Alan Jotkowitz
Book Review of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Return to Zion: Addresses on Religious Zionism and American Orthodoxy (New York: OU Press and Ktav, 2023).
Rav Soloveitchik’s new book, The Return to Zion: Addresses on Religious Zionism and American Orthodoxy, is a translation from Yiddish of ten oral discourses he gave from 1939 to 1958, mostly at conferences of the Mizrachi Organization of America, of which he was the honorary President.[1] His addresses were eagerly anticipated and, for many, were the highlight of the meetings—and they illustrate another aspect of his greatness. Besides being the leading talmudic scholar of his time, a communal rabbi in Boston, and the founder and leader of a local yeshiva, he was also a national leader, setting not only halakhic policy but also political policy for a large portion of American orthodoxy. This, despite the fact that he begins some of the discourses with the quote from Amos, “I am not a prophet and I am not a prophet’s son” (7:14), and emphasizes that he is just a simple rosh yeshiva. As pointed out by Dr Hillel Seidman,[2] the Rav, besides being the preeminent talmudic scholar of his generation, was also the greatest orator of his time, particularly in his native Yiddish.
The book also addresses the Shoah, as it tragically was occurring in real time. As Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter has noted, the Rav’s thinking in this area has not been fully explicated.[3] The Rav, like most American Jews, felt helpless and powerless as their families were being sadistically murdered before their very eyes. For whatever reason, the Rav wrote very little about the Shoah, and this book helps to fill that void. During those dark years, in addition to his communal and educational activities, he wrote Halakhic Man, The Halakhic Mind, and And From There You Shall Seek (U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham), which can in some sense be viewed as hespeidim for the Jewish world that was destroyed. And, clearly, his very active leadership in Mizrachi and vocal support for the State are related to the historical tragedy of the Shoah and his personal response to it, as the Rav himself stated in a public lecture in 1977:
A layman once suggested to me that we should include another Al Het in our Yom Kippur confessional: ‘for the sins we have committed in being unresponsive to the cries of our brethren in Europe who were being brutally slaughtered.’ He was quite right! I am not blaming anybody. I am blaming myself. Why didn’t I act like Mordecai when he heard the news about the evil decree issued by Haman and Ahasuerus? Why didn’t I “go out into the center of the city and shout bitterly and loudly” [Esther 4:1]? Why didn’t I shout, yell, and cry? Why didn’t I tear my clothes like Mordecai? Why didn’t I awaken the Jewish leaders? I am not blaming anybody. This was the punishment for our being idol worshipers. Our faith in Roosevelt bordered on idolatry.[4]
In the first essay, entitled “We Take Refuge Exclusively under the Shadow of He Who Spoke and the World Came into Being,” R. Soloveitchik does not primarily discuss the individual victims of the destruction. Instead, he bemoans the loss of the mythical Yisrael Saba figure and what that means for the future of the Jewish People. Many traits and markers of Yisrael Saba were preserved among Polish, Lithuanian, and Russian Jews, with their thousand-year old histories and traditions, with their entire manner of living, thinking, and feeling. The seal of Israel was impressed upon all of their creations and accomplishments. They had the enthusiasm of Yisrael Saba, the strength of character in certain respects of our old-time Jacob, the image of whose countenance is engraved upon the throne of glory (Bereishit Rabbah 68:12). With the destruction of Eastern European Jewry, this type is largely gone. And this constitutes one of the greatest tragedies of modern Jewry.[5]
In the second essay, the Rav deals more directly with the issues and differentiates between pain and suffering: “Pain is a physiological-psychological phenomenon. Suffering entails a spiritual ethical value assigning act.”[6] The pain cannot be explained, as the Rav teaches: “We have no explanation for these pains and no philosopher or metaphysician can solve this mystery—just like Job did not discover the secret of his pains.”[7] The suffering also cannot be explained, but entails a response from us, and, in this context, the response is building a Jewish State committed to the Torah. The messianic elements found in some of the writings of Rav Kook are missing for the most part from the Rav’s discourse, but he does seem to be in favor of Rav Herzog’s project to build a modern state based on halakhah.
In this oral discourse, many of the themes the Rav will further develop in his well-known essay Kol Dodi Dofek are first presented, such as the idea that suffering can never be explained but entails a human response. Many of the famous “knocks” from Kol Dodi Dofek are also presented here for the first time. Interestingly, he does not use the Shir Ha-Shirim metaphor but instead gives a unique perspective on the akeidah to explain his ideas. According to the Rav, crucial to understanding the story is not the willingness to sacrifice, but the recording of the birth of sons to Nahor later in the perek:
This is the portrait of the binding. It is not the sacrifice that is at the center of the drama but rather that which is paradoxical, irrational, and incomprehensible—the torments of an illogical life that is full of contradictions. We dare not allow all of this to simply remain a paradoxical fate—an illogical and incomprehensible enigma—rather it must be transformed into destiny, self-determination, and free choice.[8]
The Rav continues:
Is the building of the land paradoxical, enigmatic, and incomprehensible? Absolutely![9]
For this, he gives a number of reasons: our conflict with the Arabs; the struggle with the desert-like terrain of the land; the resurrection of the Hebrew language; the faith in the return to Zion; and Zionism’s challenge to Christian faith. Some of these incomprehensible challenges were surmounted and turned into the famous “knocks” from Kol Dodi Dofek.
He continues:
Should we leave the great work of building the land of Israel with all its historical complications and paradoxes, and with the immensely significant influence it will exert on the lives of Jews in the Diaspora in the hands of non religious youth? At a harat olam [creation of the world] hour in the most critical period of our history should we hide in caves and shadows? And later groan about the desecration of Shabbat in the land of Israel?[10]
What seems to be missing is a stirring call to action to do whatever possible to save the remnant of European Jewry. Notwithstanding that, the Rav does demand from his listeners:
First, as the efforts to save the Jewish survivors are being organized on a mass scale and the question is especially relevant now given the establishment of the rescue committee [the war refugee board] by the president—Orthodoxy must ensure that it occupies a prominent position.[11]
But this almost seems like an afterthought and not the main thrust of the lectures. Perhaps the Rav himself gave the reason for the lack of action: the Jewish communities’ almost-idolatrous faith in President Roosevelt. And that sin cannot be repeated in the fight to establish the State of Israel.
In the Rav’s lectures to Mizrachi, he does not exclusively focus on Israel, but extensively discusses the situation of American Jewry. The lectures were given at the height of the popularity of the Conservative movement, and their message is remarkably consistent and prescient: Judaism without Torah and halakhah is doomed to failure and disappearance. Interestingly, already in 1944, he wrote:
Lubavitch has undertaken a task that could have a recognizable impact on the development of American Judaism throughout the country. It is still difficult to predict the results but the experiment is grandiose… the Rebbe sends out young men sporting beards and sidelocks, most of them Americans. They arrive in towns where no one has ever seen a Jew with a beard. They set up shop in a shtibl and pull children in from the street. After the children’s school sessions, they bring them to the beit midrash, they ritually wash their hands, they dress them in tzitzit and they teach them the axioms of Judaism.[12]
But the Torah Judaism R. Soloveitchik advocates for is one that, while remaining steadfastly true to halakhah, is integrated professionally and academically into the secular or Christian world at large. Regarding isolation, he writes: “At the same time we cannot enclose ourselves within a Great Wall of China and break off all our connections with the surrounding culture.”[13] This is a position that does not seem to be born out by the reality of the world we live in and the growth and success of the Hareidi isolationist model.
One of the Rav’s discourses, entitled “The letters of Creation” (1944), given at the time Jews were being wiped out in Eastern Europe, was devoted to Jewish education in America, which might also be a response to the Shoah:
Therefore we demand of the Mizrachi party that it become a Torah movement that introduces the otiyot yetzirah, the ABCs of Judaism, to American Jewry. Let it be understood that we do not mean organizing Hevrot Shas or student groups, printing sacred books, or publishing philosophical tracts but rather …establishing Yeshiva day schools and hadarim for boys and girls and teaching small children the simple Hebrew alphabet, basic Hebrew reading skills and a plain understanding of the Hummash.[14]
The Rav heroically did this himself, leaving the beit midrash to found a yeshiva day school in Boston and recognizing that Jewish survival in America depends on basic yeshiva education, not Brisker lomdus to which he was so devoted.
A similar message defines his Zionism. After the initial battle for the establishment of the State, many of the Rav’s discourses deal with the battle for Torah in the nascent Jewish State. This was not a rejection of the State, as many of his ultra-orthodox rabbinical colleagues advocated, but rather a vision of a State based on Torah. For example, regarding a plea to integrate halakhah and Torah values into the State regarding such issues as Jewish education, national service for women, and who is a Jew, He teaches: “For if the Land of Israel is part of the madness of the dance of eternity, then a Land of Israel governed [based] on the Torah is certainly part of that dance.”[15]
The Rav had written previously about how lonely he felt, separated from not only his rabbinical colleagues but his extended family as well. I don’t think enough has been written about how brave he was, and the personal sacrifices he made, in staking out these positions, not to mention the self-confidence he must have had.
As discussed above, in the establishment of the State, the Rav clearly saw the hand of God. Notwithstanding what he has written—that a Jewish theology can only come from halakhah—there is very little halakhah in these discourses, and many of them rely on biblical interpretations in developing their themes.
This original review was written before the tragic events of October 7th, but no one can write about Zionism now without relating to the current war in Israel. The feeling of powerfulness of American Jewry in the 1940s that pervades the book is certainly not present today, as modern Israel has the capacity to fight back and defeat its enemies. But the question of how a religious person should relate to the State does have new meaning after October 7th. The messianic vision of religious Zionism that the Rav was so opposed to is struggling with the meaning of the events and the fact that our military prowess is so tied to American armaments, power, and goodwill. The war has also brought to the forefront the relationship of the hareidim to the State. Can they continue to live an isolated existence apart from the rest of Israeli society, or is some form of integration crucial for the future of the State? This tension is, of course, most felt in the vociferous debate currently going on in Israel about hareidim serving in the army. The issue has always been simmering, but the war and the simple need for more soldiers, alongside the efforts of the government to legislate hareidi exemptions, has only highlighted the inequalities in the current system and the tremendous burden placed on other segments of the population.
For followers of the Rav’s brand of religious Zionism, which has focused on the practical, historical, as well as religious aspect of the Jews returning to their ancestral homeland, the war raises questions such as the relationship of the State to the Diaspora and the international community, the future of Diaspora Judaism in dealing with a recurrence of the ancient scourge of antisemitism, and how the State should deal with non-Jewish citizens who have fought alongside their Jewish brothers in arms. What is clear from all of the above is that we are sorely missing the Rav’s wisdom and guidance in not only dealing with these difficult issues but placing them in a theological, religious, and moral context, as only he was uniquely able to do.
[1] Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Return to Zion: Addresses on Religious Zionism and American Orthodoxy, 159. For some reason, as noted in the book, the Rav did not address the conference in the years 1948-1954.
[2] Ibid., 35.
[3] https://traditiononline.org/traditions-2023-book-endorsements-part-2/
[4] Aharon Rakeffet, The Rav: The World of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, vol. 2 (New Jersey: Ktav Publishing,1999), 156-57.
[5] The Return to Zion: Addresses on Religious Zionism and American Orthodoxy, 13.
[6] Ibid., 96.
[7] Ibid., 98.
[8] Ibid., 98-99.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., 105.
[11] Ibid., 27.
[12] Ibid., 45.
[13] Ibid., 99.
[14] Ibid., 42.
[15] Ibid., 214.
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