Majesty and Humility: The Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
432
Majesty and Humility: The Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
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Overview
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik was not only one of the outstanding Talmudists and religious leaders of the 20th century, but also one of its most creative and seminal Jewish thinkers. This comprehensive study of Rabbi Soloveitchik's religious philosophy offers a broad perspective and balanced understanding of his work. By interpreting and analyzing both individual essays and overarching themes in an accessible and engaging manner, it uncovers the depth, majesty, and fascination of his thought.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9789655242577 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Urim Publications |
| Publication date: | 07/17/2017 |
| Series: | Rabbi Soloveitchik Library |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 432 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to Rav Soloveitchik's Life and Thought
Students of philosophy in general, and students of Jewish philosophy in particular, often study a thinker's ideas without reference to his biography. Neglect of the biographical element is in general ill-advised, but especially so in the case of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. I say this for several reasons.
First, as in the case of many religious thinkers from the nineteenth century and onward, Rav Soloveitchik's philosophy revolves around human experience. He characterizes Judaism as being "theo-centric but anthropo-oriented," and this is an apt description of his own thought: while placing God at the center of human existence, it nevertheless focuses its attention on man and his problems. For example, unlike medieval philosophers who assert that the existence of evil in the world is merely an illusion, that evil does not really exist from God's perspective, Rav Soloveitchik treats evil as an undeniable human experience. Accordingly, he does not try to explain the existence of evil, but rather focuses on how it does and should impact on man. Similarly, he is not interested in describing the attributes of God, but rather man's relationship with God; not the effects of Torah study on the metaphysical realm, but rather its influence on the human personality. Given his focus on human experience, and the fact that, naturally, the human experience with which Rav Soloveitchik is most familiar is his own, it is not surprising that he incorporates that experience into his philosophizing. In a sense, his thought begins with himself. Hence, an understanding of his life is pertinent to an investigation of his thought.
Indeed, many passages in Rav Soloveitchik's writings are explicitly autobiographical; he frequently veers from philosophic or halakhic analysis to intimate and touching personal confessions. Such passages are quite rare among the writings of other gedolei Torah (giants of Torah), especially when they appear in published articles. The subjectivity of many of the Rav's writings does not detract from their relevance, brilliance or originality. On the contrary, it charges his works with a power they would have lacked had they been more detached and objective.
A second reason to preface our study of Rav Soloveitchik's thought with an examination of his biography is that, as a communal leader, he addressed current events and the contemporary social and religious scene. His philosophical works are relevant and applicable to these concrete, real-life challenges, many of which remain with us now, a few decades later. Works like The Lonely Man of Faith amply demonstrate that he was an astute observer of societal trends and a sharp critic of contemporary religiosity. For example, though it is widely noted that the Rav provided intellectual and spiritual legitimacy to the ideology of Modern Orthodoxy, it is less often noted that he frequently critiqued the way it was practiced. He also expressed discontent with contemporary religiosity in general.
A third reason to incorporate the Rav's biography into the study of his thought is that understanding his family tree and his educational background can help us better appreciate his intellectual and emotional makeup. This is especially important regarding his Brisker heritage, which was central to his self-perception.
Fourth, it has been claimed that insight into the Rav's life can help us understand the seemingly different tones of his early and late essays, and may help us understand why he addressed certain issues and not others.
Finally, it is important for us to know about the Rav's life because, beyond his masterful and creative halakhic scholarship and philosophic thought, it is the image of the Rav himself, heroic and yet human, which is so captivating.
Family
Rav Joseph Baer (Yosef Dov) Halevi Soloveitchik (1903–1993) was born in Pruzhan, Poland. Named after his great-grandfather, the "Beit Halevi" (1820–1892), who had headed the Volozhin Yeshivah (the "mother of yeshivot") and served as rabbi of Slutsk and Brisk, he counted among his forebears almost all of the most prominent scholars of Lithuania, such as Rav Hayyim of Volozhin and Rav Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (the Netziv). His father, Rav Moshe (1879–1941), was the son of the illustrious Rav Hayyim Soloveitchik of Brisk (1853–1918), founder of the "Brisker" method of Talmud study. His mother, Rebbitzen Pesia (1880–1967), was the daughter of Rav Eliyahu Feinstein of Pruzhan (1842–1928), a prominent scholar and disputant of Rav Hayyim on many matters of public policy. Heir to a distinguished heritage, he grew up surrounded by outstanding scholars and religious exemplars.
In many ways, the Soloveitchiks and the Feinsteins were a study in contrasts. Although the Soloveitchiks were renowned for their extreme acts of kindness, they were known primarily for their rigorous intellectualism, self-discipline and ideological extremism. These expressed themselves in an almost single-minded devotion to Torah study, unyielding opposition to secular studies and to Zionism, and refusal to compromise on these matters. The Feinsteins, on the other hand, although no less committed to Torah study, were known for their warmth, openness and tolerance. Their home was host to Jews of all kinds and their children were encouraged to study languages, literature and science.
The Rav was thus exposed to two very different influences within his home. Although in his writings the Rav repeatedly stresses his Soloveitchik heritage, we must bear in mind that he was a Feinstein as well. While cognizant of the different temperaments and backgrounds of his parents, he did not attribute these differences to their upbringings so much as to a general difference between what Proverbs (1:8) labels musar avikha and torat imekha, "the instruction (or discipline) of your father" and "the teaching of your mother": We have two massorot, two traditions ...
Father teaches the son the discipline of thought as well as the discipline of action. Father's tradition is an intellectual-moral one ...
What kind of a Torah does the mother pass on? ... Most of all I learned [from my mother] that Judaism expresses itself not only in formal compliance with the law but also in a living experience. She taught me that there is a flavor, a scent and warmth to the mitzvot. I learned from her the most important thing in life - to feel the presence of the Almighty and the gentle pressure of His hand resting upon my frail shoulders. Without her teachings, which quite often were transmitted to me in silence, I would have grown up a soulless being, dry and insensitive.
As this passage reveals, the Rav placed great emphasis on both the intellectual and experiential aspects of Judaism; we shall see this duality emerge as a leitmotif in his writings. In fact, it is the fusion of thought, action and emotion in his philosophy that endows it with much of its considerable potency.
Brisk
The Rav's most formative childhood years were spent in Khoslavitch, Belorussia, where his father served as rabbi from 1913 until 1920. Though the town was populated primarily by Chabad (Lubavitch) hasidim, it had a tradition of employing mitnaggedim as rabbis. When his mother detected that in heder he was being taught far more of the foundational Chabad work Tanya than Talmud, she complained about this to her husband and later to her father-in-law, who recommended that Rav Moshe assume personal responsibility for his son's education. The following formative period in the Rav's development is described by Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, Rav Soloveitchik's disciple and son-in-law:
During the next twelve years, young Soloveitchik dedicated himself almost exclusively to the study of Jewish law. Under Rav Moshe's tutelage he was trained in the "Brisker" method, with its insistence on incisive analysis, exact definition, precise classification and critical independence. Gradually, the acute dialectic of halakhic logic - so rigorous and yet so subtle; so flexible and still so firm - became second nature, and Soloveitchik emerged from this period thoroughly imbued with the religious and intellectual discipline of the Halakhah.
It is worth noting the characteristics of the Brisker method pinpointed by Rav Lichtenstein above. The Brisker method innovated by Rav Hayyim Soloveitchik quickly conquered most of the mitnagged yeshivah world. Although it had intellectual precursors (such as the eighteenth-century Ketzot haHoshen and the nineteenth-century Minhat Hinukh) and often presented itself as merely uncovering the logic of the Rishonim (medieval commentators), it was widely viewed as having wrought a revolution in Talmud study, which the Rav himself compared to the Newtonian revolution in physics. The method's denigrators referred to it as "chemistry," due to its penchant for breaking down concepts into their component parts and its transformation of Halakhah from a series of dicta into an abstract and quasi-scientific system of interlocking concepts.
At the heart of the Brisker enterprise is the attempt to understand all the possible conceptual approaches to a talmudic issue, rather than adopting one position and trying to defend it against attack. In "lomdish" parlance, this can be described as "trying to answer a difficult Rambam without making the Ra'avad look like an am ha-aretz (ignoramus)." Classic Brisker learning usually identifies two basic approaches to an issue, both of which are necessary to understand an issue in its entirety. The distinction between these two approaches is referred to as a hakirah (lit., investigation). Rabbi Jonathan Sacks nicely describes the power of this analytic methodology:
[By] drawing out the conceptual presuppositions of the Halakhah, apparently unrelated arguments could be seen as instances of an overall pattern of disagreement. As a hermeneutic tool, it was a powerful method of extracting universal themes from a literature which had hitherto seemed utterly concrete and case-specific.
While this pluralistic approach may not be very conducive to reaching practical conclusions, it does sensitize one to the complexity of issues, the legitimacy of different approaches, and the frequent need to maintain opposing concepts in dialectical tension or balance.
The Rav's early immersion in "Brisker lomdus" affected not only his Talmud study, but his entire method of thought. All of his philosophical essays revolve around dialectical pairs of ideas: cognitive man vs. religious man, Adam I vs. Adam II, majesty vs. humility, the natural religious consciousness vs. the revelatory religious consciousness, etc. These dialectical pairs can be viewed as the two sides of a hakirah, both of which are legitimate and necessary, and both of which are required for a proper understanding of an issue in its entirety. The Rav extended this method even into the reading of biblical texts, most notably in his reading of the two accounts of the creation of man. He was not afraid of a contradiction and, in fact, believed that the whole truth can be attained only through the dialectical interplay between conflicting approaches. Among the hallmarks of his thought are its complexity and honesty, and its eschewing of simplistic solutions to complicated problems.
The Rav's employment of the method of philosophical typology might also be influenced by his Brisker background. The Brisker method constructs abstract, ideal halakhic categories that account for the functioning of complex halakhic phenomena. The typological method constructs a number of different ideal personality types in order to understand the functioning of complex human beings; in an actual human being two or more of these types may interact. This method is evident in the Rav's depictions of the "pure ideal type" of halakhic man, the lonely man of faith, etc.
In his halakhic scholarship, the Rav followed Brisk in transforming halakhic dicta into an abstract system of legal concepts; but in his philosophy, the Rav took this approach a step further and derived philosophic concepts from the halakhic sources. Finally, the critical independence of the Brisker approach played no small role in fostering the Rav's independence of thought.
This early period was crucial to the Rav's life not only because it was when he mastered the Brisker method along with large sections of the Talmud, but also because it cemented his bond with his father, giving rise to his conception of the ideal rebbe-talmid (teacherstudent) relationship. The Rav's relationship with his father was one of the two most central relationships in his life, the other being that with his wife; three of his major philosophical works carry dedications, one to his father and two to his wife. He keeps referring back to these relationships in many of his essays.
Surprising as it may seem to some today, the Rav never attended a yeshivah and his only rebbi was his father. The identification of father with teacher was crucial for the Rav; not only is a father supposed to be a teacher, but a teacher must be a father as well. Just as his father inducted him into the chain of Brisk, so must every teacher induct his student into the chain of the masorah (tradition). Teaching, for the Rav, is not just a meeting of minds, but a merging of minds and of experiences, an act of identification on the part of the student with his teacher. This holds true of the Rav and his father to such an extent that almost all the Torah of Rav Moshe we possess today has come to us through his son.
Berlin
The Rav's father considered Talmud study so self-sufficient that not only did he disapprove of secular studies, but it is said that he never even opened the Rambam's philosophic masterpiece, The Guide of the Perplexed. This is especially striking when we consider the centrality of the Rambam's halakhic code, the Mishneh Torah, to the Brisker mode of study. The Rav, by contrast, maintained an active interest in Jewish thought. Furthermore, he acquired from his mother a taste for literature and poetry, reflected in the literary flair and poetic bent of many of his own writings.
Recognizing his son's genius early on, Rav Moshe intensively and somewhat mercilessly groomed him to be the next leader of Orthodox Jewry. For many years Rav Moshe believed that mastery of halakhic literature would suffice to attain this goal. Eventually he came to believe that, due to changing times, familiarity with secular knowledge was also necessary. Thus, in his late teens, the Rav received the equivalent of a high school education from a series of tutors. In his early twenties, after having "filled his belly with the bread and meat" of halakhic study, he set out to attend university in order to encounter the best that the outside world had to offer.
After three semesters studying at the Free Polish University in Warsaw, the Rav entered the University of Berlin, where he was to remain for much of the next six years, earning his Ph.D. in 1932. Berlin was one of the intellectual and cultural centers of Europe, and the 1920s were a time of tremendous intellectual ferment there. Great breakthroughs were being made in the sciences, especially physics, and in the humanities too there was palpable excitement regarding new ideas and approaches being formulated.
The Rav arrived upon this scene, curious, confident, ready to master new systems of thought and to face the challenges they might present. He studied mathematics and physics, but concentrated primarily upon philosophy, and maintained a lifelong interest in all these subjects. Attracted to ideas of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantian philosophy, he wrote his thesis on the epistemology (theory of knowledge) of Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), a leader of the Marburg school, when he could not find an advisor for a thesis on the Rambam.
Anyone opening Halakhic Man or The Halakhic Mind will immediately be struck by the extent to which the Rav mastered the entire tradition of Western thought. Penetrating secular knowledge to its very depths, he understood it intimately, as an insider its power and beauty as well as its danger to the religious spirit. In fact, Rav Soloveitchik is virtually alone among modern gedolim in the serious philosophical training he received and in the high value he attached to this knowledge. On occasion, the Rav's education lends his writings a dated quality (now that the "modern" philosophy of the 1920s is not as modern). Generally, though, it facilitates his shedding new light on familiar topics and adds depth to his understanding of the confrontation between religion and the modern world.
In Berlin the Rav also encountered a new type of rabbi, one who mastered traditional modes of text study but was also trained in critical academic methods. He befriended two brilliant and fascinating Orthodox scholars: Rav Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg (1885–1966), author of Seridei Esh and head of theHildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary, and Rav Hayyim Heller (1878–1960), head of the Beit ha-Midrash ha-Elyon, who became a father figure to him. Armed with the conceptual Brisker method, the Rav found that academic critical-historical text study did not hold much interest for him. But he did maintain a close lifelong relationship with Rav Heller, who later moved to New York. His masterful eulogy for Rav Heller is not only a moving tribute to the man, but an important presentation of some of the central ideas of the Rav's thought.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Preface by Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein,
Foreword by Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter,
Dedication,
Introduction,
I. Entering the Rav's World,
1. Introduction to Rav Soloveitchik's Life and Thought,
2. "The Community": Individual and Society,
3. "Majesty and Humility": The Centrality of Dialectic,
II. Thought, Feeling and Action,
4. "Catharsis" (1): Halakhic Heroism,
5. "Catharsis" (2): Elevating Physical Existence,
6. "Catharsis" (3): Purifying the Emotions,
7. "Catharsis" (4): Intellectual and Religious Humility,
8. The Experiential Dimension of Judaism,
9. Torah Study: Intellect and Experience,
10. Mitzvot: The Need for Action,
III. Religion in the Modern World: The Lonely Man of Faith,
11. Presenting the Problem,
12. Defining the Two Adams,
13. Two Types of Community,
14. A Perpetual Dialectic,
15. The Subversion of Religion,
16. The Autonomy of Faith,
17. Intellectual and Existential Challenges to Faith,
18. Practical Consequences of the Autonomy of Faith,
IV. Doctrine of Man,
19. Family Relationships and Religious Life,
20. Prayer (1): Prayer as Encounter and as Self-Acquisition,
21. Prayer (2): Self-Sacrifice and the Audacity of Prayer,
22. Repentance (1): Return to the Self or Self-Creation?,
23. Repentance (2): Responding to Distress and Evil,
24. Suffering: Halakhah and the Human Condition,
V. Jewish History and Destiny: Kol Dodi Dofek,
25. From the Holocaust to the State of Israel,
26. Fate, Destiny and Jewish Identity,
27. The Significance of the State of Israel,
VI. Halakhah and the Religious Quest,
28. The Dialectic of Halakhic Man,
29. Halakhic Man's Values and Character,
30. The Goals of Halakhic Man,
31. Subjectivity and Objectivity in Halakhah,
32. U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham (1): The Natural Search for God,
33. U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham (2): The Dialectic of Reason and Revelation,
34. U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham (3): Cleaving to God,
35. U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham (4): Devekut via Halakhah,
VII. Summation,
36. Review,
37. Major Themes and Concluding Reflections,
Acknowledgements,
Events in the Life of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,
Bibliography,
General Index,
Index of Rabbi Soloveitchik's Writings,
About the Author,