Levi Morrow
Review of:
Joseph Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man: 40th Anniversary Edition, trans. Lawrence Kaplan (Jewish Publication Society, 2023).
Daniel Ross Goodman, Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America (University of Alabama Press, 2023).
Hershel Schachter, Divrei Soferim: The Transmission of Torah Shebe’al Peh (Maggid Books, 2024).
Yitzhak Twersky, Perpetuating the Masorah: Halakhic, Ethical, and Experiential Dimensions (Maggid Books, 2023).
When R. Joseph Soloveitchik began writing and teaching in the early decades of the 20th century, there was no way of imagining the influential figure he would become by the end of it. Even then, there was no way of foreseeing what his influence would look like in the 21st century, as more of his writings have been published and more of his students have taken their place on the stage of Jewish thought and history. The question, at this point, is not whether Rav Soloveitchik is influential, but in what way. What does his influence look like at this point, and what might it continue to look like in the future?
Haviv Adam She-Nivra Be-Tzelem (Avot 3:14)– Halakhic Man and Soloveitchik’s Children
Halakhic Man presents a particularly good example of the unexpected life of a published text. As Lawrence Kaplan, translator of Halakhic Man into English, diligently tracks in a preface to the new 40th anniversary edition of the book, Halakhic Man’s early reception reflected the way it was published: not as the slim English volume first published in 1983, but in 1944 as a Hebrew essay in the rabbinic periodical Talpioth.[1] Its immediate audience was rabbis and Jewish intellectuals who mostly engaged with it in a piecemeal fashion rather than grappling with the book’s argument as a whole. This was due in part to the eclectic, elliptical style of the book, but also to the fact that rabbis and intellectuals have their own pressing theological concerns which shape how they engage with texts. As long as it remained a Hebrew-language essay, the book’s reach was confined to, and defined by, that limited expanse.
Kaplan describes the year his translation was published as “a watershed year” (xl), and he is not wrong. While Halakhic Man was originally written in Hebrew, it has likely been more widely read and more influential in English translation than it ever was in the original. This is due in part to its much broader audience. Talpioth’s audience of Hebrew-reading intellectuals and rabbis has been replaced by a broad subset of Jews, Modern Orthodox and otherwise—and some non-Jews!—regardless of their level of education. Many of these readers are uncomfortable reading any sort of Hebrew, let alone Soloveitchik’s idiosyncratic and poetic blend of early 20th century rabbinic and literary Hebrew, and Kaplan’s translation made the text accessible to them. Moreover, as Kaplan notes, even readers comfortable in Hebrew, and who may even have first encountered the text in Hebrew, will often make use of the English translation (xlvi). Kaplan records how he sat with Soloveitchik for two separate weeks while he was working on the translation to review it together (lix), and the book’s broad acceptance as a stand-in for the original certainly reflects that degree of authorial involvement.
Given the English book’s much broader audience, two of Kaplan’s other contributions are critical: explanatory annotations and an interpretive introduction. In the explanatory glosses, Kaplan defines terms, adds explanations and context, and even records some of Rav Soloveitchik’s comments from their sessions together. For example, just a few pages into Halakhic Man, you find the following sentence: “The ontological dualism is a reflection of an ontic dualism.” The average reader without any philosophical background may struggle to understand what Soloveitchik was trying to say. A reader with a philosophical background, however, may be caught in the opposite problem: assuming that Soloveitchik is wholesale adopting the meaning of the terms in modern philosophy, particularly as they were made popular by the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger.[2] However, as Kaplan notes, Soloveitchik’s usage of the terms in Halakhic Man “seems diametrically opposed to Heidegger’s view” (170). In this and other notes, as well as in a thorough glossary of terms, Kaplan puts plainly what is often obscured in Soloveitchik’s own particular language.
Kaplan’s interpretive introduction to the book focuses on presenting “the fundamental problematic of the essay…—namely, the conflict between this worldliness and otherworldliness” (lxviii).[3] Halakhic Man can be a wandering and elliptical work, and the reader can often get lost in its “winding course” (cii). While the second part of the book is relatively focused on the theme of self-creation, the first part moves back and forth not just between characterizing three imagined ideal figures—cognitive man, homo religiosus (religious man), and the eponymous halakhic man—but also through a long list of topics—the nature of halakhah, Torah study, the fear of death, pluralistic vs. monistic ontologies, the reasons for the commandments, politics and ethics, the Haggadah, halakhah and science, and more—for a which a common theme can be hard to discern. Kaplan provides a compelling interpretation of the book, showing how the relationship between “worldliness” and “otherworldliness” is, as Soloveitchik says, the “central antinomy” of Halakhic Man (lxxv)—it is the contradiction which permeates the book’s entire unified-if-convoluted structure. While the book’s lay audience has presumably always been able to glean many key ideas from the book, Kaplan’s preface shows how even Soloveitchik’s original readers often missed the essay’s central theme, and his interpretation will help many see the forest in the trees, as it were.
As Kaplan explains, halakhic man overcomes the tension between immanence and transcendence through autonomous creativity. This is the theme of the second part of the book, which describes how a person can, and must, create themselves as a prophetic figure—as Kaplan summarizes, “the man who has completed this process of self-creation turns out to be none other than halakhic man himself” (lxviii). Freedom is both the means and the ends of this process: “The goal of self-creation is individuality, autonomy, uniqueness, and freedom” (135). This free creativity is manifest in the first part of the book in both intellectual Torah study and the realization of halakhah in the world. In pursuing these twin aims, halakhic man ties the Torah and halakhah—into which God has self-contracted—together with the world in which human beings live their lives. As Kaplan puts it,`
[T]hanks to the “mystery of tzimtzum” God is never removed from His revealed word but is always to be found together with halakhic man in the revelational covenantal framework which He ordained for him. Therefore, since halakhic man perpetually experiences God as being present, or “contracted,” in this framework, from the very beginning he is able to cleave to God and internalize His law. (cx)
Moreover, “that framework encourages and sustains freedom and creativity” (ibid.). As opposed to Soloveitchik’s later works, which emphasize sacrifice and submission, Halakhic Man champions freedom and autonomy.[4] Soloveitchik never abandons either pole entirely in favor of the other, but the balance in Halakhic Man tilts clearly and heavily toward autonomy. It is this that makes Halakhic Man a paean to both modernity and Soloveitchik’s traditional family background—they share common emphasis on intellectual autonomy.
Halakhic man’s “revelational covenantal framework…requires an initial act of submission to its authority, but there is never any moment of terror, necessity, or constraint” (ibid.). The necessity of revelation as the basis for autonomous study and action is present, but so downplayed that its most explicit appearance is confined to a footnote: “The freedom of the pure will in Kant’s teaching refers essentially to the creation of the ethical norm. The freedom of halakhic man refers not to the creation of the law itself, for it was given to him by the Almighty, but to the realization of the norm in the concrete world” (153 n. 80, emphasis added). This is a key piece of the puzzle for understanding Halakhic Man, and its placement in a note instead of the body of the text speaks volumes. Revelation merely provides the background or the raw material for halakhic man’s rugged intellectual autonomy. Kaplan highlights a dramatic line to this effect from within Halakhic Man’s pages: “[Halakhic man] recognizes no authority other than the authority of the intellect (obviously in accordance with the principles of tradition)” (79). With tradition here standing in for revelation, the heteronomous element is confined to a parenthetical, secondary to the primary message: personal and intellectual autonomy.[5]
Halakhic Man’s emphasis on autonomy is radicalized in the subjects of Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America, by Daniel Ross Goodman.[6] Each in their own ways, these three figures all draw on Soloveitchik, and all emphasize autonomy while downplaying heteronomous elements.[7]
Of the three, Sacks has the least claim to the title of “Soloveitchik’s child,” and he perhaps would not have jumped to claim it. (Goodman argues only that his subjects all at least “implicitly” (3) claimed to be such). While Goodman documents the ways in which Soloveitchik’s influence appears in Sacks’ writings, his most consistent engagement with Soloveitchik’s texts took the form of critiques. In fact, Sacks’ first published article was a critique of The Lonely Man of Faith published in Tradition, arguing that the alienation at the heart of the book is a foreign and unnecessary element which Soloveitchik need not have introduced into his Jewish theology. As Kaplan notes (xxxiii-xxxvii), this critique is a consistent one. Not only does Sacks project it back into Halakhic Man, where it is certainly less fitting than in The Lonely Man of Faith—but it does not exhaust Sacks’ critical relationship with Soloveitchik. Sacks also critiques Halakhic Man’s conception of halakhah, rightly claiming that it misses halakhah’s communal dimension—if Sacks himself misses the way The Lonely Man of Faith emphasizes this dimension (ibid.). If Sacks is “Soloveitchik’s child,” then their relationship is a fraught one, with Sacks’ persistent critiques of Soloveitchik outpaced only by their shared affection for fusions of Torah and modernity. The persistence of this critique, however, highlights Sacks’ own emphasis on human autonomy and the religious power it contains. Sacks’ man of faith is not lonely, and certainly does not locate religiosity in loneliness. All people coming together to build a better world—much as for Soloveitchik’s Adam the first—may be Sacks’ key religious vision.[8]
Hartman was, as a matter of plain fact, Soloveitchik’s student, and he dedicated much of his writing and teaching to Soloveitchik’s theology. One of his books, Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,[9] is entirely dedicated to explorations of Soloveitchik’s thought, and Soloveitchik appears throughout his other books as well. Much like Sacks, Hartman is frequently a critic of Soloveitchik, particularly when it comes to exactly the elements of passivity and alienation which Sacks critiqued. For Hartman, Soloveitchik is right to speak in terms of covenant (in The Lonely Man of Faith), but has it all backwards in saying that joining a covenant requires submission to and passive acceptance of the Divine. Covenant, for Hartman, is a category which celebrates human initiative, as people were invited to become God’s partners in the labor of Torah, history, and building a better world. In a covenant, “the integrity of both partners is recognized and the human partner is enabled to feel personal dignity and to develop capabilities of responsibility.”[10] For Hartman, autonomy and creativity are constitutive of the Jewish covenant with God.
Irving (Yitz) Greenberg also studied closely with Soloveitchik, and Soloveitchik’s Children has much to say about what Greenberg learned from him. Greenberg is in many ways the primary subject of the book, perhaps simply because Soloveitchik was still alive and the author was able to sit in his classes and correspond with him about the issues involved in the book. The author has insight into subtle ideas which Greenberg learned from Soloveitchik, such as seeing overarching patterns in halakhah beyond its mere details (15-16, 19-20, 177 n. 41). Greenberg’s perspective is also somewhat determinative of the structure of the book. Categories such as interfaith dialogue and interfaith relations may be common to all three figures, but “The Primacy of Life”—the title of a subsection in chapter 2 of the book—screams Greenberg more than it does Hartman or Sacks.[11] Similarly, only in the discussions of Greenberg do we find articulated most clearly what is perhaps the key axiom of the book: to be a “child” of Soloveitchik is to be loyal to his method more than his doctrines—a doctrinaire student of Soloveitchik would be no child of his. As Goodman notes, “Greenberg took Soloveitchik’s big-picture ideas and methodologies and ran with them, further than his teacher was comfortable with” (20). Similarly, Goodman says of Hartman that
Hartman chose to not simply repeat Soloveitchik’s lessons verbatim, as did many of Soloveitchik’s other students; instead, he chose to interpret the implications of what he had received from Soloveitchik—most significantly in the areas of pluralism and interfaith theology—and thereby revealed, as did Greenberg, his status as a true and mature disciple of Soloveitchik… He did not passively accept the instruction of his teacher. In the spirit of Soloveitchik’s teachings on creativity, Hartman interpreted and realized the training of Soloveitchik in his own dynamic, creative manner—in ways that may have departed from the letter of Soloveitchik’s instruction but in so doing were fulfillments of its spirit. (93)
There is a dialectical point here, emerging out of a modern, Promethean understanding of the creation of the new bound up with the destruction of the old. Soloveitchik himself was radically creative, breaking (in some ways) with the traditions he inherited from the “halakhic men” of his family heritage, and Soloveitchik’s “children” are loyal to him by similarly breaking with his own example. As Goodman puts it, “They are independent of their teacher, but it is through their very independence—their thinking religiously and theologically for themselves, and even through their pointed disagreements with Rav Soloveitchik—that their status as veritable philosophical spiritual children of the Rav is affirmed” (158). If creativity and autonomy are the central religious values at stake, then they are made most visible when breaking with existing conventions rather than when simply innovating in continuity with the past.
All three subjects of Soloveitchik’s Children celebrate autonomy at the expense of a passive loyalty to tradition. It is unquestionable that they could have found such a value in Soloveitchik, and, particularly for Hartman and Greenberg, there is every reason to think that they learned that value from Soloveitchik. However, Soloveitchik was never so one-sided as these three figures appear from their depiction in Soloveitchik’s Children. Soloveitchik’s Children, by my count, contains exactly one instance where one of its subjects avers any discomfort with human power and autonomy. Citing The Lonely Man of Faith’s vision of humanity’s world-shaping capacities, Greenberg notes that “There is no power without responsibility,” and conditions human reach on carefully shaping our grasp in environmentally-sensitive and responsible ways. He critiques the passage from The Lonely Man of Faith, saying that “if taken the wrong way—and if taken too far—this position can have dangerous consequences” (31). But again, this is the sole pushback against Greenberg, Hartman, and Sacks’ general championing of human initiative, and it is not even the only interpretation of The Lonely Man of Faith presented in the book: “Hartman, however, cites this passage from The Lonely Man of Faith in a more approving fashion” (ibid.).
Soloveitchik’s Children’s has a story it wants to tell—as its subtitle declares, the book is about “the future of Jewish theology in America.” The future of Jewish theology as depicted in its pages is a deeply modern, humanist project. It is a Jewish theology which believes in the human capacity to remake the world in its own image—and to reflect the divine in doing so. But the divine image always threatens to become an idol, and this was in fact one of Soloveitchik’s great worries. As he would have it, the refusal to recognize and accept limits on human autonomy is exactly the idolatry most characteristic of modernity. Humans cannot be fully autonomous and self-sufficient, and also tend naturally toward denying that fact. However, as we shall see, it would be wrong to view this as the only dangerous possibility. For Soloveitchik, it would be just as idolatrous to swing too far in the other direction.
Havivin Divrei Soferim (Song of Songs Rabbah 1:2) – Divrei Soferim and Perpetuating the Masorah
R. Herschel Schachter’s Divrei Soferim: The Transmission of Torah Shebe’al Peh is a forthrightly partisan work. Before the content of the book proper even begins, the Introduction makes this clear. The Introduction is dedicated to showing the importance and centrality of the Oral Torah, and it does so by focusing on sectarian controversies (xv-xxi). The Oral Torah has always been a cause for conflict, it would seem. Schachter slides seamlessly between the Sadducees and Boethusians in the Second Temple era and the Karaites in the Middle Ages—any historical differences between these groups paling in the face of one overwhelming similarity: they rejected the Oral Torah. Schachter rehearses a host of issues which became the site of debates between partisans of the Oral Torah (rabbinic Jews) and their opponents, from the meaning of “the day after the Shabbat” in Vayikra 23:15 to whether or not food put on a heat source before Shabbat could be eaten on Shabbat—cholent as a signifier of sectarian identity.
Schachter even makes the striking suggestion that the sectarian controversy around the Oral Torah led to the creation of a blessing:
Historians claim that this berakhah may actually have been introduced in the days of the Geonim as part of their battle with the Kara’im, who forbade such lighting. The berakhah was enacted to show that not only is it not prohibited to have kindled lights on the Shabbos, it is a mitzvah, worthy of a berakhah, to kindle these lights before the Shabbos. In fact, R. Ovadia Yosef cites a custom to recite a berakhah only prior to hadlakas neiros on erev Shabbos, not erev Yom Tov; this may stem from the fact that there was never a dispute with the Kara’im regarding Yom Tov lights. (xix)
According to this suggestion, the reason rabbinic Jews say a blessing before lighting candles on the eve of Shabbat is because the status of that ritual—as a rabbinic commandment—was subject to sectarian controversy. Correspondingly, an opinion exists that Jews don’t say a blessing before the same ritual lighting on the eve of Yom Tov, because no such controversy obtained. Notably, the claim is not that the status of the ritual as a rabbinic commandment dictates that a blessing be recited; it is that the controversy with the Karaites led to the establishment of the blessing. While the Introduction—and the book more broadly—has much to say about the value and importance of the Oral Torah, the element of sectarianism, of us/them controversy, is constitutive of the significance—one even wants to say “sanctity”—of the Oral Torah and its place in Jewish life. The heresy makes the doctrine, as it were.
Notably, Schachter’s heresiological argument for the importance of the Oral Torah comes in place of a plausible alternative beginning for any book about the Oral Torah: arguments and proofs that the Oral Torah logically must exist and is not a fabrication.[12] In fitting with the book’s partisan posture, Schachter does no such thing. Instead, he takes its existence as a given—a fact all the more striking in light of the history of sectarian controversies he narrates. The Oral Torah has apparently always been challenged, but it does not need defending. Instead, one either believes in the Oral Torah or one doesn’t—in or out, us or them.
Believing in the Oral Torah, in this case, does not mean believing that Moses was given two corpuses, one written and one oral, each of which was passed down faithfully over time. Schachter painstakingly delineates the meaning of different categories from the Oral Torah—from laws passed down by Moses at Sinai to rabbinic enactments—and the preponderance of the categories are described as the latter, as creative rabbinic interpretations and enactments, rather than laws of Mosaic origin. To what degree the rabbis were merely faithfully transmitting what was transmitted to them versus engaging in a creative legal and religious project is a traditionally debated topic, and Schachter comes down firmly on the side of emphasizing creative interpretation. “Any talmid chakham” can make use of the rules for interpreting the Torah, and all Jews “are obligated to follow the interpretations of the talmidei chakhamim of that generation, even when it is in disagreement with the accepted opinion of greater talmidei chakhamim of an earlier generation” (42, 43). Notably, Schachter cites some of the exact same talmudic stories as David Hartman—with both of them citing the stories in order to champion creative interpretation of the Torah.[13] As a theological backstop, however, Schachter adds that when an “honest” rabbi rules, they certainly receive divine guidance, with providence ensuring the correct final outcome (72-78).
This affirmation of autonomous creativity paired with conservative conditions on that creativity is a recurring motif. Schachter’s legitimation of creative rabbinic interpretation generates the anxiety which threads its way through the book. The book’s ideal readers are partisans of the Oral Torah; they believe in the power and authority of rabbis to creatively interpret the Torah and make rabbinic enactments. But in an age of intellectual autonomy, this may create just as big a problem as it solves. Widespread intellectual freedom invites the risk—perhaps even the inevitability—that different rabbis will interpret the Torah differently or make differing enactments. In its most dramatic form, internal difference threatens to split or even dissolve the community. When the community sees its norms as reflecting God’s laws, then disagreements take on additional theological severity.
Schachter is therefore at pains to make clear that affirming the rabbinic powers of interpretation and enactment does not mean believing that every rabbi can make legitimate use of these powers. Determining which rabbis are authoritative and which are not is an urgent matter. Innovating in Torah cannot be inherently wrong (all partisans of the Oral Torah embrace innovation), but “Some may innovate in the wrong direction, advancing practices that are not in the spirit of Torah” (35). Again, this is anxiety-inducing. If innovation is permitted, sometimes even necessary and good (146), but also can be bad and against the spirit of the Torah, how is a Jew supposed to know what to do?
His simple answer is “Ask the talmidei chakhamim, who are fully knowledgeable in kol haTorah kulah” (35), but that just shifts the problem. “How is a Jew supposed to know what to do?” becomes “How is a Jew supposed to know which rabbis to trust?” Here, Schachter gives us a variety of conditions which might help narrow it down. It might differ from person to person; Schachter suggests that there is a particular obligation for a person to follow their close rebbe (51). Discussing rabbis differing with rabbis of previous generations, Schachter states that “A talmid chakham who is entitled to an opinion is permitted and obligated to express his honest to goodness opinion” (46), implying that there is a category of rabbis who are, in fact, not entitled to have an opinion, for whatever reason. In a discussion of the category of the “rebellious elder,” he suggests that being “entitled to an opinion” is the same as being a “chakham shehigia lehora’ah,” literally, “a scholar who has reached [the level of] instruction” (13-14). Reaching this level, Schachter says, is necessary for weighing in on halakhic matters, though “at times, people have incorrectly decided on their own that they have attained such status” (56 n. 61). This is quite radical: not only can a lay person not know which experts to trust, experts can’t even know if they can trust themselves!
As the book progresses, the question of which rabbis are authoritative shifts from the areas of personal connection or halakhic knowledge to questions of values. “There are certain hashkafos [worldviews] and attitudes that are part of the Torah Shebe’al Peh, which must be transmitted by tradition and which affect rabbinic interpretation as well,” he says, and any new rabbinic interpretations “ must also be correct according to the traditions of attitudes” in addition to those of law and interpretation (66). This is meant to head off his “concern regarding talmidei chakhamim introducing secular attitudes and foreign concepts into the Torah that reflect their personal agenda,” though he also notes that such rabbis should not properly be considered talmidei chakhamim (67). When a real Torah scholar rules and innovates, however, one “must” believe that they are doing so free of bias or exterior, foreign values (68). This is where the true significance of the student-teacher relationship emerges, as it is the vehicle by which true Torah values are said to be inculcated (68, 97). Recognizing that interpretation is never just a matter of what a text says, that values are always involved, makes this absolutely critical. Much as one must be a partisan of the Oral Torah, one must have internalized the values of the Torah—one must have “a Torah personality” (97)—in order to legitimately interpret the Torah.
It is thus no surprise that the topic of the student-teacher relationship, on the scale of “the masorah” as a whole, returns in the final appendix of the book, titled “Innovation and Change in Halakhah.” The book, broadly an exploration of the contents which make up the corpus we call “The Oral Torah,” is bookended by its heresiologies—the legitimacy of creative interpretation at the beginning and the legitimate authority to interpret at the end. With the category of “the masorah,” Schachter provides a narrow resolution of the question of whom to trust. As he states earlier in the book, a personal rebbe, the teacher who imbues a person with a Torah personality, must be obeyed. However, he now adds, the “gadol hador” (literally, “the great of the generation”) has the same status and must also be obeyed (149). This category enables Schachter to draw a straight, continuous line from the centralized authority of the rabbinic high court in antiquity to the leaders of Jewish communities today. Insisting on holding together the claim that this idea of the masorah allows for change, with the assertion that not all changes are permissible, he raises the question directly: “Who Is Authorized to Institute Change?” (151). Here, he ties together all the themes we have seen so far. The authorized person must have “a broad knowledge and a deep understanding of the corpus of halakhah,” be familiar with “the spirit of the law,” and have “mastery of both the rules and the attitudes of the Masorah” (ibid). Only thus will they “be able to consider new practices based solely on values internal to the Masorah, removing external influences from the deliberation” (ibid.).
The partisan celebration of creative intellectual autonomy with which the book opened—and which so mirrored what we saw in Halakhic Man and Soloveitchik’s Children—has been supplanted by a clear hierarchy of authoritative interpreters. The anxiety of authenticity and continuity requires narrowing the field of who can be truly autonomous—who can legislate the law for themselves (auto-nomos)—and who must follow the law legislated by others. Innovation is necessitated by the vicissitudes of time, but an authority who can declare that “[t]he threshold of historical necessity has indeed been reached” is required.
The same dynamic is on display in Yitzhak Twersky’s Perpetuating the Masorah. The book is a collection of sermons delivered in memory of Rav Soloveitchik, his teacher and father-in-law. These speeches, chock full of interesting explorations of rabbinic texts, are also focused on Soloveitchik’s stature, both as an intellectual hero and as a teacher.[14] If he was the implicit subject of Schachter’s discussions of the teacher who shapes the student, who both embodies and transmits the Masorah, here it is quite explicit. Even when he goes sometimes unmentioned in the text itself, he is always there in the background. The teacher and the Torah are, as Twersky expounds, often inextricably linked.
This literary feature of the book nicely realizes one of its repeated theological claims: that a person who studies Torah internalizes it and gains some degree of identity with it, even mastery over it. It goes from being “God’s Torah” to being “the scholar’s Torah” (based on Avodah Zarah 19a). Here, Twersky rehearses some of the same themes as Schachter advances in his discussion of the close teacher (rav muvhak) and the obligations which devolve upon the student from that status (43-49), in contrast with the normal obligations of any Jew toward any Torah scholar. A student has additional requirements to honor his teacher (kavod)—requirements the teacher can renounce—but all Jews must respect (hiddur) Torah scholars as figures who represent the Torah—and therefore the scholar cannot renounce this respect, which they receive by virtue of their identification with the Torah (46-47).
Where Soloveitchik takes center stage—and the essay most relevant for our purposes—is the final chapter of the book, titled simply “The Rov” (how Soloveitchik was and is known to his students and followers).[15] Here we find Twersky’s most robust discussion of the masorah, alongside other themes from Schachter such as the question of which rabbis are qualified to innovate. Tying the two together, Twersky notes that “It is self-evident that not everyone is qualified or licensed to submit novellae, and not every hiddush [“innovation” –LM] will be absorbed into the mainstream of our masorah” (136). Notably, Twersky ties together the creativity of “hakhmei hamasorah,” the Torah scholars who “advance the authoritative masorah” (137), with moments of crisis (151-152). Soloveitchik’s stature is not merely a feature of his erudition and pedagogy, but of his meeting the moment (156-158)—specifically, the transition of Orthodox life from Europe to Israel and America before, during, and after the World Wars. “Hakhmei hamasorah” don’t just “advance the masorah by creative interpretation and innovation, but also by serving as sources of stability and continuity exactly when those elements seem most lacking. By virtue of their personality traits (Twersky mentions generosity and leadership, among others) as well as their authoritative positions, the scholars of the masorah help the community maintain its identity and keep from coming apart as it is rocked by change.
A recent moment of crisis provides an excellent demonstration of some of the unintuitive dynamics of autonomy and authority. The COVID-19 pandemic rocked the entire world, but the stress placed on the social fabric of the United States around the questions of “How do we know what is true?” and “How do we act based on what we know to be true?” was immense. Which sources of information were to be trusted as authoritative? What kinds of data should dictate behavior? These are questions we generally do not need to ask, and they were suddenly quite urgent. Notably, popular culture-war discourse typically associates trust in existing institutions with “the right” and critical-thinking and independence with “the left,” but, during the worst moments of the pandemic, we were more likely to hear about “doing your own research” and “deciding for yourself” from figures on “the right,” and more likely to hear about trusting leaders and institutions from people on “the left.” Schachter actually took a central role in providing guidance to wide swaths of Orthodox Jewry in the US, using his authority to navigate the burning, often controversial, questions of the moment. While liberal perspectives often denigrate authority, it is clear that autonomy without authority can reach toxic, even conspiratorial extremes, and submission to authority can lead to rapid, directed communal action—though neither result is guaranteed.
Two Forms of IdolatryThe picture that emerges from the four books discussed here is one of a cord unraveling. Solovetchik’s writings are rife with tensions and contradictions, and in fact he celebrated this, preferring struggle to comfort and uncomfortable truths to false resolutions. Halakhic Man may read as if it has managed to find a resolution, but the careful reader will notice the tensions which persist. While the book broadly champions intellectual autonomy, Twersky celebrates its fifth footnote, which insists that faith must be unshakeable, and that questions may not be asked, until one already has the answers (146-148; Halakhic Man, 143 n. 5). Like Halakhic Man itself, the four books I have reviewed here can be mapped roughly onto the two contradictory themes which make up the fabric of Soloveitchik’s corpus: the “majesty” and “humility” of humanity—intellectual autonomy and existential creativity—on the one hand, and passivity and receptivity on the other. Among Soloveitchik’s inheritors, these tensions have come apart, as each pole of Soloveitchik’s thought is held in increasing isolation from the other. The subjects of Soloveitchik’s Children champion autonomy and leave no space for passive acceptance. Schachter and Twersky, meanwhile, work in a model which circumscribes intellectual autonomy to the hakhmei hamasorah alone—they could never see as universal Halakhic Man’s statement that “[Halakhic man] recognizes no authority other than the authority of the intellect (obviously in accordance with the principles of tradition)” (79). The phrase “principles of tradition” does not nearly suffice to capture the broad sense of intellectual hierarchy and self-abnegation captured by the idea of “the masorah,” an abstraction which always inheres in concrete individual rabbinic authorities.
Soloveitchik’s writings are marked by the conscious attempt to hold together two clusters of polarized concepts: intellectual freedom vs. submission, universal rationality vs. particular commitments, human grandeur and human frailty, etc. Halakhic Man may be his least representative work in this respect, with one of the poles consigned almost entirely to the footnotes. In the rest of his oeuvre, however, Soloveitchik is much more insistent on foregrounding the tension between the poles, disallowing any restful resolution. In fact, he says, to embrace one pole—either pole—at the expense of the other would be tantamount to idolatry. Embracing power and autonomy, he says, is the fundamental idolatry of modernity, reenacting the sin of Adam who defied the divine command in favor of his own moral reasoning. Just as idolatrous, however, is exclusive self-abnegation—repeating the sin of the Golden Calf, an idol made by Jews who felt lost in the absence of a human authority figure.[16]
In the work of Soloveitchik’s students, the poles of his theology have begun to come apart. One set of Soloveitchik’s inheritors has taken up the mantle of intellectual autonomy. They insist on both the freedom and responsibility of interpretation. Importantly, there is a moral claim here. Not only can we interpret the Torah freely, they say, but we should or even must. In contrast with Soloveitchik’s emphasis on a “covenant” as a type of social bond created by mutual self-restraint, Hartman argues that covenants are about mutual activity and responsibility, Greenberg famously argues that we are in the era of “The Third Covenant,” a “voluntary covenant” constituted by human activity and divine absence, and Sacks describes covenants as bonds of “mutual responsibility” and says that the key feature of the Jewish-divine covenant is that it foregrounds the dignity and equality of all Jews.[17] These thinkers de-emphasize the role of submission and sacrifice which Soloveitchik saw as critical, not just for the religious personality but also for society and politics. Uncritically affirming autonomy risks exactly that: being uncritical—missing our own ideological blind spots and then taking other people to be involved in conspiracy when they disagree with us.
Things don’t fare much better with the other pole. While Soloveitchik isn’t quite as worried about the socio-political consequences of submitting to authority, he does still consider it idolatrous. As the anarchist Mihkail Bakunin noted, “whoever says revelation says revealers, messiahs, prophets, priests, and legislators inspired by God himself; and these, once recognized as the representatives of divinity on earth…necessarily exercise absolute power.”[18] If authority figures are made into the arbiters of values and of the very details of halakhah—of God’s presence in the life of an Orthodox Jew—then we risk those authority figures taking the place of God. If Soloveitchik averred that, in the interpretation of Torah, “The only authority is reason. The Halakhah expels from its realm all mysterious obscurity, whispers of intuition that are beyond rational cognition, and even supernatural revelations,”[19] Schachter argued that the only authority is the “baalei masorah” or the “chakhmei masorah,” who reign and innovate by virtue of their correct intuitions (how this is ascertained is not clear, but it is in contrast to those rabbis with intuitions and agendas most foreign) and whose rulings are vouchsafed by the promise of divine providence.
It is impossible to know how Soloveitchik would have evaluated his student’s understanding of the idea of “masorah”—though notably Schachter derives much of his understanding directly from his understanding of Soloveitchik[20]—but two risks involved in unchecked submission are relatively clear: First, it threatens to put an end to all the projects Soloveitchik championed under the rubric of human autonomy. Ba’alei masorah never put a man on the moon, as it were. Second—and here we return to the themes and arguments from Hartman, et al.—if sacrifice is the only value, then we lose any ability to reflect morally on our actions beyond that factor. Asserting that an action is good if it involves sacrifice, and bad if it doesn’t, provides a rather shallow metric for evaluating issues as complicated as right and wrong, good and bad. Sacrificing for one’s people or country can certainly be noble or heroic, but it can simultaneously be an act of great violence directed toward the entirely undeserving. To put it differently: that an authority tells you to do something does not make that thing right or good. Resisting that trap requires dipping into the sin of Adam—partaking in the very sort of moral and intellectual autonomy that becomes idolatrous when made the sole principle of human life.
Soloveitchik’s various “children” are veering apart, heading as groups toward one of two distinct forms of “idolatry,” represented for Soloveitchik by the sin of Adam—arrogant autonomy—and the sin of the Golden Calf—exaggerated and unnecessary submissiveness.[21] Beyond the religious values at play here, Soloveitchik also saw each pole as providing checks against the other, and it seems that those checks are disappearing. This widening gyre might be fruitfully mapped onto the sociological shift known as “Orthodox Judaism’s Slide to the Right.”[22] As Orthodoxy shifts rightward, on this reading, it gives up on autonomy and embraces the risk of excessive submission—the devil it knows. Autonomy-first thinkers, who might have seen themselves as Orthodox, may suddenly have found themselves part of more liberal Jewish spaces (for is autonomy not a key liberal value?). This is an anti-idealist perspective—theology as a superstructure with sociology at its base. Another possible read is biographical: perhaps the ability to hold these two ideas together has less to do with the ideas and more to do with Soloveitchik himself, who may have been naturally inclined toward such tensions and contradictions. If this is true, then it is not surprising that Soloveitchik lamented his inability to pass the entirety of his religious life onto his students—perhaps it could never have been any other way.[23]
[1] I will alternatingly refer to Halakhic Man as an essay and a book, given that it was first published as the former but is certainly now experienced primarily as the latter.
[2] See, for example, David Hyatt, “The Ontological Halakhic Man,” available at https://www.academia.edu/38807611/The_Ontological_Halakhic_Man.
[3] I broadly agree with Kaplan’s argument, though I find that the terms “worldliness” and “otherworldliness” in many ways obscure more than they illuminate. This is not a criticism of Kaplan, who takes them from the essay, but merely an observation. For a brief formulation of my understanding of the central theme of the book, translated into political theology’s distinction between system and exception, see here.
[4] Kaplan notes the appearance of the theme of sacrifice in Soloveitchik’s writings “from the 1960s and 1970s” in an erudite and informative gloss (187). I would push back on this slightly, in dialogue with another important contribution by Kaplan in this volume: his discussions of The Emergence of Ethical Man (Ktav Publishing House, 2005). Emergence is a fascinating and criminally under-discussed work by Soloveitchik, the date of composition of which is somewhat a mystery. The book’s editors note in the introduction that Soloveitchik was interested in religious anthropology—a key theme of the beginning of the book—in the mid-to-late 1950s, so perhaps it was written then. Throughout his contributions to the new Halakhic Man volume, Kaplan notes similarities between Emergence and Halakhic Man, and on the basis of Emergence’s relationship with student notes from the late 1940s, asserts that “The Emergence of Ethical Man was written a few years after Halakhic Man” (cxv n. 138), potentially making their common themes a feature of Soloveitchik’s early thought. This is certainly possible. However, it is worth noting that Emergence also contains one of Soloveitchik’s strongest formulations of the theme of sacrifice, arguing that the Torah actually affirms the value of human (self-)sacrifice, prohibiting it only because of the ethical problems involved (Emergence, 43). This suggests either that a later dating for Emergence may be more appropriate, or that the theme of sacrifice—certainly more present in the later writings than in Halakhic Man—may exceed so narrow a chronological confinement.
[5] A similar dynamic is at play in Soloveitchik’s And From There You Shall Seek (Ktav Publishing House, 2008), which says that “Studying the Torah is a cognitive occupation like any other intellectual activity. The only authority is reason. The Halakhah expels from its realm all mysterious obscurity, whispers of intuition that are beyond rational cognition, and even supernatural revelations. A prophet who expresses his opinion on matters of Torah law in the form of a prophecy is punishable by death… The freedom of inquiry and investigation in the field of the Halakhah is enormous” (AFTYSS, 107), followed shortly by the claim that “Halakhic thought, rooted in a revelational foundation, cannot control its own postulates as does scientific thought. It has to accept them as they are” (AFTYSS, 110).
[6] The depiction here of Sacks, Hartman, and Greenberg is based on Goodman’s depiction of them rather than based on an expansive analysis of their respective bodies of work. Nevertheless, it seems to me to capture the primary thrust of their theologies.
[7] Goodman candidly and forthrightly notes that Soloveitchik had many other heirs about whom full books—very different books—could be written (169 n. 4). Regarding two of those other heirs—R. Hershel Schachter and R. Yitzchak Twersky—see below. Soloveitchik’s Children does include a fascinating discussion of Schachter’s prolific and creative response to the COVID-19 pandemic in a section on “The Primacy of Life” (95-100, at 96-97). See below.
[8] Sacks’ oeuvre is obviously much more complicated than this, and I am no expert. That being said, I think his statements on this count are both consistent and clear.
[9] Jewish Lights Publishing, 2001. The first printing of this book actually marked it as “Volume 1.” No further volumes ever materialized, however, and subsequent printings dropped the notation.
[10] David Hartman, A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism, (The Free Press, 1997), 6.
[11] “Life” is a theme throughout Greenberg’s career, but note should be made of the title of his most recent book, The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism (Jewish Publication Society, 2024).
[12] On heresy as a critical category in Schachter’s writings, see Adam S. Ferziger, “Feminism and Heresy: The Construction of a Jewish Metanarrative,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77, no. 3 (September 1, 2009): 494-546, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfp044; Zev Eleff and Seth Farber, “Antimodernism and Orthodox Judaism’s Heretical Imperative: An American Religious Counterpoint,” Religion and American Culture 30, no. 2 (July 2020): 237-72, https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2020.8; Rachel Adler, “Innovation and Authority: A Feminist Reading of the ‘Women’s Minyan’ Responsum,” in Gender Issues in Jewish Law: Essays and Responsa, eds. Moshe Zemer and Walter Jacob (Berghahn Books, 2001), 3.
[13] Schachter discusses the story of the oven of Akhnai, wherein R. Yehoshua declares of the Torah that “It is not in Heaven!” (48), and the story of Moses visiting the classroom of R. Akiva, where interpretations Moses does not recognize are said to be “Laws of Moses from Sinai” (54-55), both of which are discussed in ch. 1 of Hartman, A Living Covenant.
[14] On Soloveitchik as a “hero,” see David Hartman, “The Halakhic Hero: Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man,” Modern Judaism 9 (1989): 249-73.
[15] Originally published in Tradition. While the other chapters in the book originated as lectures given in Soloveitchik’s memory, this chapter is directly dedicated to discussing him.
[16] See Joseph Soloveitchik, “The Golden Calf and the Roots of Idolatry,” in Vision and Leadership: Reflections on Joseph and Moses (Ktav Publishing, 2010), 129-141.
[17] On Hartman, see A Living Covenant, throughout; Goodman, Soloveitchik’s Children, 33. For Greenberg, see Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, “The Third Great Cycle of Jewish History,” in Perspectives (CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, 1987); idem, The Triumph of Life, 236-241 . For Sacks, see Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (Continuum, 2003), 115, 133-135. Sacks uses the term “covenant” for a broad set of relationship types, roughly any and all relationships that are not “transactional.” See ibid., 148-151.
[18] Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (Dover Publications, Inc., 1970), 24.
[19] See footnote 5 above.
[20] Herschel Schachter, Nefesh Harav (Reshit Publishing, 1994), 34-58; and see Lawrence Kaplan, “The Multi-Faceted Legacy of the Rav: A Critical Analysis of R. Hershel Schachter’s Nefesh ha-Rav,” B.D.D. – Bekhol Derakhekha Daehu: Journal of Torah and Scholarship 7 (1998): 51-85.
[21] Soloveitchik, “The Golden Calf and the Roots of Idolatry.”
[22] See Samuel C. Heilman, Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy (University of California Press, 2006).
[23] See Joseph Soloveitchik, “The Love of Torah and the Redemption of the Soul of the Generation,” in In Aloneness, In Togetherness, ed. Pinchas Peli (Daf-Chen, 1976), 420-421; Schachter, Nefesh Harav, 39 n. 5; Aharon Lichtenstein, “The Rav at Jubilee,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 30, No. 4 (1996): 54-55.
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