Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik download epub

One of my favorite all time teachers (Dr Rabbi Hartman) encountering another of my favorite all time teachers (The Rav). I could visualize Dr Rabbi Hartman giving this as a lecture. (I was a student of his back at Hebrew U in 1973-4).

This book analyzes several of Rav Soloveitchik's responsa and essays, including:

*Soloveitchik's essay "Halakhic Man". In this essay, Soloveitchik explains and praises "halakhic man": the self-confident scholar who not only follows halakha, but has a passion for study. The goal of this legal hero is not to know God through mysticism, but to find new legal insights through rigorous analysis. According to Hartman, Soloveitchik "discerns a profound dialectic between relevation and intellectual creativity. Although halakhic man believes that every word of Torah is divine, this very word becomes his possession and plaything." So man does not merely walk obediently with God, but also creates a spiritual civilization through his own interpretive skills. But Hartman's analysis leads to a troubling (for me) question: obviously, a scholar could be highly creative at the time the Mishnah and Talmud were being shaped. But how creative can a scholar be today, when so much of Jewish law has been fixed by thousands of years of evolution? Can someone truly be a halakhic hero in such a world?

*Soloveitchik's most famous essay, "The Lonely Man of Faith." In that essay, he explains how man is torn between his desire to dominate and master the world (as shown in the Genesis 1 narrative) and his desire to submit to God. In the latter vision, Man is not satisfied with knowing "the impersonal God of the cosmos" but a more personal God who can provide "relational intensity and intimacy with God." Again, Soloveitchik sees a dialectic: here, between majesty (the human who dominates nature, and who praises God for helping him dominate nature and for creating nature) and intimacy with God. Modern, secular man has difficulty with the second type of relationship.

*Soloveitchik's writing on Judeo-Christian theological dialogue. Apparently, Soloveitchik analogizes the Jewish relationship to God to a personal relationship- just as one does not debate an intimate personal relationship, one does not debate an intimate relationship to God with (in Soloveitchik's words) "others whose relationship to God has been molded by different historical events and in different terms."

*Soloveitchik's essay on prayer. Soloveitchik has two views of petitionary prayer- first as self-discovery (insofar as the standard words of prayer teach us what our needs ought to be) and second as "acknowledging the unlimited rule of the divine and the complete feebleness of mankind." According to Hartman, Soloveitchik's work involves one difficulty: Soloveitchik writes that because human beings are so helpless before God, "they are dependent upon precedent to dare pray at all ... [and thus he] considered it presumptous to make the slightest change in the forms of prayer ... even spontaneous voluntary prayer." Yet according to Hartman, there is ample halakhic precedent in favor of spontaneous prayer. What was Soloveitchik thinking? Hartman asserts that Soloveitchik overemphasizes the terror inherent in prayer.

Rabbi David Hartman is a Torah teacher of courage and authenticiy. Here he expounds and contends with the beloved teacher who helped inspire him in ' learning' and ' thought'.This is from Rabbi Hartman's moving introduction." In the course of my philosophical studies and at crucial moments of life when I experienced difficult periods of doubt, and questioned some of the prevailing ,widely accepted theological and moral positions found in the halakhic tradition, he was the figure , the living image that nurtured and sustained my committment. His impact on me during ten yearsof studying with him has never lost its power and influence.

Rabbi Soloveitchik represented a Judaism committed to intellectual courage,integrity and openness- the antithesis to dogma and fanaticism" pp.IX-X

Rabbi Hartman's dialogue with the work of Rabbi Soloveitchik challenges other understandings of the Rav, and opens up new perspectives for thought.

This is like all of Rabbi Hartman's works an illuminating and passionate contribution to the world of Jewish thought.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903-1993) was and still is the leading rabbinical figure of Modern Orthodox Judaism. He was the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva University, the senior lecturer on Talmud. He was the advisor to the Rabbinical Council of America, the organization of about 1,000 Orthodox rabbis. Since many of today's Modern Orthodox rabbis graduated from Yeshiva University and belong to the Rabbinical Council of America, his influence upon the rabbis and, hence, upon their congregations has been great. Who was this man? David Hartman, one of today's leading thinkers, a rabbi and Ph.D., evaluates the thinking of Rabbi Soloveitchik in this interesting and revealing book.

This volume was first published in 2001 and reissued in 2004. It was the winner of two National Jewish Book Awards. In his more recent book about Rabbi Soloveitchik, The God Who Hates Lies, Confronting & Rethinking Jewish Tradition, published in 2011, Dr. Hartman points out that Modern Orthodox Judaism has in many respects been frozen in suspended animation, refusing to budge and grow despite moral imperatives and logic, resulting in many people being harmed. A prime example of this phenomenon is the failure of Modern Orthodox leaders to address the problem of the aguna, the "chained one," the wife whose husband refuses to give her a Jewish divorce and who is unable to remarry. This situation exists because of an interpretation of the Torah that only a man can give a divorce. It exists today because of the ruling issued by Rabbi Soloveitchik, Dr. Hartman points out, that the age-old interpretation and practice should not be changed despite the harm that it inflicts upon many women. I described this issue in my review of this book and in an article about what Dr. Hartman considers "Rabbi Soloveitchik's Mistake," which can be found, among other sites, in my website at [...]. The problem, in short, is that despite his profound learning, Rabbi Soloveitchik was very conservative in his thinking and practices and insisted that even when matters do not seem to make sense Jews must, as the Protestant theologian Soren Kierkegaard stated, take a leap of faith.

In this earlier book, Dr. Hartman analyses several of Rabbi Soloveitchik's writings. According to Rabbi Soloveitchik, the Halakhic Man, the title he gave one of his most influential writings, is a Jew who follows the teachings of the Torah as interpreted by the ancient rabbis. A Jew, in his view, "studies halakhah (Jewish law) simply because it is an extension of God's word." Not because, as the great sage Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) wrote, to acquire true ideas and to improve oneself and society.

Dr. Hartman explains that Rabbi Soloveitchik's Halakhic Man "is surrounded by clear normative principles. His perception of the world is firmly anchored." He "is controlled by the normative halakhic framework.... Halakhah defines not only what halakhic man will see, but also the emotions with which he responds to prosperity and tragedy," even to the terrible tragedy of the "chained woman."

Rabbi Soloveitchik gives as his model the story of Rabbi Elijah Pruznu whose beloved daughter was dying, who asked her doctor how many minutes his daughter had until she would die. When he received the doctor's reply, he returned to his room to put on the tefillin, which Orthodox Jews wear for the morning service, because once his daughter died he would, by the halakha, be unable to wear them until she was buried. Then he took them off and went to his daughter's room just in time to see her die.

Hartman comments, "There is something abnormal - one might even say inhuman - about R. Elijah's behavior. One would normally expect a father to want to be with his daughter in her final moments. When a child is dying, one would not expect a father to worry about such a question as, What mitzvot (biblical commands) will I be unable to perform when my status changes to a mourner?" This is the kind of indifference that prompted Rabbi Soloveitchik to rule that the chained woman must stay shackled.

Rabbi Soloveitchik sees the Halakhic Man as not "the harmonious individual...but the torn soul and the shattered spirit...involved in an irresolvable contradiction." The Jew, according to his view of Judaism acknowledges "total dependency and helplessness before God, that only God is mighty and not they, that God is holy and they are but dust and ashes."

These are the views of Rabbi Soloveitchik and he has many followers. But they are not the teachings, as he admits, of many others, such as Maimonides. His critics, who are mentioned in this book, say that he misunderstood Judaism.