the talmudist
possibly
be
placed
on a
higher pedestal?
In
explaining
the nature of the
typological analysis
that he
employs
in his
essay,
Soloveitchik states that the various human
types
never exist
235
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
in
pure
form in the real world.
Yet,
having
said
this,
he does not hesitate
in the least to
point
to
specific
individuals as the embodiment of halakhic
man. Nor
surprisingly,
all of them-the Vilna
Gaon, Hayyim
of
Volozhin,
Elijah
of
Pruzhan,
Hayyim
Soloveitchik,
and Moses Soloveitchik-are
Litvak virtuosi. Soloveitchik
places particular
stress on his father
and,
even more
so,
his
grandfather, citing
several stories about each to il-
lustrate various
aspects
of the nature of halakhic man. He
notes,
for
example,
that his father and
grandfather
never set foot in a
cemetery,
because the
thought
of death would have interfered with their
contempla-
tion of the ideal halakhic
system. Wishing
to draw a
sharp
contrast to the
subjectivism
of
"mystical
man"
(illustrated by
several citations from
Hasidic
sources),
Soloveitchik tells how his father
reprimanded
a Luba-
vitcher Hasid who was overcome with
religious
emotion as he
prepared
to blow the shofar on the New
Year;
Moses'
only
concern was that the
shofar be sounded in a
halakhicly
correct manner.
Finally,
Soloveitchik
underscores his
grandfather's
derisive view of mussar as a
species
of
introspection
irrelevant to a life based on the
study
of the Law.
This,
then,
is halakhic man.
As a modern restatement of the
program
and rationale of
talmudism,
"Halakhic Man" is a brilliant tour
deforce.
Soloveitchik succeeds in
greatly
enhancing
the status of the talmudist
(at
least in the
eyes
of the modern
audience that he is
addressing
in his
essay) by portraying
him as an
analogous figure
to the
mathematician-scientist,
and
by focusing
on crea-
tivity
as his
defining
characteristic. The
key
factor in this
effort,
of
course,
is Soloveitchik's use of neo-Kantian
thought
as the
framing
medium of
his
analysis.
Yet,
it must be
noted,
the mesh of talmudism and neo-
Kantianism in "Halakhic Man" is far from
perfect.
Thus,
Soloveitchik
treads
gently
over the fact that the mathematician-scientist
fully
creates
his own
system
of
thought,
whereas
the talmudist,
even at his most cre-
ative,
works with halakhic
principles
that have been revealed to him
by
God.
Certainly,
this has
important implications
for an evaluation of the
relative
creativity
of the two
types
of scholars. In
addition,
it raises
serious
questions
about the use of the term a
priori
in connection with the
halakhah. In the neo-Kantian
scheme,
a
priori
refers to a condition of
human
consciousness,
and a
body
of revealed truth such as the Torah can
certainly
not be that. Still another
problem
with Soloveitchik's
compari-
son of the mathematician-scientist and the talmudist is that the
conceptual
system
of the former is
completely objective
and
self-contained,
while
that of the latter includes
subjective
elements
(since
a number of halakhic
categories, e.g., "ways
of
peace"
and
"ways
of
pleasantness,"
are
inherently
subjective)
and is influenced
by
outside factors
(i.e.,
such
non-legal
sources
as
philosophy,
Kabbalah,
and
aggadah). Finally,
Soloveitchik
sidesteps
the
point
that the mathematician-scientist deals with an
open body
of
knowledge
that is
evolving
toward
greater
truth,
while the talmudist
236
Joseph
Soloveitchik
concerns himself with a closed
system
of
thought
that is seen as
perfect
ab
initio. In
general,
then,
Soloveitchik overstates his thesis in "Hala-
khic Man."22
It should be noted in
passing
that in another of his
essays23-pub-
lished nineteen
years
after "Halakhic Man"-Soloveitchik does succeed
in
fully bridging
the
gap
between the mathematician-scientist and the
talmudist in terms of
creativity.
In "How is Your Beloved Better than
Another?,"
Soloveitchik
argues
at
length
that his
grandfather, Hayyim
Brisker,
revolutionized Talmud
study
in
precisely
the same manner that
Galileo and Newton transformed the nature of scientific
inquiry. Just
as
the latter
developed
abstract-formal mathematical
systems
on the basis of
which
they explained
natural-sense
phenomena,
Soloveitchik
maintains,
so also did his
grandfather
introduce
highly
abstract
conceptual
structures
within which he
organized
and
explained
the
particulars
of the Law. In
this
view,
the revealed halakhot are the raw data which the talmudist
patterns through
the use of autonomous reason. Since Soloveitchik was
fully
conversant with the Brisker method of Talmud
study (indeed,
he
was a master of
it!)
at the time that he wrote "Halakhic
Man,"
it seems
strange
that he did not
point
to it then as a
way
of
strengthening
his
argument
for a mathematician/scientist-talmudist
analogy. Apparently,
at that
juncture,
he had no desire to
portray
his
grandfather
as a talmudist
who broke with the
past.
Two
aspects
of Soloveitchik's
enterprise
in "Halakhic Man" that merit
special
attention are the
way
in which he harnesses his secular
learning
and his reliance on a
typological analysis
of human
experience.
With
regard
to the
former,
there has been considerable confusion. Because
"Halakhic Man" is
replete
with references to the full
panoply
of Western
thinkers and
ideas,
and because the
essay
leans
heavily
on neo-Kantian
philosophy,
it has been
generally
assumed that Western
thought plays
a
key
determinative role in Soloveitchik's
thinking.
Thus,
virtually
all
discussions of "Halakhic Man" refer to the "influence" of neo-Kantianism
on
Soloveitchik,
as if a
reading
of Hermann Cohen had
provided
the
basis for his
theological
position
and
agenda.
In
fact, however,
-and this
is true of all of Soloveitchik's
theological writings-the
arrows run in the
exact
opposite
direction;
it is
Soloveitchik,
standing
on firm
Jewish
ground,
who uses Western
thought
to serve his own
(Jewish) theological
purposes.
Thus,
as we have
seen,
"Halakhic Man" is
anything
but a
radical
reinterpretation
of
Judaism
in the
light
of neo-Kantian
phi-
losophy.
Rather,
Soloveitchik latches on to neo-Kantianism as a
way
of
adding
to the
prestige
of
talmudism;
he dresses
up
talmudism in neo-
Kantian
garb
so as to make it more
appealing
to a
modern,
secularized
audience. Soloveitchik's aim in the
essay
is
thoroughly
conservative,
and
he uses neo-Kantian
philosophy
as a mere
packaging
device. Soloveitchik
himself underscores this
point
when he states
(in
a footnote in "Halakhic
237
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
Man" that has been
ignored
in all discussions of his
work)
that he is
drawing upon
neo-Kantian
thought
so as to make talmudism more
"palatable"
to the reader.24
Exactly!
For
Soloveitchik, then,
neo-Kantian
philosophy specifically,
and Western
thought generally,
exist as resource
materials to be
pressed
into the service of
Judaism.
It is a
matter,
so to
speak,
of
presenting
the old
Jewish
wine in new Westernized bottles.
There is
yet
another form of intellectual
packaging
which is exhibited
in "Halakhic Man." All the learned footnote references to the
history
of
Western
thought,
all the brief excursuses
examining
abstruse
philosophi-
cal,
theological,
and scientific
issues,
all the citations of Greek in the
original
(sometimes
without
accompanying translations!)-these
are
devices that Soloveitchik uses to establish his own credentials with the
reader. Soloveitchik is
fully
aware in "Halakhic Man" that he faces a
serious
credibility problem
in
making
a case for talmudism. How does an
Orthodox
Jew
even
begin
to convince a modern
sophisticated
audience
that the talmudist is a
figure worthy
of admiration? Part of the
answer,
of
course,
is to make talmudism
appear intellectually
attractive-attractive,
that
is,
by
the standards of
modernity.
And that is where
neo-Kantianism,
with its talk of science and
creativity,
comes in.
Yet,
Soloveitchik
wisely
understands that this is not
enough;
that he has to establish his own
authority
in this area if he is to be a
truly
effective
spokesman
for
talmudism. Hence the
impressive
show of secular
learning
which Solo-
veitchik
puts
on in "Halakhic Man."25 And it is
impressive,
because
Soloveitchik is
fully
at home in the Western intellectual
tradition;
he
knows what he is
talking
about. While "Halakhic Man" ends on an
apolo-
getic
note,
with Soloveitchik
expressing
the
hope
that he has not let down
the cause of the
talmudist,
his
worry
is
completely superfluous.
Dr. Solo-
veitchik is a masterful
propagandist
for talmudism.
Having
stressed the functional nature of Soloveitchik's overall
ap-
proach
to Western
thought,
it is
important
to
point
out that at times he
puts
aside the criterion of
utility
and makes use of a
specific
idea or meth-
odology
for the
simple
reason that it
appeals
to him. A clear case in
point
is his reliance on a
typological analysis
in "Halakhic Man." As Soloveit-
chik himself
acknowledges
in a
footnote,26
his
typological methodology
is based on the work of Eduard
Spranger,
a
philosopher
and educator
who
taught
at the
University
of Berlin
during
the 1920's.
Why
is Solo-
veitchik so taken with
typologies? Certainly
there is no
organic
link
between their use and his effort to
portray
the talmudist as an
analogous
figure
to the
mathematician-scientist;
neo-Kantian
philosophy
is
quite
sufficient for that
purpose.
What a
typological procedure
does make
possible,
however,
is a form of
analysis
which is
highly
abstract and
which results in neat
categorization-elements,
it should be
noted,
that
are
prominently
featured in the Brisker method of Talmud
study
which
Soloveitchik
champions.
Could it
be, then,
that Soloveitchik turns to
238
Joseph
Soloveitchik
typologies
when he is
doing theology
because
they
allow for the same
play
of the mind that he
enjoys
when he is
engaged
in the
analysis
of
talmudic texts? This must remain a matter of
speculation.
What is
clear,
however,
is that Soloveitchik derives
significant personal
satisfaction
from the use of
typologies
as an
analytical
tool.
Hence,
their recurrence
throughout
his
theological
oeuvre
quite independently
of
any
func-
tional consideration.27
IV
"Halakhic Man" has been characterized
by Eugene
Borowitz as a "Mit-
nagged phenomenology
of awesome
proportions."28
This statement is
right
on
target-provided,
that
is,
that one
ignores
the
very opening
pages
of the
essay.
These
pages,
which serve as an
introduction,
stand in
bold contrast to the main
body
of the work. An
important component
of
Soloveitchik's
argument
in the "Halakhic
Man,"
as we have
seen,
is that
the talmudist in his
typological
mode, i.e.,
as halakhic
man,
represents
a
synthesis
of the best elements of intellectual man and
religious
man. In
the
introductory
section, however,
Soloveitchik stakes out a
very
different
position;
he maintains that the
talmudist,
precisely
because he
incorpo-
rates within himself
aspects
of two
radically
different "ideal"
types,
is a
conflicted
personality.
Moreover,
Soloveitchik stresses that the tensions
within the talmudist are
unavoidable,
that
they
are a constituent element
of his
being.
Thus,
"Halakhic Man"
opens
on the
following
note:
Two
opposing
selves are embodied in halakhic
man;
two
disparate
forces vie within his soul and
spirit.
On one
hand,
he is as far removed
from
general religious
man as is east from
west,
and is identical in
many
respects
to
prosaic
intellectual
man;
on the other
hand,
he is a man of
God,
who
possesses
an
ontological approach
sanctified to heaven and a
world view saturated with the radiance of the divine
presence.29
As if this were not
strange enough, given
what Soloveitchik
goes
on to
say
about the talmudist in the main
body
of the
essay,
he adds
significantly
that the conflicted nature of halakhic
man,
while
painful,
has
positive
value in that it serves as a
spur
to
religious growth.
Out of the "furnace of
perplexity
and
contradiction,"
out of the "fires of
spiritual
conflict,"
Soloveitchik
maintains,
there
emerges
a
personality
of
"incomparable
splendor
and
glory."30
The
principle
that is at work here is clear cut:
"Inconsistency
enriches
existence,
contradiction renews
Creation,
nega-
tion builds
worlds,
and denial
deepens
and
expands
consciousness."31
Quite obviously,
there is a side to Soloveitchik's
religious thinking
which is not even hinted at in the main
body
of "Halakhic Man." Two
questions immediately
arise:
why
are the
theological
views
expressed
in
the
opening pages
of the
essay
not reflected in the work as a
whole?;
and
239
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
why, given
the fact that
they
are not reflected
there,
does Soloveitchik
broach them at all in the introduction? The first
question
is
posed
with a
sense of
puzzlement,
the second with a
feeling
of absolute amazement.
Could it be that "Halakhic Man" ended
up being
a
very
different
essay
than the one Soloveitchik
originally
set out to write? That seems most
improbable;
Soloveitchik
gives every impression
in the work of
being
fully
in
command,
of
knowing exactly
what he is
up
to. At the same
time,
it is clear that Soloveitchik could have
produced
an antithetical
theologi-
cal statement to "Halakhic Man" had he so wished. The evidence for this
is
readily
in hand in "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
which while it
appeared
more than
twenty years
after the
publication
of "Halakhic
Man," is,
in
fact,
that statement. "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" takes as its
point
of
departure
the
theological position
set forth in the
introductory
section of
"Halakhic Man." It thus reveals that "other" Soloveitchik who is
carefully
kept
from view when he is
discoursing
at
length
on the nature of tal-
mudism.
An
appreciation
of "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" as the
theological
counterpoint
to "Halakhic Man" extends to matters of
style
as well as
substance.
Thus,
in "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
Soloveitchik eschews the
direct form of
argumentation
which he
employs
in his discussion of
talmudism,
and relies instead on a
philosophical exegesis
of the Bible.
Specifically,
he focuses on the two versions of the creation
story
in the
opening chapters
of
Genesis,
arguing
that
they
offer
radically differing
perspectives
on the nature of man. The most
likely
source for Soloveit-
chik's
methodology
in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" is Maimonides' Guide
of
the
Perplexed,
the
Jewish philosophical
work most dear to his
heart,
and one which
proceeds very
much
along
the same lines as his
essay.
At
the same
time,
Soloveitchik
may
be
seeking
to
capitalize
on the
currency
given
to
biblically-based philosophical analysis
in the
writings
of Karl
Barth,
the neo-orthodox Protestant
theologian.
Soloveitchik was aware
of Barth's work at an
early
date,
and
admiringly
referred to him in the
introductory
section of "Halakhic Man." What both Maimonides and
Barth could offer Soloveitchik were models of how to use the biblical text
as a
springboard
for an
intellectually sophisticated
discussion of the
human condition.
That,
precisely,
is what we have in "The
Lonely
Man
of Faith."
If the framework of "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" is
strikingly
different
from that of "Halakhic
Man,"
all the more so is this true of the tone. The
latter
essay
is written in a
cool,
impersonal,
academic
style,
one
fully
appropriate
to a man who has done a doctoral dissertation in
philosophy
at the
University
of
Berlin,
and who is
seeking
to
explain
the nature of
talmudism
by drawing analogies
to mathematics and science.
Everything
about "Halakhic Man"
suggests
the cerebral: the author's
stance;
his
choice of
subject;
his terms of reference. As
against
this,
in "The
Lonely
240
Joseph
Soloveitchik
Man of
Faith,"
we are offered the whole man: Soloveitchik writes in a
deeply personal
manner; moreover,
he
provides
an account of human
nature which does
justice
to the emotions as well as the intellect. Thus
the
essay begins:
I want... to focus attention on a human life situation in which the man
of faith as an individual concrete
being,
with his cares and
hopes,
concerns and
needs,
joys
and sad
moments,
is
entangled.
Therefore,
whatever I am
going
to
say
here has been derived not from
philosophical
dialectics,
abstract
speculation,
or detached
impersonal
reflections,
but
from actual situations and
experiences
with which I have been con-
fronted.... Instead of
talking theology,
in the didactic
sense,
eloquently
and in balanced
sentences,
I would
like,
hesitantly
and
haltingly,
to
confide in
you,
and to share with
you
some concerns which
weigh heavily
on
my
mind and which
frequently
assume the
proportions
of an aware-
ness of crisis.32
If all this seems
very
"existentialist,"
it
should,
since that is the mode in
which Soloveitchik
consciously
chooses to write in "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith." In
doing
so,
he is
directly echoing
the
point
of view
expressed
in
the introduction to "Halakhic
Man";
there Soloveitchik
praises
Soren
Kierkegaard,
Karl
Barth,
and Rudolf Otto-all of whom stand within the
broad stream of existentialist
thought-as
the three modern thinkers
who best
appreciate
the "antinomic"
quality
of the
religious experience.
That
experience,
as Soloveitchik
puts
it in the
very
same
passage
of "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" which we have
just
cited,
is one which is
"fraught
with inner conflicts and
incongruities, [as man]
oscillates between
ecstacy
in God's
companionship
and
despair
when he feels abandoned
by
God,
[as he]
is torn asunder
by
the
heightened
contrast between
self-apprecia-
tion and
abnegation...."
33
Existentialism indeed!34
The one common element in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" and
"Halakhic Man" is Soloveitchik's use of a
typological analysis.
In his
existentialist
mood,
he introduces us to "Adam the first" and "Adam the
second,"
who are also referred
to,
respectively,
as
"majestic
man" and
"covenantal man." As
already
noted,
Soloveitchik bases his
analysis
on
the two versions of the creation
story
in Genesis
(chapters
1 and
2),
which
are
notably
different in several
ways:
in the account of the manner in
which man is created
(in
the first
version,
man is created in the
"image
of
God";
in the second
version,
man is formed out of the dirt of the
ground
and God breathes life into
him);
in the
depiction
of the first human
being(s)
as a male-female
pair
(the
first
version)
or as a
single
individual
(the
second
version);
in the nature of the commandment which is
given
to man
(in
the first
version,
man is told to "fill the earth and subdue
it";
in the second
version,
man is
charged
to "serve and
keep"
the
creation);
and,
finally,
in the names
by
which God is
designated
(in
the first version,
the name "Elohim" is
used;
in the second
version,
"Elohim"
appears
in
241
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
conjunction
with the
tetragrammaton).
What the Bible is
offering
us
here,
Soloveitchik
argues,
are "two
Adams,
two
men,
two fathers of man-
kind,
two
types,
two
representatives
of
humanity.
.. ."35
Thus,
Adam the
first-majestic
man is
creative,
functionally
oriented,
and enamoured of
technology;
his aim is to achieve a
"dignified"
existence
by gaining
mastery
over nature. Adam the second-covenantal
man,
in
contrast,
eschews
"power
and
control";
as a
non-functional,
receptive,
submissive
human
type,
he
yearns
for a redeemed
existence,
which he achieves
by
bringing
all his actions under God's
authority. Majestic
man,
in
short,
glories
in the assertion of human
will,
while covenantal man seeks its
extinction.
If
majestic
man and covenantal man as "ideal"
types
have a familiar
air about
them,
it is because
they
are
strikingly
similar
to,
respectively,
intellectual man and
religious
man,
who
appear
in Soloveitchik's
study
of talmudism. To be
sure,
the matched
types
are not
fully
identical.
Thus,
intellectual man is
preoccupied
with theoretical
knowledge,
while
majestic
man seeks to translate it into the
practical
realm. Or
again,
religious
man turns
away completely
from the natural
world,
while cove-
nantal man retains
strong
links to it. These
differences, however,
(which
are
fully explicable
in terms of the diverse ends toward which Soloveitchik
is
theologizing
in "Halakhic Man" and "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith")36
only serve to underscore a
larger pattern
of
similarity.
The most im-
portant
characteristic which
majestic
man shares with intellectual man is
creativity.
Thus,
Soloveitchik states: "There is no doubt that the term
'image
of God' in the first account
[dealing
with
majestic man]
refers to
man's inner charismatic endowment as a creative
being.
Man's likeness to
God
expresses
itself in man's
striving
and
ability
to become a creator."37
As for covenantal
man,
he is most like
religious
man in
yearning
for a
direct
experience
of the divine. "The biblical
metaphor referring
to God
breathing
life into Adam
[the second],"
Soloveitchik tells
us,
"alludes to
the actual
preoccupation
of the latter with
God,
to his
genuine living
experience
of God.... His existential 'I'
experience
is interwoven in the
awareness of
communing
with the Great Self whose
footprints
he dis-
covers
along
the
many
tortuous
paths
of creation."38
An awareness that Soloveitchik is
dealing
with
very
similar
typo-
logical pairs
in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" and "Halakhic Man" is im-
portant precisely
because it
brings
into focus the
sharply contrasting
ways
in which he relates to them in the two
essays.
In "Halakhic
Man,"
Soloveitchik is
clearly
in
sympathy
with the Adam the first
type,
i.e.,
intellectual man. It is intellectual man who
provides
the basic model for
the
talmudist;
the
latter,
like the
former,
is
this-worldly
oriented,
given
to
quantifying,
and
always creatively
involved with a
priori
ideas. To be
sure,
Soloveitchik also introduces
religious
man into his
typological
scheme,
but that is
by necessity,
since intellectual man
(who
is best
repre-
242
Joseph
Soloveitchik
sented in the
mathematician-scientist)
evinces no interest in
anything
smacking
of transcendence. A
longing
for
transcendence, then,
is what
religious
man contributes to the
makeup
of the talmudist.
Yet,
as we have
seen
(and
it is a
point
which Soloveitchik
repeats
time and
again
in
"Halakhic
Man"),
the talmudist refuses to follow the lead of the
religious
man
type
in
locating
transcendence in a realm
beyond
the natural.
Rather,
he seeks to achieve it in the world of the here and now
by using
the tools
which intellectual man has
bequeathed
to him. Hence the
peculiar
secular
cast to the talmudist's
religiosity,
a cast which testifies to the dominant
impact
of the intellectual man
type
in
shaping
his outlook.
How different is "The
Lonely
Man of Faith". When Soloveitchik
expresses
himself in an existentialist
mode,
he
completely
reverses
things;
he sides
squarely
with Adam the second. The diminution in status which
Adam the
first-majestic
man suffers in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" has
nothing
to do with the fact that he varies in some
way
from intellectual
man as the latter is
portrayed
in "Halakhic Man." Rather it reflects a
transvaluation of values in which Soloveitchik now
denigrates
the
very
same human
qualities
which he had
previously
lauded.
Thus,
the secu-
larity
of
majestic
man takes on a
negative coloring:
it
results,
Soloveitchik
tells
us,
in a "surface"
existence,
in a "fenced-in
egocentric
and
ego-ori-
ented" life.39
Indeed,
at its most
extreme,
it
brings
to the fore a "demonic"
personality, "[whose] pride
is almost
boundless,
[whose] imagination [is]
arrogant,
and
[who] aspires
to
complete
and absolute control of
every-
thing."40
As
against
this,
covenantal man is a
repository
of virtue alone.
He is an
"in-depth personality"
who manifests an
"all-embracing sym-
pathy"
for other human
beings
even while
experiencing
the
"grandeur
of
the faith commitment."41 Not
surprisingly
then,
covenantal man has much
to teach
majestic
man:
"[His]
unique message speaks
of defeat instead of
success,
of
accepting
a
higher
will instead of
commanding,
of
giving
instead of
conquering,
of
retreating
instead of
advancing,
of
acting
'ir-
rationally'
instead of
always being
reasonable."42 For his
part, majestic
man has
nothing
to teach covenantal man.
To
say
the
least,
it is
startling
that Soloveitchik
assigns radically
dif-
ferent
weights
to the Adam the first and the Adam the second
types
in
"Halakhic Man" and "The
Lonely
Man of Faith." Even more
eye-opening,
however,
is the fact that in the former
essay,
he
ultimately brings
his
types together,
whereas in the latter
work,
he
resolutely
refuses to do so.
The
unity
which is achieved in Soloveitchik's
study
of talmudism comes
about
through
his
positing
the existence of a third
type-halakhic
man
-who,
as has been
pointed
out,
synthesizes
elements of intellectual man
and
religious
man. In "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith," however,
majestic
man and covenantal man remain
permanently
at war with each
other;
there is no end to. the conflict between them.
Moreover,
Soloveitchik
insists that both
types
exist
simultaneously
within
every religious Jew
243
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
and,
beyond
that,
that God
regards
this situation as fit and
proper. Why
is this so?
Why
should the
religious Jew
not
try
to cast out secular
majestic
man from his inner
being?
Because,
Soloveitchik
argues-in
what is
certainly
a
key interpretive point
of "The
Lonely
Man of Faith"
-Adam the first's
secularity
has
religious
sanction,
the
stamp
of God's
approval; majestic
man,
after
all,
is created in the
"image
of God" and
commanded to "fill the earth and subdue it."
Thus,
Soloveitchik arrives
at a
"tragic"
view of the nature of
religious
life as
entailing
a
"staggering
dialectic":
[God]
wants man to
engage
in the
pursuit
of
majesty-dignity
as well as
redemptiveness.
He summoned man to retreat from
peripheral,
hard-
won
positions
of
vantage
and
power
to the center of the faith
experience.
He also commanded man to advance from the covenantal center to the
cosmic
periphery
and
recapture
the
positions
he
gave up
a while
ago.
He authorized man to
quest
for
"sovereignty";
He also told man to
surrender and be
totally
committed. He enabled man to
interpret
the
world in
functional,
empirical "how"-categories.
. . .
Simultaneously,
He also
requires
of man to
forget
his functional and bold
approach,
to
stand in
humility
and dread before the
mysterium magnum surrounding
him,
to
interpret
the world in
categories
of
purposive activity
instead of
those of mechanical
facticity....43
It
only
needs to be added that the Soloveitchik of the main
body
of
"Halakhic Man" would find this statement
totally
alien,
while the Solo-
veitchik of the introduction to the
essay
would
fully
endorse it.
What about loneliness? How does it fit into Soloveitchik's
typological
scheme? Here
again
we have a
striking
illustration of the vast
gulf
in
outlook
separating
"Halakhic Man" and "The
Lonely
Man of Faith." In
Soloveitchik's
analysis
of
talmudism,
the
religious
virtuoso exhibits in-
tellectual
prowess;
he is the thinker
par
excellence. In "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
on the other
hand,
the model
religious
individual
(sometimes
labeled
by
Soloveitchik the
"knight
of
faith,"
a
Kierkegaardian term)
manifests an acute
feeling
of
loneliness;
he is the sensitive soul
par
excellence. This
loneliness,
Soloveitchik
argues,
has its source in the
covenantal man side of the human
personality
and reflects an "I" aware-
ness of "exclusiveness and
ontological incompatability
with
any
other
being."44
Soloveitchik
expands upon
this
point
in the
following way:
"The 'I' is
lonely, experiencing ontological incompleteness
and casual-
ness
[sic],
because there is no one who exists like the 'I' and because the
modus existentiae of the 'I' cannot be
repeated,
imitated,
or
experienced
by
others."45 Not
suprisingly,
existential loneliness is a source of
pain;
it
evokes a sense of the
"absurd,"
thus
leading
the individual to doubt his
"ontological legitimacy,
worth,
and reasonableness."46 It is
something,
Soloveitchik
stresses,
which must be overcome.47
244
Joseph
Soloveitchik
The
way
in which the individual overcomes loneliness is
by
estab-
lishing
a "covenantal
relationship"
with God and fellow humans. This
mode of
existence,
Soloveitchik
emphasizes,
is
unique
to the covenantal
man
type
within the
individual,
since the
majestic
man side of the human
personality
never
experiences
loneliness. There is an
irony
in
this,
in
that
majestic
man is
by
nature a "social
being, gregarious, [and]
com-
municative."48
(This
is
why
in the first account of the creation
story,
dealing
with
majestic
man,
Adam and Eve are described as
coming
into
existence
together.)
However,
his
sociability
has
nothing
to do with the
need for
dialogue.
Rather,
it
represents
a "creative social
gesture";
he
joins
forces with others because he believes that "collective
living
and
acting
will
promote
his
interests";
he
forges
a functional
community
in
which he can better
display
his
dignity
and
majesty.49
At
bottom, then,
majestic
man remains
self-sufficient,
"ontologically complete,"
even while
living
in a "natural
community."50
In that
community,
Soloveitchik
tells
us,
... Adam and Eve act
together,
work
together, pursue
common
objectives
together; yet they
do not exist
together. Ontologically, they
do not
belong
to each
other;
each is
provided
with an 'I' awareness and knows
nothing
of a "We" awareness.... The
in-depth personalities
do not com-
municate,
let alone
commune,
with each other.51
If the
majestic
man
type
within the individual
points
him in the
direction of the natural
community,
the covenantal man
type prompts
him down the
path
toward the "covenantal
community."
It is in the latter
mode of
relationship
that true
dialogue
is achieved and the circle of
existential isolation broken. Since
covenant-making
takes
place
on two
levels-between man and God and between fellow humans-it
may
be
wondered which comes first? Soloveitchik's answer here is clear-the
lonely
individual has to reach out to God before he can
open
himself to
other human
beings. Paradoxically, though,
this
reaching
out comes
about
through
an act of
"recoil,"
in which the covenantal man side of the
human
personality humbly
submits to God's will. It is when covenantal
man "lets himself be confronted and defeated
by
a
Higher
and Truer
Being,"
Soloveitchik
argues,
that "finitude and
infinity, temporality
and
eternity,
creature and creator become involved in the same
community.
They
bind themselves
together
and
participate
in a unitive existence."52
Having
made an initial "sacrificial
gesture"53
vis a vis
God,
the inner
covenantal man now turns to fellow humans and
repeats
the act: he
"give[s] away part
of himself" in "surrender and
retreat,"
with the result
that true human
companionship
is born.54 What
emerges
from all
this, in
Soloveitchik's
view,
is a
"community
of commitments . . .
compris[ing]
three
participants:
'I, thou,
and
He,'
the He in whom all
being
is rooted
245
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
and in whom
everything
finds its rehabilitation
and,
consequently,
re-
demption."55
Given Soloveitchik's insistence in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" that
the model
religious
individual is a
great
emoter,
it is to be
expected
that
he would have
difficulty
in
integrating
Torah
study
into the overall
scheme of the
essay.
What
possible
connection could there be between
the emotional need to overcome existential loneliness and the intellectual
probing
of sacred texts a la the talmudist?
Apparently,
Soloveitchik
himself is aware of
this,
since he does not so much as mention Torah
study
in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith."
Rather,
in a fashion that would do
honor to a Hasid but is
totally
out of character for a
Litvak,
he focuses on
prayer
as the central
religious
act of the
religious
virtuoso. In this
analysis,
prayer
is linked to
prophecy,
and the two are
presented
as twin com-
ponents
of the man-God
dialogue.
What
prayer
and
prophecy
have in
common,
Soloveitchik
argues,
are three
key
elements: a "confrontation
of God and man takes
place"; powerful feelings
of "human
solidarity
and
sympathy"
are
evoked;
and a "normative ethico-moral
message"
is is-
sued.56 Since
prophecy
no
longer
exists,
Soloveitchik
stresses,
it is
prayer
alone which
permits
the "covenantal God-man
colloquy"
to be maintained
at
present. Prayer,
in
fact,
is the "continuation of
prophecy
and the
fellowship
of
prayerful
men is
ipso facto
the
fellowship
of
prophets."57
What a claim for a
champion
of Litvak
religiosity
to make!
While Torah
study
finds no
place
in "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
Torah observance does-but in a manner that is
very
far removed from
the
way
it is
presented
in "Halakhic Man." In Soloveitchik's
essay
on
talmudism,
the
halakhah,
to the
degree
that it is
functional,
represents
the concretization of the ideal a
priori
Torah. The halakhah is the divine
blueprint
for
reality brought
down to
earth,
and as such can serve as a
vehicle for
achieving
transcendence in the world of the here and now.
While
something
of this view
(minus
the a
priori element)
is also
suggested
in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" when Soloveitchik refers to the "normative
ethico-moral
message"
which issues in
prophecy
and
prayer,
this is not
the main thrust of his discussion of the Law in his existentialist
theological
statement.
Rather,
in "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
Soloveitchik
depicts
the halakhah as a tool which God uses to maintain the tension between
the
majestic
man and covenantal man sides of the human
personality.
The "halakhic
gesture,"
he informs
us,
embodies a
"paradoxical yet mag-
nificent dialectic .... When man
gives
himself to the covenantal com-
munity
the halakhah reminds him that he is also wanted and needed in
another
community.
the
cosmic-majestic,
and when it comes across man
while he is involved in the creative
enterprise
of the
majestic community,
it does not let him
forget
that he is a covenantal
being
who will never find
self-fulfillment outside of the covenant and that God awaits his return to
the covenantal
community."
This, then,
is Soloveitchik's existentialist
version of the
teleology
of the halakhah.58
246
Joseph
Soloveitchik
It is in connection with his discussion of the halakhah that Soloveit-
chik
expresses momentary-and
that is all it
is,
momentary-doubt
about
the bold existentialist claims that he is
putting
forward in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith."
Having just
made the
point
that the halakhah functions to
reinforce the individual's
ontological
turmoil,
Soloveitchik
suddenly
pulls
back,
apparently
afraid that he has created an
opening (or
at least
the
appearance
of an
opening)
for a
theological
dualism.59 Could it be
that
reality
is divisible into secular and hallowed
sectors,
and that
majestic
man functions in
one,
while covenantal man
operates
in the other? Cer-
tainly,
this view
might
be
implied
when the halakhah is
depicted
as
entailing
a dialectical movement. Soloveitchik is
quick
to
add, therefore,
that
Judaism
has "a monistic
approach
to
reality,
and . . .
unreservedly
reject[s] any
kind of dualism."60
However,
he now
goes
much
further,
stating
that the
"steady oscillating
of the man of faith between
majesty
and covenant"
is,
in
fact,
a
"complementary
movement,"
and that the
halakhah serves as a
"uniting
force."61 These
astonishing
claims are
followed
by
the remarkable assertion that the task of the
religious Jew
is
to "be
engaged
not in dialectical
surging
forward and
retreating,
but in
uniting
the
[natural
and
covenantal]
communities into one
community
where man is both the
creative,
free
agent,
and the obediant servant of
God"62 Shades of"Halakhic Man."
Yet,
having
said all this-which com-
pletely
contradicts his existentialist
exposition
of the
teleology
of the
halakhah- Soloveitchik
simply drops
the
matter,
and
proceeds
once
again
to dwell at
length
on the
unending
conflict between
majestic
man and
covenantal man. His loss of confidence is of the shortest duration.
The reason
why
Soloveitchik is so confident about what he has to
say
in "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
is that he-in
good
existentialist fashion
-is
drawing upon
his own
experience
as a
religious Jew.
Soloveitchik,
as
we have
seen,
underscores this
point
in the
very
first
paragraph
of the
essay.
A bit further into his
analysis,
he makes it clear that
he, indeed,
is
lonely:
I am
lonely....
It is a
strange,
alas,
absurd
experience engendering
sharp, enervating pain....
I
despair
because I am
lonely
and, hence,
feel frustrated. On the other
hand,
I also feel
invigorated
because this
very experience
of loneliness
presses everything
in me into the service
of God. In
my
'desolate,
howling
solitude' I
experience
a
growing
aware-
ness that. .. this service to which
I,
a
lonely
and
solitary
individual,
am
committed is wanted and
gracefully accepted by
God in His transcen-
dental loneliness and numinous solitude.63
It is evident from statements like
this,
that Soloveitchik's existentialism is
something very
far removed from a detached
philosophical
outlook. His
is an existentialism born of life rather than intellectual
study.
To be sure,
Soloveitchik borrows a broad
array
of
concepts
and terms from such
thinkers as
Kierkegaard
and Martin Buber64 in
giving expression
to his
247
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
existentialism,
but what he has to
say
is based on his
personal religious
experience.
Existential
thought,
then,
plays
the same role in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" that neo-Kantian
philosophy
does in "Halakhic Man?'-it
is a
packaging
device. Soloveitchik is
quite explicit
about this: "Whatever
I am about to
say, [in
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith"]
is to be seen as a
modest
attempt
on the
part
of a man of faith to
interpret
his
spiritual per-
ceptions
and emotions in modern
theologico-philosophical categories."65
Given the existentialist credo that
subjectivity
is
truth,
Soloveitchik
might
well have been satisfied to
simply express
his
religious feelings
and let it
go
at that. As an Orthodox
Jew,
however,
he
clearly
finds
himself under a
compulsion
to demonstrate that his
personal religious
experiences
are in line with classic
Judaic teaching.
Hence,
the elaborate
typological analysis
of the two versions of the biblical creation
story
which he
puts
forward in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith." Needless to
say,
Soloveitchik is not
offering
us the
plain meaning
of
Scripture
in his
essay.
Rather,
he
presents
an
extremely sophisticated philosophical
drash
which
plumbs
the
depths
of the biblical text. The total effect is stun-
ning-
Soloveitchik enables us to see dimensions of the biblical
story
that
we never dreamed were there.
Yet,
the radical newness of what Soloveit-
chik has to
say
should not obscure the fact that his intent is
thoroughly
conservative. He is
seeking
to anchor his
personal religious sensibility
in
the
Jewish
tradition.
V
A
comparative analysis
of "Halakhic Man" and "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith" makes it
abundantly
clear that Soloveitchik's
theological
stance is
extremely complex.
Additional evidence for this
may easily
be
provided
by turning
to an examination of the traditional and modern elements in
Soloveitchik's
religious
outlook.
Despite
the
popular impression
to the
contrary,
Soloveitchik is not
fully
committed to a "modern"
approach
to
Orthodoxy.
Indeed,
there is a
strong
traditionalist bent to his
thinking
which manifests itself in a
variety
of
ways.
Moreover,
even when Soloveit-
chik
operates
within a modernist
framework,
his discussion often veers
off in an
unanticipated,
i.e., unmodern,
direction.
Orthodox admirers and critics alike
agree
that the modern side of
Soloveitchik's
religiosity
is best
expressed
in his
openness
to Western
culture. As was
pointed
out
above,
Soloveitchik is
unique
in this
regard
among contemporary
masters of the
Talmud,
those men who wield ulti-
mate
authority
within the Orthodox
community.
At the same
time,
however,
it is crucial to note that Soloveitchik is not an
ideologist
of
secular
learning,
as was Maimonides in his
day
or as was Samson
Raphael
Hirsch in nineteenth
century Germany.
We do not
possess
a
single essay
248
Joseph
Soloveitchik
by
Soloveitchik in which he advocates that Orthodox
Jews
obtain a secular
education. Of
course,
Soloveitchik takes his own
knowledge
of Western
culture for
granted,
and
happily
makes use of it to better
present
his
theological
views. But that is as far as it
goes;
he is not in the least
interested in
convincing
others to follow his
path.
For
Soloveitchik,
in
short,
secular
learning
is a matter of
personal preference-or
better
yet,
personal
need-but not a
religious imperative.
Even as
regards
himself,
Soloveitchik is not an
unqualified
enthusiast
for Western culture.
Mathematics, science,
philosophy, theology,
litera-
ture-these are areas of Western
thought
which
strongly appeal
to him.
On the other
hand,
he has not the
slightest
use for modern historical
scholarship.
Thus,
when Soloveitchik sits down to
study
a
Jewish
text,
be
it Talmud or
Bible,
his
approach
is
utterly
traditional: a talmudic
sugya
is
always
examined in terms of the
logical categories developed by
the
classical
commentators;
a biblical narrative is
always
seen
through
the
prism
of rabbinic
(midrashic) interpretation.
While Soloveitchik was
introduced to the historical-critical method of Talmud
study during
his
student
days
in
Berlin,
when he enrolled in the "modern"
yeshivah
headed
by
Rabbi
Hayyim
Heller,66
he
clearly
did not find it to his
liking.
As for modern biblical
criticism,
which calls into
question
the Mosaic
origin
of the
Pentateuch,
Soloveitchik considers it to be
nothing
less
than
"heresy."67
Not
only
is Soloveitchik
highly
selective in
choosing
which elements
of the Western intellectual tradition to
appropriate,
but also in the uses
to which he
puts
them. Since he is such an ardent admirer of
Maimonides,
one would
expect
him to be
greatly
influenced
by
the latter's
religious
rationalism-the
attempt
to
logically
demonstrate the truth of what
Judaism
teaches. In
fact, however,
Soloveitchik
completely
eschews
any
such
aim,
offering,
as Lou Silberman has
noted,
dogmatics
in the
place
of
apologetic theology.68
When Soloveitchik harnesses his secular
learning,
Eugene
Borowitz adds
significantly,
it is to "illustrate and
amplify
. . .
ideas,
not to demonstrate them."69 In
part,
this
rejection
of
religious
rationalism reflects Soloveitchik's sense that
logical proofs
are
really
beside the
point
when it comes to the fundamental claims of
religion.
As
he states in a footnote in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith":
The trouble with all rational demonstrations of the existence of
God,
with which the
history
of
philosophy
abounds,
consists in their
being
exactly
what
they
were meant to be
by
those who formulated them:
abstract
logical
demonstrations divorced from the
living primal
ex-
periences
in which these demonstrations are rooted. For instance, the
cosmic
experience
was transformed into a
cosmological proof,
the ontic
experience
into an
ontological proof,
et cetera. Instead of
stating
that
the most
elementary
existential awareness
as a
subjective
"I exist" and
an
objective
"the world around me exists" awareness is unattainable as
249
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
long
as the ultimate
reality
of God is not
part
of this
awareness,
the
theologians engaged
in formal
postulating
and
deducing
in an ex-
periential
vacuum.70
Even
though
Soloveitchik wishes to address a modern
audience, then,
he
presents
his
theological
views on an
essentially
take it or leave it basis.
While
skepticism
about the
utility
of the
logical proofs goes part
of
the
way
in
explaining
Soloveitchik's chosen mode of
theologizing,
there
is an additional factor that has to be reckoned with.
Strange
as it
may
seem,
Soloveitchik is to some extent a
simple
man of
faith,
a naive
religious
believer. Of
course,
one would
hardly guess
this from
reading
such
high-brow theological
works as "Halakhic Man" and "The
Lonely
Man of Faith."
Yet,
the fact remains that time and
again
in his
essays
and
speeches,
Soloveitchik focuses on the "man-child" as the ideal
religious
personality.71
Abraham and
Moses,
he tells
us,
were such
figures,
as
were,
to
leap
to the modern
period, LHayyim
Soloveitchik,
Moses
Soloveitchik,
and
Hayyim
Heller. What is a "man-child"? Soloveitchik describes this
exalted
religious type
in the
following
manner:
The
great
man,
whose intellect has been raised to a
superior
level
through
the
study
of
Torah,
gifted
with
well-developed, overflowing,
powers-depth, scope, sharpness-should
not be viewed as
totally
adult.
The soul of a child still nestles within him. On the one
hand,
he is
knowledge-sated, strong
of
intellect,
rich in
experience, sober-sighted,
crowned with
age, great
of
spirit.
On the other
hand,
he remains the
young
and
playful
child;
naive
curiosity,
natural
enthusiasm,
eagerness
and
spiritual
restlessness,
have not abandoned him. If a man has
aged
and
completely
become
adult,
if the
morning
of life has
passed
him
by,
and he
stands,
in
spirit
and
soul,
at his
high
noon,
bleached of the dew
of
childhood,
if he has
grown up completely,
in
thinking, feeling,
desire,
trust-he cannot
approach
God. The adult is too smart.
Utility
is his
guiding-light.
The
experience
of God is not a businesslike affair.
Only
the child can breach the boundaries that
segregate
the finite from the
infinite.
Only
the child with his
simple
faith and
fiery
enthusiasm can
make the miraculous
leap
into the bosom of God. The
giants
of Torah
-when it came to
faith,
became little
children,
with all their
ingenu-
ousness,
gracefulness, simplicity,
their tremors of
fear,
the vivid sense of
experience
to which
they
are devoted.72
The force with which this is
put
should make it clear that Soloveitchik is
talking
about a
religious gestalt
that is known to him
through
first-hand
experience.
And it is that
experience,
most
certainly,
which
provides
the
explanatory background
for the remarkable claim which he
puts
forward
in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith":
I have never been
seriously
troubled
by
the
problem
of the Biblical
doctrine of creation vis-a-vis the scientific
story
of evolution at both the
cosmic and the
organic
levels,
nor have I been
perturbed by
the con-
250
Joseph
Soloveitchik
frontation of the mechanistic
interpretation
of the human mind with the
Biblical
spiritual concept
of man. I have not -been
perplexed by
the
impossibility
of
fitting
the
mystery
of revelation into the framework of
historical
empiricism.
Moreover,
I have not even been troubled
by
the
theories of Biblical criticism which contradict the
very
foundations
upon
which the
sanctity
and
integrity
of the
Scriptures
rest.73
Soloveitchik,
in
sum,
is a
"man-child,"
and the child-like side of his
per-
sonality
stands in no need of rational
proofs
in the
religious sphere.
While one can
point
to
ambiguities
in Soloveitchik's attitude toward
the Western intellectual
tradition,
this is
certainly
not true of his view of
Western
technology.
Here Soloveitchik's
modernity
comes to the fore in
a
truly striking
fashion-he is
totally approving
of
any
and all techno-
logical
endeavor. The carte blanche
approval
that Soloveitchik
gives
to
technological striving
in an
essay
like "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
it is
important
to
note,
has
nothing
to do with tolerance of an
essentially
secular
enterprise.
Rather,
Soloveitchik sees Western civilization's tech-
nological
thrust as a noble
attempt
to
carry
out God's command to Adam
the first: "fill the earth and subdue it." He adds:
Man of old who could not
fight
disease and succumbed in multitudes to
yellow
fever or
any
other
plague
with
degrading helplessness
could not
lay
claim to
dignity. Only
the man who builds
hospitals,
discovers
therapeutic techniques,
and saves lives is blessed with
dignity.
Man of
the 17th and 18th centuries who needed several
days
to travel from
Boston to New York was less
dignified
than modern man who ... boards
a
plane
at the New York
Airport
at
midnight
and takes several hours
later a
leisurely
walk
along
the streets of London.74
Soloveitchik's
religious appreciation
of
technology
extends,
in
fact,
even
beyond
the
earthly
realm: "Adam the first transcends the limits of the
reasonable and
probable,
and ventures into the
open spaces
of a boundless
universe.... Man
reaching
for the distant stars is
acting
in
harmony
with
his nature which was
created, willed,
and directed
by
his Maker. It is a
manifestation of obedience to rather than rebellion
against
God."75 In
the
light
of
this,
one can
only
wonder how Soloveitchik would
interpret
the biblical
story
of the tower of Babel.
The fact that Soloveitchik
portrays
Adam the first as a "creative
esthete"76 as well as a
technological
virtuoso,
serves to alert us to
yet
another
aspect
of his
religious modernity.
Alone
among major
Orthodox
figures today,
he is
keenly
aware of the
esthetic,
both as a mode of con-
sciousness and as an
interpretive category.
This
awareness,
no
doubt,
reflects Soloveitchik's immersion in Kantian
philosophy
at the
University
of Berlin
(both
Kant and Hermann Cohen wrote massive tomes
dealing
with the
subject);
it is
hardly something
that he could have absorbed in
an Orthodox environment in Eastern
Europe.
To
say
that Soloveitchik is
251
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
aware of the esthetic
realm, however,
is not to
imply
that he is
totally
enamored of it.
Here,
in
fact,
the evidence is
contradictory.
On the one
hand,
it is
certainly significant
that Adam the first-an ideal
type
whose
nature is God-willed-is
depicted
as
"always
an
esthete,"
his "conscience
. ..
energized
...
by
[the idea]
of the beautiful."77
Moreover,
in "But if
You Search There" Soloveitchik
explicitly
states that the esthetic is a
key
element in all
religious experience.78 Finally,
Soloveitchik's own written
work,
which is
carefully
crafted so as to achieve a
strong
esthetic
effect,
points
to a
positive
attitude.79 On the other
hand,
he
approvingly
cites
Maimonides' view that the sin of Adam and Eve consisted in their sacri-
ficing
the ethical on the altar of the esthetic.80 Related to this is Soloveit-
chik's
objection
to esthetics as
working against
the halakhic concern
for detail:
In esthetics the overall
configuration,
the
gestalt,
is
important,
not the
detail.
Indeed,
one
steps
back to view a
painting
so that the detail
disappears.
If the detail is too
compelling
it
disrupts
the overall effect.
Halakhically,
the detail is
important.
One minute before sunset
Friday
eve and one minute after is the difference between identical acts
being
permitted
or forbidden.81
All in
all, then,
Soloveitchik
appears
to be of two minds about the esthetic.
Yet,
even his
negative judgments,
it is
important
to
stress,
represent
an
involvement with a realm of
experience
that is
beyond
the ken of Or-
thodox traditionalism.
What about Soloveitchik's Zionism? Is it not still another element of
his
religious modernity? Certainly,
confirmed Orthodox traditionalists
would maintain
so,
since
they regard
Zionism,
in its modern
political
form,
as a secular
heresy-an arrogant
human
attempt
to act inde-
pendently
of God's will
(as
expressed
in the
coming
of the
Messiah).
This
anti-Zionist
point
of view-which was institutionalized in the
Agudath
Israel
organization-was
communicated to Soloveitchik as
part
of his
family heritage.
In
strictly personal
terms, then,
there is no
question
that
Soloveitchik's move into the Zionist
camp represented
a break with the
bonds of tradition. And a
painful
break at
that;
in
joining
forces with the
Mizrachi
(the religious
Zionist
movement),
Soloveitchik tells
us,
he had
to "sacrifice
peace
of mind and ties of
community
and
friendship."82
As
for Soloveitchik's mature Zionist
position,
it includes an affirmation of
modern
Jewish
nationalism as the fulfillment of the biblical command to
conquer
and settle the land of Israel. The State of Israel
itself,
he main-
tains,
is invested with the full
sanctity
of the
holy
land; indeed,
its
very
existence is a token of God's
loving
concern for his
people
in the wake of
the Holocaust.83
Having
made the
point
that Soloveitchik's Zionism seems
radically
new when seen from a traditionalist Orthodox
perspective,
it remains to
252
Joseph
Soloveitchik
be said that it
appears remarkably
old-fashioned when
judged by typical
Zionist-even
religious
Zionist-standards. The
key point
here is that
Soloveitchik does not
regard
the rise of the State of Israel as an event that
has
fundamentally (let
alone
permanently)
altered the nature of
Jewish
life. To be
sure,
he
rejoices
in the fact that the
Jews
now have a
place
of
refuge
and an
army
with which to defend
themselves,
and that the State
of Israel has bolstered
Jewish
morale
throughout
the world. At the same
time,
Soloveitchik does not believe that the
Jewish
state can offer a solu-
tion to the
problem
of
anti-Semitism,
or that its existence creates
any
new
imperatives
or standards of
judgment
for
Jews.
There
is,
in
short,
not the
slightest
whiff of messianism in Soloveitchik's Zionism. Now as in the
past,
he
insists,
Jews
remain
obligated
to
study
and
practice
the Law- that
is the
yardstick by
which the success or failure of the State of Israel will
be measured. As Walter
Wurzburger explains:
"In the final
analysis,
[Soloveitchik]
sees in the
Jewish
state not an end in itself but an instru-
mentality
for the realization of the value
system
which is
ultimately
grounded
in the Sinaitic revelation."84 Woe unto
Zion,
Soloveitchik
warns,
if Torah does not
proceed
out of it!
Since Soloveitchik does not view the rise of the State of Israel as an
event that has
decisively
reoriented
Jewish
life,
it is not to be
expected
that he would look
upon
the Holocaust in a different manner. This
point
needs to be underscored because an effort has been made of late to enlist
Soloveitchik into the ranks of the "Holocaust
theologians,"
i.e.,
those
Jewish
thinkers who see the destruction of
European Jewry
as an event
that has shattered the traditional framework of
Judaic
existence.
Thus,
Irving Greenberg,
in
arguing
that the
conjunction
of the Holocaust and
the creation of the State of Israel marks the
opening
of the "third
cycle
of
Jewish history," points
to Soloveitchik's
"major
and seminal
response
to
the Holocaust" in
"Hark,
My
Beloved Knocks" as his source of
inspira-
tion.85 In
truth, however,
there is
nothing
at all radical about the
essay;
"Hark,
My
Beloved Knocks" is a
sophisticated
restatement of an
utterly
traditional
position.
The basic
premise
of the work is that it is not
only
metaphysically
futile to
question
God's
ways,
but also
Jewishly
unau-
thentic to do so.
Indeed,
Soloveitchik
goes Job's
friends one better
by
criticizing Job
for even
daring
to ask
why
he suffers. Such is the
way
of
the "man of
fate,"
Soloveitchik
maintains,
whereas the authentic
Jew
is
called
upon
to be the "man of
destiny."
The
latter,
viewing
his
suffering
as a
challenge
and call to
action,
asks
only
one
question:
"what should I
do now?" Here Soloveitchik's answer is
absolutely
clear:
repent!
As
he states:
Suffering
comes to elevate man, to
purify
his
spirit
and sanctify him, to
cleanse his
thoughts
of the
dregs
of
superficiality
and vulgarity;
to
refine his soul and broaden his horizons. A
general principle:
suf-
253
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
fering-its purpose
is to correct the flaw in man's
personality....
Suffer-
ing appears
in the world to contribute
something
to
man,
to make
atonement for him. . . .
Suffering obligates
man to return in full
repentance
to God.86
This then is Soloveitchik's ultra-traditional
response
to the "absolute
hiddenness of God's face" in the
Holocaust,
to
"suffering unparalleled
in
the
history
of exilic millenia."87
Among
the
things
that the Holocaust
swept away
was the world of
East
European Jewish piety
into which Soloveitchik was born.
This,
no
doubt,
goes
a
long way
toward
explaining yet
another
aspect
of his re-
ligious
traditionalism-his
nostalgic
idealization of the
past
as embodied
in "Brisk." "Brisk" in this context does not refer to the method of Talmud
study
that was
developed by
Soloveitchik's
grandfather,
but rather to the
religious lifestyle
of Lithuanian
Jewry. Consistently
in his
essays
and
lectures,
Soloveitchik invokes "Brisk" as a
yardstick by
which to measure
true
Orthodoxy;
it is the
paradigm
of authentic
Judaic
existence. Yet it is
most
certainly
not a fair
yardstick,
in that it denotes an
imaginary
world.
Here,
for
example,
is how Soloveitchik describes the "Brisk" of his
youth,
at the same time
comparing
it to the current Orthodox scene in America:
... I remember a time when
ninety percent
of the
Jews
were observant
and the secularists were a small
minority....
I still remember-it was
not so
long ago-when Jews
were still close to God and lived in an
atmosphere
pervaded
with holiness. But
today
what do we see? The
profane
and the secular are in control wherever we turn. Even in those
neighborhoods
made
up predominantly
of
religious Jews
one can no
longer
talk of the
"sanctity
of the Sabbath
day."
True,
there are
Jews
in
America who observe the Sabbath .... But there are no "eve of the
Sabbath"
Jews
who
go
out to
greet
the Sabbath with
beating
hearts and
pulsating
souls. There are
Jews
who observe the
precepts
with their
hands, feet,
and mouths-but few who
truly
know the
meaning
of service
of the heart. What is the
percentage
of
religious Jews today
in contrast to
the
ninety percent only
two
generations ago?
Absolute zero.88
This is sheer
romanticism,
of
course,
romanticism born of
nostalgic
longing,
and fueled
by
a sense of irrevocable loss. In
comparison
to
"Brisk," then,
modern
Orthodoxy
cannot
help
but
appear
as
"rootless,"
as
having "snipped wings."89
How ironic that the
leading
Orthodox
advocate of
openness
to the new should be so tied to a model of
Jewish
life drawn from the never-never land of the
past.
Given Soloveitchik's idealization of
"Brisk,"
it is not
surprising
that
his career choice was to become a
talmudist,
rather than to
pursue
an
academic career in
philosophy.
How could he in
good
conscience have
opted
for the latter alternative? After
all,
Soloveitchik had.
to honor the
claims of the
past.
In
becoming
a
talmudist,
it needs to be
stressed,
254
Joseph
Soloveitchik
Soloveitchik set the
pattern
for his
everyday
existence,
a
pattern
that
continues
unchanged
as he enters his fifth decade of
teaching
at Yeshiva
University's
rabbinic
training
school.
Thus,
any attempt
to assess the
traditional and modern elements in Soloveitchik's
religiosity
has to come
to
grips
with that fact that
day
in and
day
out the vast bulk of his time is
given
over to the
pious
examination of
Judaism's
sacred texts.
Any
secular
interests that Soloveitchik
may
have- and
they
are
far-reaching,
of course
-have to be
pursued
in his
spare
time;
they
are,
by
definition,
secondary.
Beyond
this,
Soloveitchik's involvement in the
yeshivah
side of Yeshiva
University
means that his activities are carried out in a hothouse of re-
ligiosity.
All of Soloveitchik's students and
colleagues
are
Orthodox,
and
some of the latter even
sport long
black coats.
Anyone
who has seen
Soloveitchik
participating
in the afternoon
prayers
with his students
(in
the
classroom!) following
one of his Talmud
lectures,
knows how comical
it is to think of him as a modern academic
type.
Such behavior is
fully
appropriate
to
"Brisk,"
but would be
unimaginable
at
Harvard,
Berkeley,
or the
University
of
Chicago.
Is it
going
too far to maintain that Soloveitchik's
strangely negative
attitude toward
inter-religious dialogue
is
prompted by
a
lingering
concern over what
they
would
say
in "Brisk"? Of
course,
there is
nothing
strange per
se in the view that
Jews
should desist from
discussing
matters
of faith with Christians or others. This
position may easily
be sustained
on both
prudential
and
theological grounds.
Soloveitchik himself has
chosen the latter
route,
arguing
in "Confrontation" that "the word of
faith reflects the
intimate,
the
private,
the
paradoxically inexpressible
cravings
of the individual for . . . his Maker. It reflects the numinous
character and the
strangeness
of the act of faith of a
particular community
which is
totally incomprehensible
to the man of a different faith com-
munity."90
Fair
enough,
but how can
Joseph
Soloveitchik
say
this?
Has he not read
widely
in Christian
theology?
Does he not
point
to
Kierkegaard,
Barth,
and Otto as thinkers who have
plumbed
the
depths
of
religious experience?
Most
importantly,
has he not drawn on these
Christian
theologians
in
formulating
his own
Jewish theology?
If,
despite
all
this,
Soloveitchik can take a stand in
opposition
to inter-faith discus-
sions,
it seems
likely
that,
deep
down,
he feels a certain amount of
guilt
over what he is
doing.
After
all,
in "Brisk" the talmudists did not read
Christian
religious
works. That much restraint-and here Soloveitchik's
modernity again
comes to the fore-he is not
prepared
to show. But at
least,
Soloveitchik
apparently
feels,
there is no need to talk to the
goyim
in
public.
There is
yet
another area where Soloveitchik's idealization of "Brisk"
would
appear
to serve as a conservative brake on his outreach to
modernity.
This involves his view of the
proper
role of women in
Jewish
life.
Judging by
his actions
alone,
one would have to conclude that Solo-
255
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
veitchik is
squarely
in the modern
camp
of
Orthodoxy
on this issue: he
married
Tonya
Lewit,
the
recipient
of a Ph.D. in
education,
and
put
her
in
charge
of a
day
school
(the
Maimonides School in
Boston)
in which
girls
and
boys study
all
Jewish subjects, including
Talmud,
together.
Yet,
in his
writings,
Soloveitchik fails to
provide
even the barest rationale for
a
greater
involvement of women in those areas of
Jewish
life which have
traditionally
been male preserves. On the
contrary,
he makes
possible
a
staunch defense of the status
quo by arguing
that men and women have
very
different roles in
transmitting
the
Jewish heritage.
It is the
father,
Soloveitchik
maintains,
who teaches the child
"discipline
of
thought
as
well as ...
discipline
of action. Father's tradition is an intellectual-moral
one."91 The
mother,
in
contrast,
as Soloveitchik sees
it,
is involved with
the
emotions,
helping
the
youngster
"to feel the
presence
of God . . . to
appreciate
mitzvot and
spiritual
values,
to
enjoy
the warmth of a dedicated
life."92 The conservative
implications
of such a view of male-female
religious
roles
hardly
need to be
spelled
out in detail. What does need to
be
stressed, however,
is that Soloveitchik
puts
forward this
position
in
the course of
memorializing
the wife of a Hasidic
rebbe,
a woman of the
old
school,
a woman
whom,
he tells
us,
was
very
much like his own
mother. Is this not a clear indication of the
powerful
hold that "Brisk"
has on Soloveitchik's
thinking?
VI
If Soloveitchik manifests a remarkable tolerance for
theological
contra-
dictions,
it is most
likely
because
they
are his
very own-they
reflect the
reality
of his
personal religious
situation. It is one
thing,
however,
to
assert that Soloveitchik is a conflicted
personality,
and
quite
another
matter to define the
precise
nature of that
split.
An obvious
stumbling
block here is that Soloveitchik offers us little in the
way
of direct
guidance
on the matter. While there are some
tantalizing autobiographical
tidbits
scattered
throughout
his
theological
oeuvre,
they only
take on
signifi-
cance when seen in the context of the
larger religious
issues that are
being
addressed. And these
issues,
in
turn,
need to be viewed in the
broad
religio-cultural
framework in which Soloveitchik
operates
for
their true
biographical importance
to
emerge.
Thus,
a
methodology
adequate
to the task of
probing
Soloveitchik's
personal religious
dilemma
requires
a constant
shuttling
back and forth between the man and the
work,
and vice versa. Seen in this
light,
however,
all of Soloveitchik's
theological writings
turn out to be
quite revealing
in a
personal way.
Indeed,
they may
be said to constitute
multiple
installments of his
spiritual autobiography.
256
Joseph
Soloveitchik
Every analysis
has to
begin
somewhere,
and when
dealing
with Solo-
veitchik the surest foundation is to be had in his
forthright
declaration
that "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" is based on his
personal religious experi-
ence. It is in this
essay,
of
course,
that Soloveitchik
projects
a
religious
type
conflicted to the core-a fact of crucial
importance. Beyond
that,
Soloveitchik's statement that he is the model for the
lonely
man of faith
makes it
crystal
clear that he has a
deep personal
stake in the bold exis-
tentialist claims which he
puts
forward in the
essay.
Yet,
it is
just
this
element of
personal
involvement,
directly expressed,
which is
conspicu-
ously
absent in Soloveitchik's defense of Litvak intellectualism in
"Halakhic
Man";
nowhere does he
suggest
that he is the model for
halakhic man.
Soloveitchik,
to be
sure,
labors
mightily
to make talmudism
appear
attractive to a modern
audience,
bringing
to bear on the effort his
broad secular
knowledge
in
general
and the
perspectives
of neo-Kantian
philosophy
in
particular.
Yet he does
so,
quite clearly,
out of a sense of
duty,
of
obligation,
rather than
personal religious
need. "Halakhic
Man,"
it is to be
remembered,
was written in the
early
1940's,
at a time when
Lithuanian
Jewry
was
being destroyed by
the
Nazis,
and when Solo-
veitchik was still
mourning
the death of his
father,
a
supreme
Litvak. In a
very
real
sense, then,
the
essay
stands as a memorial-to
"Brisk,"
a dis-
tinctive
religious
culture,
and to the Brisker
(Soloveitchik) dynasty,
which
played
a crucial role in
shaping
Litvak intellectualism. It is
hardly
an
accident that members of the Soloveitchik
family
are
prominently
fea-
tured in "Halakhic Man."
Piety,
both familial and
cultural,
dictates Solo-
veitchik's
theological position
in the
essay.
If use of the word "dictates" in connection with the
theological
views that Soloveitchik sets forth in "Halakhic Man"
suggests
a man
acting
under
compulsion,
that is
fully appropriate.
Evidence for this is
readily
at hand in the talmudic citation that Soloveitchik uses as the
epigraph
for his
essay.
In context
(Sotah 36b),
the
passage-"At
that
moment his father's
image
came and
appeared
to him
through
the
window" -refers to the biblical
Joseph,
who,
while in
Egypt,
was
sexually
enticed
by Potiphar's
wife. As
Joseph edged
toward
sin,
the Talmud tells
us,
Jacob appeared
to him in a vision and issued a stern
warning: pass
the
test at hand or be forever cut off from the children of Israel.
This, then,
is
the situation in which Soloveitchik finds himself in "Halakhic Man": he
is a
Joseph,93
with a father
looking
over his
shoulder,
who will either
uphold
the honor of the Brisker
dynasty-or
else;
Soloveitchik
simply
cannot afford to fail the test. Small
wonder, then,
that
having
worked
prodigiously
to
provide
an elaborate rationale for
talmudism,
he con-
cludes "Halakhic Man" on the
following prayerful
note: "... it is revealed
and known before He who created the
world,
that
my
sole intention was
257
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
to defend the honor of the halakhah and the halakhists.... And if I have
erred,
may
the Lord of
mercy forgive
me."94
But is there not
something fundamentally wrong
here?
Why
should
Soloveitchik
require any special
incentive to make the case for talmudism?
Does he not stand
foursquare
behind the values of Litvak
intellectualism,
values that are so
powerfully projected
in "Halakhic Man"? The answer
to the last
question, apparently,
is a
qualified
"no." Most
certainly,
there
is a side of Soloveitchik that
responds
with total enthusiasm to his familial-
cultural
heritage
of undiluted
intellectualism,
of a fierce commitment to
mind as the one sure
guide
to truth. Soloveitchik the Litvak is no
figment
of the
imagination;
he does exist. But there is
yet
another side to Solo-
veitchik,
and this side is
incapable
of
endorsing
what the Litvak in him
affirms. Litvak intellectualism
may speak
to Soloveitchik's
mind,
but it
ignores
the
reality
of what he
feels- feelings
so
strong
that
they eventually
burst
through
the dam in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith." The Litvak tradi-
tion is
simply
too
cold,
too
rational,
too
unyielding
to the emotions.
What is a Litvak to do if his own
religious experience
tells him that the
truth lies elsewhere?
Try
as he
might
to
keep
his non-Litvak side
carefully
under
wraps
in
"Halakhic
Man,"
Soloveitchik does not succeed in
doing
so.95 It comes to
the fore both
directly
and
indirectly; directly
in the existentialist intro-
duction to the
essay; indirectly
in the anecdotal material that is scattered
throughout
the work. As to the
introduction,
we have
already
had
occasion to indicate-and the
significance
of this should not be lost on
the reader-that it
depicts
a conflicted
religious type very
much like the
one
portrayed
in "The
Lonely
Man of Faith." What needs to be added
here is that this
type
is
centrally,
even
radically,
involved with the
emotions.
Caught
in a
permanent tug-of-war
between the intellectual
man and
religious
man
types
within his
personality,
the "ideal"
type
of
the introduction
experiences
severe
psychological
stress,
ongoing
emo-
tional turmoil.
Yet,
far from
viewing
this in a
negative light,
as a
good
Litvak
would,
Soloveitchik sees it as
something positive, arguing
that a
"deep split
of the soul"
promotes religious growth, ultimately producing
a
personality
of
"incomparable splendor
and
glory."96
In
short,
if the
message
of the main
body
of "Halakhic Man" is use
your
mind,
that of
the introduction is trust
your feelings.
Turning
now to the main
body
of "Halakhic Man"
itself,
we
may
ask:
how does Soloveitchik view those
Jews-the
confirmed Litvaks-who
refuse to
place any
trust in
feelings?
A surface
reading
of the
essay
would
certainly
seem to indicate that he is
completely approving;
that here
Soloveitchik's Litvak side is
powerfully
manifested. We refer
specifically
to the anecdotal material that he
presents
to illustrate the nature of
halakhic man. This
material-briefly
described above - is
strikingly
con-
sistent: time and
again,
Soloveitchik,
with
apparent
relish,
shows us a
258
Joseph
Soloveitchik
model
Litvak,
usually
a member of his own
family, emphatically rejecting
the siren call of the emotions.
Yet,
there is
something strange
about
Soloveitchik's tales of the Litvaks. The behavior he describes is so
radical,
so
extreme,
as to make his
presumed
heroes seem
grotesque.
Who,
for
example, wishing
to
portray
Litvak intellectualism in a
positive light,
would boast that his father and
grandfather
set aside all human sentiment
and refused ever to enter a
cemetery,
because a stark encounter with
death would have distracted them from the
contemplation
of the Law?97
Or
again,
who would tell with
pride
the
following
macabre
story
about
his maternal
grandfather:
The beloved
daughter
of Rabbi
Elijah
of Pruzhan became ill about a
month before she was to be
married,
and after a few
days
was near death.
Rabbi
Elijah's
son entered the room where Rabbi
Elijah
was
praying,
wrapped
in his
prayer
shawl and
phylacteries,
to inform him that his
daughter
was in her death throes. Rabbi
Elijah
went to his
daughter's
room and asked the doctor how much
longer
it would be before the end.
When he received the doctor's
reply,
Rabbi
Elijah
returned to his
room,
removed his Rashi's
phylacteries
and
quickly put
on the
phylacteries
of
Rabbenu
Tam,
for
immediately upon
his
daughter's
death he would be
subject
to the law that an onen
[a
mourner whose dead relative has not as
yet
been
buried]
is
exempt
from all the commandments. After he
removed his second
pair
of
phylacteries, wrapped
them
up,
and
put
them
away,
he entered his
dying daughter's
room,
in order to be
present
at the moment that her soul
departed....
98
Stories like
this,
while
ostensibly presented
in order to
glorify
the
Litvak,
cannot
help
but evoke
strong disapproval
in the reader. And this dis-
approval,
it seems safe to
assume,
is shared in
part by
Soloveitchik him-
self,
specifically by
that
part
of him which rebels
against
the Litvak tradi-
tion's
spurning
of the emotions. The vein of
anger
that runs
through
the anecdotal material in "Halakhic Man" is not to be missed.
Seen in a broad cultural
context,
the stories that Soloveitchik tells in
"Halakhic Man" seem like
nothing
so much as Hasidic
parodies
of the
brainy
but soulless Litvak. The thematic link with Hasidism that is
evident here should alert us to a still
larger
truth:
Soloveitchik,
within
his own
personality, recapitulates
the
religious
debate between the
Hasidim and the
Mitnaggdim.
To
say
this is not to
imply
that Soloveitchik
is in
any way
a closet Hasid. Rather the
point
is that his
critique
of Litvak
intellectualism
exactly parallels
that
put
forward
by
the Hasidic move-
ment. In both cases the
argument
is made that the Litvak tradition is
excessively
cerebral,
not
allowing
sufficient
play
to the
emotions;
that
the
Litvaks,
as the Hasidim were wont to
express
it,
honor torah
(study)
at
the
expense
of
yirah (religious feeling).
But for Soloveitchik to
say
this is
to
reject
that
part
of himself which is
unreservedly
committed to the
Brisker
heritage
of
pure
talmudism,
of a self-sufficient intellectualism
259
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
that seeks
nothing beyond study, study,
and still more
study.
Small
wonder, then,
that when,
in the introduction to "Halakhic Man" and in
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
Soloveitchik
gives greater weight
to the
emotions than the
intellect,
he also
projects
conflicted
religious types.
Soloveitchik,
most
certainly,
is
speaking
to his own
religious
dilemma.
Given the fundamental
split
in Soloveitchik's
theological
outlook,
it
is not to be
expected
that he would follow the lead of the Hasidim in
emphasizing
the
joyous
side of
religious experience.
On the
contrary,
in
both the
introductory
section to "Halakhic Man" and in "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
he stresses the inevitable
pain
that
accompanies
an
honestly-lived religious
life. The former
writing,
for
example,
contains a
lengthy
footnote in which Soloveitchik rails
against
the view that
religion
offers an
"escape
from the turbulence of life to a
magical,
still,
and
quiet
island."" Such a
view,
he
argues,
is
"intrinsically
false and
deceptive,"
masking
the truth that
"religious experience,
from
beginning
to
end,
is
antinomic and antithetic."100 As for "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
it
depicts
religious
life as
painfully wrenching
at
every
turn;
the
"knight
of
faith,"
according
to
Soloveitchik,
is
ontologically
torn,
existentially lonely,
and
engaged
in
repetitive
sacrificial
gestures.
For
good
measure,
Soloveitchik
adds that the sensitive
religious
individual
today
feels
particularly
alienated because the covenantal man side of his
personality goes largely
unappreciated
in a
society given
over to the achievements of
majestic
man. All in
all,
Soloveitchik's
emphasis
on the
painful
nature of
religious
experience
is clearcut. What is also obvious is that this stress reflects the
personal
burden of
pain
which he carries as an individual torn between
the claims of Litvak intellectualism on the one side and a Hasidic-like
affirmation of the emotions on the other.
Once the
specific
nature of Soloveitchik's
religious
dilemma is
fully
grasped,
various elements of his
larger theological enterprise begin
to
fall into
place.
A
striking example
is his insistence that a
group
of
commandments exist which have both an inner and outer dimension. As
he states:
[T]here
are two kinds of
precepts,
the first
consisting
of those whose
fulfillment and
performance
are
combined,
as for
example
the
precept
of
taking
four
species
on the Feast of Tabernacles. . . .
[When]
one
actually
takes the
palm
branch in hand one
performs
the
precept
and
fulfills it at the same time. The same is
true,
for
example,
of the
precept
of
sacrificing
the Paschal lamb or the
precept
of
counting
the
omer,
the
49
day period
between Passover and the Feast of Weeks. But there are
other
precepts [including prayer, repentance, mourning,
and love of
neighbor]
whose
performance
and fulfillment are not
identical,
for
example
when the
performance
of the
precept
is
through specific
action
of some kind or
through
a verbal
utterance,
but its fulfillment is
up
to
the heart. The
precept
is,
in
fact,
performed by
means of an utterance or
260
Joseph
Soloveitchik
261
an external
act,
but fulfillment is
dependent
on
attaining
a certain
degree
of
spiritual
awareness.101
Distinguishing
between
performance
and fulfillment is standard in a
Brisker-inspired
halakhic
analysis.
In this
case, however,
Soloveitchik
clearly
has a
specific goal
in mind: to secure a
place
for the emotions
within the four ells of the Law.
Indeed,
by arguing
that a number of com-
mandments that are basic to
religious
life
require
both halakhic
precision
and inner
feeling
for their
proper
observance,
he succeeds in
making
them over in his own
image.
How wonderful: the Litvak in Soloveitchik
can stand firm on the need for
legal rigor,
while his non-Litvak side can
rejoice
that a
surge
of emotion is not
only
tolerated but
actually
mandated.
Having
carved out a niche for the emotions in the hallowed
precincts
of the
Law,
Soloveitchik
plunges
ahead,
offering
brilliant
analyses
of the
affective
component
of
prayer, repentance, mourning,
etc. The extent of
his involvement with these
matters,
as well as the
passion
that he
brings
to
them,
are
hardly
fortuitous:
Soloveitchik,
quite obviously,
has found a
channel for
expressing
his
powerful
emotional side. In
dealing
with
prayer,102
Soloveitchik
consistently
stresses the
point
that it is "bound
up
with the human
needs, wants, drives,
and
urges
which make man suf-
fer."'03 He
explains:
Prayer
and trouble are
inseparably
linked. Who
prays? Only
the suf-
ferer
prays
.... To a
happy
man,
to contented
man,
the secret of
prayer
was not revealed. God needs neither thanks nor
hymns.
He wants to
hear the
outcry
of
man,
confronted with a ruthless
reality.
He
expects
prayer
to rise from a
suffering
world
cognizant
of its
genuine
needs.104
In line with his view that
prayer represents
a "doctrine of human
needs,"105
Soloveitchik
interprets
the classic
controversy
between Nah-
manides and Maimonides about the
obligatory
nature of
prayer
as a
dispute
over what
properly may
be said to constitute "trouble."
According
to
him,
the former thinker
(who
considers
prayer
to be
biblically
man-
dated
only
in time of
great
distress)
is concerned
exclusively
with a
"surface crisis"
brought
about
by
external
factors, i.e., war, famine, etc.,
while the latter thinker
(who regards prayer
as ordained
by
the Bible on
a
daily
basis)
also takes account of a
"depth
crisis"
reflecting
man's
per-
manent condition of existential
pain.106
The attention that Soloveitchik
pays
to the affective
component
of
prayer,
while
quite
considerable,
seems rather scant when
compared
to
that which he lavishes on the affective element of
repentance.
Indeed,
in
the "reconstructed" lectures
gathered together
in On
Repentance,
Solo-
veitchik deals with this
subject
so
exhaustively,
that one is led to wonder
whether
anything
else remains to be said about it. He makes
pointed
dis-
tinctions of
every imaginable
sort: between atonement and
purification;
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
between individual atonement and communal
atonement;
between re-
pentance
out of love and
repentance
out of
fear;
between intellectual re-
pentance
and emotional
repentance;
between
repentance
that
wipes
out
the
past
and
repentance
that builds on the
past;
and between
gradual
repentance
and instantaneous
repentance.
What is
truly
remarkable about
all this is that Soloveitchik is
working
with
dry
halakhic
materials;
he
claims to be
doing nothing
more than
explicating
various
passages
in
Maimonides' law code. As for the central
message
of On
Repentance,
it
comes across loud and clear:
"[Repentance]
is a
precept
whose essence is
not in the
performance
of certain acts or
deeds,
but rather in a
process
that at times extends over a whole
lifetime,
a
process
that
begins
with
remorse,
with a sense of
guilt,
with man's
increasing
awareness that there
is no
purpose
to his
life,
with a
feeling
of
isolation,
of
being
lost and
adrift in a
vacuum,
of
spiritual bankruptcy,
of frustration and failure
-and the road one travels is
very long,
until the
goal
of
repentance
is
actually
achieved."'07
The same
impulse
which
prompts
Soloveitchik to stake out a claim
for the emotions as
part
of the halakhic
enterprise,
leads him to search
for an ideal
Jewish type
that can somehow strike a balance between the
affective and
cognitive
elements of
religious experience.
The closest he
comes to
achieving
this
goal-and
it
is,
in
fact,
far from the mark-is in
"The Hidden and the
Revealed,"
where he
depicts
"New Moon
man,"'08
a
type
characterized
by
a
cold,
intellectual exterior and a
warm,
emotional
interior. New Moon man is
totally
alive to the full
gamut
of
religious
feelings,
but he
resolutely
refuses to
express
them
outwardly
lest
they
be
cheapened
in the
process.
His
guiding principle
is that "the more
holy
and intense the
emotion,
the more it must be hidden
within";'09
to the
world he will show
nothing
but his
cold,
rational side. This bizarre
formulation reveals in a stark manner the
depth
of the
split
within Solo-
veitchik's
personality.
Were he
capable
of
envisioning any
sort of
genuine
synthesis
between
thought
and
feeling,
between torah
andyirah,
in the life
of the
religious Jew,
he would have no need for New Moon man's self-
denial. The fact that this
type
is
required
to
repress
his
passionate
side is
proof positive
that
Soloveitchik,
however much he
might
wish it to be
otherwise,
can see no
way
of
establishing
a stable
equilibrium
between
the emotions and the intellect. Once the claims of the emotions are
recog-
nized,
once
religious feelings
are accorded
legitimacy
and
permitted
expression, they immediately
call into
question
the fundamental
postu-
lates of Litvak
religiosity.
Is there not a connection between Soloveitchik's failure to find a
way
out of his
religious
dilemma and his effort in "But if You Search There"
to chart a
complete phenomenology
of the
spirit,
to
trace,
step by step,
the
process by
which man links
up
with the divine? Such an
undertaking,
though forbidding
in so
many ways,
cannot
help
but
prove
attractive to
262
Joseph
Soloveitchik
Soloveitchik:
by starting
at
ground
zero in the
analysis
of the
religious
experience,
it enables him to make a
completely
fresh start in
striving
to
harmonize the claims of the intellect and the emotions. Small
wonder,
then,
that Soloveitchik labors
hard,
producing
more than
eighty tightly
printed pages
that read like a cross between Rudolf Otto's The Idea
of
the
Holy
and Maimonides' discussion of the
stages
that lead to
prophecy.
Central to Soloveitchik's
analysis
is the distinction between "natural" and
"revelatory" experience.
The former has its source in the
"logic,
order,
and
light
which shine forth from . . .
great
and
mighty
Creation";
it is
fueled
by
a
"yearning implanted
in
[man's] spiritual being
to attribute
the
multiplicity
in
time-bound,
limited existence to the first uncondi-
tioned existent ... ."10 The
latter,
in
contrast,
involves the
"penetration
of the
mysterious
into
[man's] simple
world": "God reveals himself to
man ...
[in an] incomprehensible
and awesome
revelatory
vision which
takes
place
without his
willing
it and without his
permission.""'
In reach-
ing
out to the
divine,
Soloveitchik
argues,
man moves
steadily
between
these two
types
of
experience,
until
they
are at last united in a
culminating
devekut
stage.
A
process
that
begins
with the
posing
of fundamental onto-
logical questions
about the nature of the cosmos comes to an end in a
burst of "mad" love that
brings
about attachment to God.
While the scheme of "But if You Search There" is
extremely
broad
-broad
enough
to
encompass
such diverse elements as
ontological ques-
tioning,
instinctual
drives,
revelatory experience,
Torah
study,
halakhic
observance, devekut,
etc.-it fails to effect the desired
conceptual
break-
through:
a true
rapprochement
between the
cognitive
and affective
aspects
of
religious experience.
Not that the two stand
opposed
to each
other.
Rather,
it is that
they
are
rigidly segregated.
While Soloveitchik
permits
both the intellect and the emotions to
fully play
themselves out
in his
analysis,
he allows for no
dynamic
interaction between them.
Perhaps
this is due to a fear of failure or of
creating
an
explosive theologi-
cal mix. In
any
case,
Soloveitchik makes sure that
thought
and
feeling go
their
separate ways
while
moving
toward the same
goal.
In the
end, then,
the whole
enterprise
of "But if You Search There" is rendered otiose. For
all its
sophistication,
Soloveitchik's
religious phenomenology
leaves his
own inner conflict
wholly
untouched.
VII
Because of the
particular
circumstances of his
family background,
Solo-
veitchik
experiences
the conflict between the intellect and the emotions
with
special intensity-for
the
grandson
of Rabbi
Hayyim
Brisker it
could not be otherwise. Most
certainly,
however,
he is not
unique among
Jewish
thinkers in
being greatly preoccupied
with the
thorny problem
of
263
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
the
relationship
between
thought
and
feeling
in
religious
life. We have
already
had occasion to note that Soloveitchik's
critique
of Litvak intel-
lectualism runs
exactly parallel
to the one articulated
by
Hasidic
spokes-
men. More
generally,
it echoes a theme that Isadore
Twersky
has identi-
fied as
being
recurrent in
Jewish
intellectual
history: "gnawing
dissatisfac-
tion with extreme
talmudism.""2
As he
explains:
[In
the face of
repeated
calls for an exclusive
emphasis
on Talmud
study]
there is
apprehension
and
anxiety
lest the halakhic
enterprise
become externalized and
impoverished
.... We hear
resounding
calls
for
vigilance
to assure that the halakhic
system
remain rooted in and
related to
spirituality
.... The
spiritual
concern,
with its
eye
on the
balance between essence and
manifestation,
trigger[s]
a sustained ten-
dency
to censure halakhic intellectualism and to
downgrade
talmudism
which crowds
sensibility
and
spontaneity
out of the
picture....
113
Twersky points
to a broad
range
of
outstanding Jewish figures
across the
ages-from Bahya
ibn Pakuda in the eleventh
century
to Abraham Isaac
Kook in the twentieth
century-who belong
to this tradition.
But
why,
to
begin
with,
should there be a need for an
ongoing
"spiritual insurgence"? Why
is it
that,
time and
again,
extreme talmudism
comes to dominate
Jewish religious
culture? An
explanation
is to be had
in
Judaism's pronounced legalistic
bent: talmudism is the child of
halakhocentricity.
"A
major corollary
of
halakhocentricity," Twersky
notes,
"is the
repeated
demand for . . . a curriculum oriented toward
religious practice
and hence
weighted
with
Talmud, Talmud,
and more
Talmud.
Study
is the handmaiden of
practice
and talmudic lore is the
prerequisite
for and source of
religious performance.""4
To a Litvak like
Soloveitchik,
this
is,
of
course, self-evident;
an awareness of
Judaism's
halakhocentric nature is basic to his
religious
consciousness.
Hence,
his
preoccupation
with the Law in "Halakhic
Man,"
and his insistence in that
essay
that the talmudist is the ideal
religious type.
But hence also his
terrible
anguish
when,
in a
very
different
mood,
he feels
compelled
to
offer a
spiritualist critique
of Litvak intellectualism. In the talmudist-
spiritualist
debate,
Soloveitchik finds himself
squarely
on both sides of
the issue.
Something yet
more needs to be added here about the nature of
Soloveitchik's
religious
dilemma. Most
exponents
of the
spiritualist
view-
point
look
upon
themselves as the true
champions
of the
Law;
they
are
convinced that a measure of
spiritual leavening
will render the halakhic
enterprise
all the more effective.
Soloveitchik,
however much he
might
wish it to be
otherwise,
cannot
bring
himself to affirm this
position.
As he
sees
it,
the
talmudist-spiritualist
debate is an either/or
proposition;
there
is no
way
in which
spiritualist
concerns can feed into the work of the
talmudist. This narrow
reading
of the issue
points up
a
striking irony
in
264
Joseph
Soloveitchik
Soloveitchik's
theological
stance: even as he rebels
against
the Brisker
tradition,
he continues to
accept
its
point
of view as normative. Soloveit-
chik's
perception
of the talmudic endeavor as a
purely cognitive
affair
clearly
reflects the
standpoint
of Litvak intellectualism. Were he
willing
to
adopt
a less
rigid
definition of
talmudism,
he
might
well be able to
effect a reconciliation between
thought
and
feeling
in the
religious
realm.
Why,
then,
does Soloveitchik
paint
himself into a
theological
corner?
Quite obviously,
it is because he is held in thrall
by
Litvak
intellectualism;
he has
fully
internalized the Litvak outlook. The Litvak in Soloveitchik
is determined to make
things
as difficult as
possible
for his non-Lit-
vak side.
The
pain
that Soloveitchik
experiences
in
attempting
to reconcile
thought
and
feeling
within a
Judaic
framework,
it needs to be
emphasized,
is that of a man
seeking
to
forge
a new
identity
for himself. We
tend,
of
course,
to think of Orthodox
Jews
as
having
a fixed
Jewish identity;
it is
the
non-Orthodox,
presumably,
who have
Jewish identity problems.
Soloveitchik, however,
is a
striking example
of an Orthodox
figure
who
feels an
urgent
need to
define,
or better
yet
redefine,
his
personal
religious identity
within the
very
orbit of
Orthodoxy.
"What kind of
Orthodox
Jew
am I?"-that is the
question
that Soloveitchik asks
himself;
indeed,
it is the
question
that animates his whole
theological enterprise.
If,
in the
end,
he is unable to come
up
with a
satisfactory
answer,
it is not
for lack of
trying.
It is
simply
that Soloveitchik wants and needs the
impossible:
to be both a
full-fledged
Litvak and a man of
great religious
passion.
The Orthodox
Jew
who offers us the
following autobiographical
vignette
is
constitutionally
unsuited to
accept anything
less:
Father's lectures were delivered in
my grandfather's parlor,
where
my
bed stood. It was
my
custom to sit on the bed and to listen to
my
father
talk. He
spoke regularly
about Maimonides. This is what he did: he
would
open
the Talmud and read the
passage.
Then he would
say
something
like the
following:
'This is the
explanation
of Ri and the
Tosafists;
now we will examine Maimonides to see how he
explained
the
Talmud.' Father would
regularly
find that Maimonides did not
explain
the Talmud as
they
did,
and that he deviated from the
simple approach.
My
father would
say,
almost in
complaint against
Maimonides: 'I under-
stand neither Maimonides'
conceptualization
nor his
approach
to ex-
plaining
the
passage.'
It is as if father accused Maimonides himself:
'Our teacher
Moses,
why
did
you
do this?' 'It would
appear,'
father
continued,
'that Rabad
[in
his critical
commentary
on
Maimonides]
is
right.'
Members of the
group
would
leap
from their seats and each one
would
propose
his idea. Father would
listen,
then
reject
their
words,
and
say again:
'The words of our teacher are as hard
[to understand]
as
iron.'
Nevertheless,
he would not
say
that we should
despair.
He would
lean his head on his fist and sink
deep
into
thought.
The
group
remained
quiet
and did not disturb him. After a
long
time he would lift his head
265
David
Singer
and Moshe
Sokol
and
slowly begin: 'My
friends,
let us see . . .' and he started to
speak.
Sometimes he would
speak
at
length,
at other times
just
a short while. I
strained
my
ears and listened to his words. I understood
nothing
about
the substance of what was said. Nevertheless a double
impression
was
woven into
my young
mind:
(1)
Maimonides was surrounded
by
those
who
opposed
him,
'enemies' who
sought
to harm
him; (2)
the
single
defender of Maimonides was
my
father. Without
my
father who knows
what would
happen
to Maimonides. I felt as if Maimonides himself
were with us in the
parlor, listening
to father's words. Maimonides was
sitting
with me in
my
bed. What did he look like? I do not know
exactly.
But his countenance was similar to father's
good
and handsome face. He
also had the same name as father-Moses. Father would
speak;
the stu-
dents,
with
eyes
fixed
upon
him,
would listen
intently
to his words.
Slowly
the tension would
dissipate;
father
proceeded
with
power
and
strength.
New
concepts
came
forth;
laws were articulated and formu-
lated with wondrous
precision.
A new
light
shined. Problems were
resolved and the
topic explicated.
Maimonides
emerged
victorious.
Father's face shone with
great joy.
He had defended
his'friend,' Moses,
son of Maimon. A smile of contentment
appeared
on Maimonides'
lips.
I too
joined
in the
joy.
I was
bursting
with
happiness.
I would
jump
from
my
bed and run
quickly
to
my
mother's room with the
joyous
news:
'Mother, mother,
Maimonides is
right.
He has overcome Rabad.
Father
helped
him. How wonderful is father!' . . .
This was a childhood
experience.
Nevertheless it is not the
golden
fantasy
of a
young boy;
these
feelings
are not
mystical.
It is a
past
psychological reality
which lives even now in the
depths
of
my
soul.
When I sit and
study
Talmud,
I
immediately
find
myself
in a
group
of
the wise men' of tradition. The
relationship
between us is
personal.
Maimonides is on
my right,
Rabbenu Tam on
my
left,
Rashi sits in
front and
explains,
Rabbenu Tam asks a
question,
Maimonides decides
the
law,
and Rabad criticizes. All of them are in
my
room
sitting
around
my
table.
They
look at me with
love,
join
with me in
conceptualizing,
and
encourage
and
strengthen
me like a father.115
This is the
quintessential
Soloveitchik-an Orthodox
Jew fully
involved
with the
Law,
but
bringing
to that involvement
passionate feelings
that a
Litvak would never understand.
What needs to be added here
by way
of
conclusion,
of
course,
is that
the source of Soloveitchik's
pain
is also the source of his
theological
creativity.
Soloveitchik is that rare
Jewish
thinker who has
produced
outstanding writings
on both sides of the
talmudist-spiritualist
debate.
This achievement is
anything
but
fortuitous;
it is a direct
outgrowth
of
his conflicted
religious
situation. As a
Litvak,
Soloveitchik has
given
us
"Halakhic
Man,"
the definitive modern formulation of the
program
and
rationale of talmudism. As a man of
great religious passion,
on the other
hand,
he has offered us "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
a
wonderfully original
spiritualist
manifesto. While one
might expect deep
inner conflict to lead
266
Joseph
Soloveitchik
to a
paralysis
of the mind and the
will,
in Soloveitchik's case it has the
exact
opposite
effect-it
spurs
him on to
greater
and
greater
achievement.
In this
connection,
special
mention should be made of Soloveitchik's
creative use of
typologies,
his sensitive
exploration
of the affective di-
mension of various
commandments,
and his
striking
elaboration
(in
"But
if You Search
There")
of a
complete religious phenomenology.
Soloveit-
chik,
in
sum,
is a driven
man,
and as such has created a
theological
oeuvre
that is
rich,
complex,
and
sparkling
with
insight.
He
suffers,
but we are
the beneficiaries of his
unending religious quest.
AMERICAN
JEWISH
YEAR BOOK
TOURO COLLEGE
NOTES
1. Mark
Mirsky, My Searchfor
the Messiah
(New
York,
1977), p.
69.
2. Arnold
Wolf,
"On
My
Mind,"
Sh'ma
(September
19,
1975), p.
295.
3.
Eugene
Borowitz,
"The
Typological Theology
of Rabbi
Joseph
B. Soloveit-
chik," Judaism
(Spring, 1966), p.
205.
4.
Wolf,
op.
cit., p.
295.
5. Three articles which do offer serious
insight
into Soloveitchik's overall
theological
stance are
Borowitz,
op.
cit.,
pp.
203-210;
Lawrence
Kaplan,
"The
Religious Philosophy
of Rabbi
Joseph
Soloveitchik,"
Tradition
(Fall, 1973),
pp.
43-64;
and Steven Katz in his edited volume
Jewish
Philosophers (New York,
1975), pp.
215-221. Valuable
biographical
information is
provided
in Aharon
Lichtenstein,
"Rabbi
Joseph
Soloveitchik,"
in Simon Noveck
(ed.),
Great
Jewish
Thinkers
of
the Twentieth
Century (New
York, 1963), pp.
281-297.
6. One
specimen
of Soloveitchik's hiddushe torah that has made its
way
into
print
is
"Fixing
the
Holidays
on the Basis of
Sight
or
Calculation,"
Or Hamizrach
(Fall, 1980), pp.
7-24
[Hebrew].
7.
Encyclopedia
Judaica, 15,
p.
131.
8.
Lichtenstein,
op.
cit., p.
283.
9.
Quoted
in Aaron
Rothkoff,
Bernard Revel
(Philadelphia, 1972), p.
128.
10. "Halakhic Man" first
appeared
in
Talpiot (1944), pp.
651-734
[Hebrew],
and is now
available,
together
with five other
essays,
in Pinchas Peli
(ed.),
In
Aloneness,
In
Togetherness (Jerusalem, 1976), pp.
39-188
[Hebrew]. [All page
citations from "Halakhic Man" in the notes refer to this
volume.]
An
English
translation of "Halakhic
Man,"
brilliantly prepared by
Prof. Lawrence
Kaplan
of
McGill
University,
will be
published by
the
Jewish
Publication
Society
in 1983.
"The
Lonely
Man of Faith" was
published
in Tradition
(Summer, 1965), pp.
5-67,
while "But if You Search There"
appeared
in Hadorom
(No.
47, 1978), pp.
1-83
[Hebrew].
The
Spring
1978 number of Tradition carried five
essays by
Soloveitchik.
See also David Telsner
(ed.),
Five Sermons
(Jerusalem,
1974) [Hebrew].
The
remainder of Soloveitchik's
writings
are scattered in a
variety
of
English
and
Hebrew
language
sources.
267
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
11.
Joseph Epstein (ed.),
Shiurei Harav
(New
York,
1974);
Pinchas Peli
(ed.),
On
Repentance (Jerusalem, 1974) [Hebrew] [Now
available in an
English
transla-
tion
(Jerusalem, 1980).];
Abraham Besdin
(ed.), Reflections of
the Rav
(Jerusalem,
1979).
12.
Soloveitchik,
"Halakhic
Man,"
op.
cit., p.
64.
13. This
position
becomes
problematic
for Soloveitchik
when,
at another
point
in "Halakhic
Man,"
he seeks to stress the normative nature of the talmudist's
endeavor.
14.
Soloveitchik,
"Halakhic
Man,"
op.
cit., p.
68.
15.
Ibid.,
p.
69.
16.
Ibid.,
p.
65.
17.
Ibid.,
p.
101.
18.
Ibid.,
p.
120.
19.
Ibid.,
p.
156.
20.
Ibid.,
p.
157.
21.
Ibid.,
pp.
85-86.
22. For
critiques
of Soloveitchik's
position
in "Halakhic Man" see Rachel
Shihor,
"On the Problem of Halakhah's Status in
Judaism,"
Forum
(Spring-
Summer,
1978), pp.
146-153;
Jacob Agus, Guideposts
in Modern
Judaism (New
York,
1954), pp.
37-44;
and
Kaplan, op.
cit.,
pp.
51-52.
23.
Joseph
Soloveitchik,
"How is Your Beloved Better than
Another?,"
Hadoar
(September
27, 1963),
pp.
752-759
[Hebrew] (reprinted
in In
Aloneness,
In
Together-
ness,
op.
cit.,
pp. 191-253).
24.
Soloveitchik,
"Halakhic
Man,"
op.
cit, p. 63,
n. 16. Great
significance
is
attached to the fact that Soloveitchik did his doctoral dissertation on Hermann
Cohen. In
fact, however,
he had
hoped
to
prepare
a dissertation on a
very
different
subject:
Plato and Maimonides. The
project
never materialized because
no one on the
philosophy faculty
of the
University
of Berlin felt
qualified
to
supervise
it.
25. "Puts on" is the
precisely
correct term here. Soloveitchik has a remarkable
ability
to make selective use of his secular
learning.
There are
times,
such as in
his
yearly
lectures on
repentance,
when he
studiously
avoids
any
mention of
Western
thought,
even if it is
directly
relevant to his
subject.
See Peli
(ed.),
On
Repentance, op.
cit.,
passim.
26.
Soloveitchik,
"Halakhic
Man,"
op.
cit., p.
39.
27.
Among
the
typologies
that Soloveitchik
puts
forward are
"majestic
man"
and "covenantal man" in "The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
op.
cit.;
"cosmic conscious
man" and
"origin
conscious man" in
"Majesty
and
Humility,"
Tradition
(Spring,
1978), pp.
25-37;
"natural man" and "confronted man" in
"Confrontation,"
Tradi-
tion
(Spring-Summer, 1964), pp.
5-28;
"New Year man" and
"Day
of Atonement
man" in "How is Your Beloved Better than
Another?,"
op.
cit.;
"New Moon man"
in "The Hidden and the
Revealed,"
in Zevi
Tabory (ed.),
Zion From the Torah
(New York, 1963), pp.
15-43
[Hebrew] (reprinted
in In
Aloneness,
In
Togetherness,
op.
cit.,
pp.
297-330. All
page
citations from "The Hidden and the Revealed" in
the notes refer to this
volume);
"man of fate" and "man of
destiny"
in
"Hark,
My
Beloved
Knocks,"
in Simon Federbush
(ed.),
Torah and
Kingship (Jerusalem,
1961), pp.
11-44
[Hebrew] (reprinted
in In
Aloneness,
In
Togetherness, op.
cit.,
pp.
333-400. All
page
citations from
"Hark,
My
Beloved Knocks" in the notes
268
Joseph
Soloveitchik
refer to this
volume.);
and
"king-teacher"
and "saint-teacher" in "A
Eulogy
for
the Talner
Rebbe,"
Boston
Jewish
Advocate
(June, 1972) (reprinted
in
Epstein
(ed.),
Shiurei
Harav,
op.
cit.,
pp. 18-26).
28.
Borowitz,
op.
cit.,
p.
209.
29.
Soloveitchik,
"Halakhic
Man,"
op.
cit., p.
39.
30.
Ibid.,
p.
40.
31.
Ibid.,
pp.
41-42.
32.
Soloveitchik,
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
op.
cit.,
pp.
5-6.
33.
Ibid.,
p.
6.
34. In A
Layman's
Introduction to
Religious
Existentialism
(New
York,
1966),
p.
18,
Eugene
Borowitz offers a definition of existentialism which
perfectly
highlights
the differences in
perspective
between "The
Lonely
Man of Faith" and
"Halakhic Man": ". .. the concern for real man as
against
abstract
ideas;
the
passion
for the
jagged
texture of concrete
reality
as
against
the clean contours of
mental
construction;
the insistence
upon
the selfs
being
involved in
thinking
as
against
the
objective,
detached observer's stance...."
35.
Soloveitchik,
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
op.
cit.,
p.
10.
36.
E.g.,
Soloveitchik has to
portray
intellectual man as a theoretical scholar if
he is to succeed in
enhancing
the status of the talmudist as a theoretician of
the Law.
37.
Soloveitchik,
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
op.
cit.,
p.
11.
38.
Ibid.,
pp.
17-18.
39.
Ibid.,
pp.
23,
38.
40.
Ibid.,
p.
63.
41.
Ibid.,
pp.
23,
28.
42.
Ibid.,
p.
63.
43.
Ibid.,
pp.
49-50.
44.
Ibid.,
p.
25.
45.
Ibid.,
p.
27.
46.
Ibid.,
p.
22.
47. In "The
Community,"
Tradition
(Spring, 1978), pp.
7-24,
Soloveitchik
evinces a more
positive
attitude toward
loneliness,
seeing
it as the source of
creativity
and "heroic defiance."
48.
Soloveitchik,
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
op.
cit.,
p.
19.
49.
Ibid.,
p.
20.
50.
Ibid.,
pp.
22,
23.
51.
Ibid.,
p.
23.
52.
Ibid.,
pp.
24,
28.
53. The notion of a "sacrificial
gesture"
is elaborated
upon
in a beautiful
manner
by
Soloveitchik in
"Catharsis,"
Tradition
(Spring, 1978), pp.
38-54.
54.
Soloveitchik,
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
op.
cit.,
p.
26.
55.
Ibid.,
p.
28.
56.
Ibid.,
pp.
34, 37,
38.
57.
Ibid.,
p.
36.
58. Cf.
"Majesty
and
Humility," op.
cit,
p.
35,
where Soloveitchik avers: "We
do have two
moralities,
one of
victory
and
triumph,
one of withdrawal and
retreat."
59.
Interestingly enough,
the one serious
critique
of "The
Lonely
Man of
269
David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
Faith" that has
appeared
to
date-Jonathan
Sach's brilliant "Alienation and
Faith,"
Tradition
(Spring-Summer,
1973), pp.
137-162-focuses
specifically
on the issue
of monism vs. dualism.
60.
Soloveitchik,
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
op.
cit.,
p.
51.
61.
Ibid.,
pp.
51,
52.
62.
Ibid.,
p.
51.
63.
Ibid.,
pp.
6-7.
64. Soloveitchik is
strangely
silent about Buber. On the one
hand,
he fails to
acknowledge
the obvious fact that his discussion of the nature of covenantal
existence
(the
"covenantal
community")
leans
heavily
on Buberian
thought.
On
the other
hand,
he avoids
criticizing
Buber's anti-halakhic stance even when he
has the
perfect opportunity
to do so.
Thus,
Soloveitchik takes
Kierkegaard
to
task for
lacking
an
appreciation
of the
"centrality
of the act of
objectification
of
the inner movement of faith in a normative and doctrinal
postulate,"
but does
not mention Buber in this context. See
ibid.,
p.
61.
65.
Ibid.,
p.
10.
66.
Heller,
a brilliant
practitioner
of both the old and the new
styles
of
Jewish
scholarship,
was
greatly
admired
by
Soloveitchik. The two men
eventually
became
colleagues
on the
faculty
of Yeshiva
University.
See Soloveitchik's
moving
memorial
essay
for
Heller,
"The Remnant of the
Scholars,"
Hadoar
(April
21,
1961), pp.
400-405
[Hebrew] (reprinted
in In
Aloneness,
In
Togetherness, op.
cit.,
pp.
257-294. All
page
citations from "The Remnant of the Scholars" in the notes
refer to this
volume.).
A
partial English
translation is available in
Epstein (ed.),
Shiurei
Harav,
op.
cit.,
pp.
7-17.
67.
Soloveitchik,
"The Remnant of the
Scholars,"
op.
cit.,
p.
286.
68. Lou Silberman,
"Concerning Jewish Theology
in North
America,"
American
Jewish
Year Book
(1969), p.
54.
69.
Borowitz,
"The
Typological Theology
of Rabbi
Joseph
B.
Soloveitchik,"
op.
cit., p.
204.
70.
Soloveitchik,
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
op.
cit., p.
32.
71.
See,
e.g., Epstein
(ed.),
Shiurei
Harav,
op.
cit,
pp.
52-53,
97 and
Soloveitchik,
"The Remnant of the
Scholars,"
op.
cit,
pp.
289-291.
72. This
passage
is drawn from the
English
translation of "The Remnant of
the Scholars"
appearing
in
Epstein (ed.),
Shiurei
Harav,
op.
cit., p.
16.
73.
Soloveitchik,
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
op.
cit.
pp.
8-9.
74.
Ibid.,
p.
14.
75.
Ibid.,
p.
16.
76.
Ibid.,
p.
15.
77.
Ibid.,
p.
15.
78.
Soloveitchik,
"But if You Search
There,"
op.
cit., p.
4.
79.
See,
for
example,
"But if You Search
There," ibid.,
where Soloveitchik uses
a
variety
of biblical verses
(most especially
from
Song
of
Songs)
to
poetically
frame a
highly sophisticated philosophical-theological analysis.
80. Soloveitchik,
"The
Lonely
Man of
Faith,"
op.
cit.,
p.
15.
81. The words are not Soloveitchik's own,
but are taken from a
summary
of a
lecture which he
gave
in 1972. See
Epstein
(ed.),
Shiurei Harav,
op.
cit.,
p.
57.
82. Telsner
(ed.),
Five
Sermons,
op.
cit, p.
25.
270
Joseph
Soloveitchik
83. Soloveitchik's views on Zionism and the State of Israel are set forth in
Telsner
(ed.),
Five
Sermons, ibid.; "Hark,
My
Beloved
Knocks,"
op.
cit.;
"On the
Love of Torah and the
Redemption
of the Soul of the
Generation,"
Hadoar
(May
27, 1960), pp.
519-523
[Hebrew]
(reprinted
in In
Aloneness,
In
Togetherness,
op.
cit.,
pp. 403-432);
and "The Eternal Link Between the
Jewish People
and the
State of
Israel,"
Or Hamizrach
(Fall, 1957),
pp.
27-31
[Hebrew].
84. Walter
Wurzburger,
"The
Holocaust,"
Shoah
(Spring-Summer, 1980),
p.
16.
85.
Irving Greenberg,
"Orthodox
Judaism
and the
Holocaust,"
Gesher
(1979),
pp.
55-82. For a
critique
of
Greenberg's position
see Steven Katz's
essay
in Alvin
Rosenfeld and
Irving Greenberg (eds.),
Thinking about the Holocaust
(forthcoming.)
86.
Soloveitchik, "Hark,
My
Beloved
Knocks,"
op.
cit.,
pp.
339-340.
87.
Ibid.,
pp.
347,
354.
88. Peli
(ed.),
On
Repentance, op.
cit.,
pp.
57-58.
89.
Soloveitchik,
"The Remnant of the
Scholars,"
op.
cit., p.
273.
90.
Soloveitchik, "Confrontation,"
op.
cit.,
pp.
23-24.
91.
Joseph
Soloveitchik,
"A Tribute to the Rebbitzen of
Talne,"
Tradition
(Spring, 1978), p.
76.
92.
Ibid.,
p.
78.
93. In "The Hidden and the
Revealed,"
op.
cit., p. 312,
Soloveitchik states
explicitly
that from
early youth
on he
strongly
identified with the biblical
Joseph.
94.
Soloveitchik,
"Halakhic
Man,"
op.
cit., p.
188.
95. Our
assumption
here-and that is all it
is,
an
assumption
-
is that Soloveit-
chik is not
consciously manipulating
the
reader, i.e.,
Soloveitchik is unaware that
his non-Litvak side is
showing.
Still another
possibility
would be that he is
carefully planting
subversive hints so as to undermine the main line of the
argument
in "Halakhic Man." This view cannot be dismissed
lightly;
a man
divided
against
himself,
who feels
compelled by
circumstances to
suppress
a
whole side of his
personality, might
well turn resentful. There is no
way
of
making
a definitive
judgment
about the matter.
96.
Soloveitchik,
"Halakhic
Man,"
op.
cit., p.
40.
97.
Ibid.,
p.
81.
98.
Ibid.,
p.
124. It is
interesting
to note in this context that in Soloveitchik's
own
life,
death functions as a
great galvanizing
force. A
large part
of his
published
oeuvre is made
up
of memorial
essays.
Were it not for
death, then,
we would have
far fewer works from his
pen.
99.
Ibid.,
p.
42.
100.
Ibid.,
p.
43. See also
Joseph
Soloveitchik,
"Sacred and
Profane,"
Gesher
(June 1966), pp.
5-8.
(This essay appeared originally
in Hazedek
(May-June,
1945).
101. Peli
(ed.),
On
Repentance, op.
cit., p.
40.
102. Soloveitchik's views on
prayer
are
presented
in
"Thoughts
on
Prayer,"
Hadorom
(No.
47,
1978), pp.
84-106
[Hebrew]; "Redemption, Prayer,
Talmud
Torah,"
Tradition
(Spring, 1978), pp.
55-72;
and Besdin
(ed.), Reflections of
the
Rav,
op
cit.,
pp.
77-87.
103.
Soloveitchik,
"Redemption, Prayer,
Talmud
Torah,"
op.
cit., p.
65.
104.
Ibid.,
pp.
65-66.
271
272 David
Singer
and Moshe Sokol
105.
Ibid.,
p.
65.
106. Besdin
(ed.), Reflections of
the
Rav,
op.
cit,
pp.
79-82.
107. Peli
(ed.),
On
Repentance, op.
cit.,
p.
44.
108. This
type gets
its name from the one or
two-day
New Moon
(rosh hodesh)
celebration which
inaugurates
each month of the
Jewish
calendar
year.
While
the New Moon is invested with
special sanctity,
it differs little in outward
appearance
from an
ordinary workday.
The holiness of the New
Moon, Soloveit-
chik
maintains,
is hidden rather than revealed.
109.
Soloveitchik,
"The Hidden and the
Revealed,"
op.
cit,
p.
312.
110.
Soloveitchik,
"But if You Search
There,"
op.
cit.,
pp.
15,
19.
111.
Ibid., p.
19.
112. Isadore
Twersky, "Religion
and
Law,"
in S. D. Goitein
(ed.), Religion
in a
Religious Age
(New York,
1974),
p.
69.
113. Ibid.,
p.
71.
114.
Ibid.,
p.
70.
115.
Soloveitchik,
"But if You Search
There,"
op.
cit.,
pp.
63-65.