Prophecy is a Mitzvah

Alex S. Ozar

There is a mitzvah, incumbent upon every adult Jew, male or female, of sound mind and body, to become and then to serve as a prophet. As R. Soloveitchik matter-of-factly puts it, “The principle of prophecy, as an article of faith…has a twofold aspect: the belief in (1) prophecy as a reality – i.e., that God causes men to prophesy; (2) prophecy as a norm ­– i.e., that each person is obliged to aspire to this rank, that every man should make a supreme effort to scale the mountain of the Lord, until he reaches the pinnacle of revelation of the Divine Presence” (Halakhic Man, 129). And once one has indeed achieved, as one must, the rank of prophet, one must, on pain of death, share the fruits of their achievement with all who can hear: one who “suppresses his prophecy,” the Mishnah says, is liable to execution at the hands of heaven (Sanhedrin 11:5).^[1]

In saying that prophecy is a mitzvah, I do not mean that it is found in any halakhic code. If it is a “norm,” as R. Soloveitchik says, it is not a norm in the same sense as the obligation to fix a mezuzah on one’s doorpost, and its existence and bindingness are not demonstrable in the same way. I argue nonetheless that we are obligated, to God and to each other, to do the work of prophecy, and that this work is principally, though not exclusively, a matter of the pursuit of justice for the vulnerable and oppressed. What follows is an effort, largely by way of an exposition of certain strands in R. Soloveitchik’s thought, to clarify and substantiate these claims.^[2]

“The Sighs of Orphans, the Groans of the Destitute”

For R. Soloveitchik, “scaling the mountain of the Lord” and thus reaching “the pinnacle of revelation of the Divine Presence,” as he says we must, is emphatically not, or at least not only, a matter of mystical accomplishment. The “prophecy awareness,” he says, “is toto genere different from the mystical experience” (Lonely Man of Faith, 52). R. Soloveitchik does not deny that individuals may achieve cognitive access to heavenly mysteries, ecstatic rapture, or even merger with the divine. For halakhically-minded Jews, however, R. Soloveitchik argues that these pursuits are at best peripheral to what prophecy is about.^[3]

His argument is as follows. Judaism, R. Soloveitchik asserts, must command and welcome the participation of all Jews on fundamentally equal terms. It is “democratic to its very core” (Lonely Man of Faith, 62). The “mystical experience of intuition, illumination, or union,” in contrast, is fundamentally esoteric in nature, being reserved for the enjoyment of a necessarily-small elite equipped with the means and leisure to pursue such attainments. And to the extent that one receives cognitive content through such prophetic attainment, that content is not shareable: if you have beheld a Seraph, nothing you tell me will make it as if I beheld a Seraph. All the more so is it the case that if you have achieved union with God, nothing you can tell me will make it the case that I have achieved union with God. If it is of importance to Judaism that you have beheld a Seraph or merged with God, therefore, it will follow that Judaism in that aspect would pertain to you and not to me. “For Judaism,” R. Soloveitchik says, that “would be not only unthinkable but immoral as well” (ibid.). Prophecy embodies mutual accountability in its very form.

If we must have prophecy and prophecy cannot be esoteric, R. Soloveitchik argues, prophecy must be practical in nature: That is, while prophecy certainly may involve non-normative elements as well, “Any encounter with God…must be crystallized and objectified in a normative ethico-moral message” (idem, 59). Because anyone can understand concrete moral instruction – and can in principle come to learn it on their own – prophecy is democratic and thus halakhically legitimate insofar as it is realized in the form of concrete moral instruction. “The democratization of the God-man confrontation was made possible by the centrality of the normative element in prophecy” (idem, 62).

While the giving of the Torah through Moses’ prophecy is, for R. Soloveitchik, exemplary in this regard,^[4] it is not the case that the form of concrete instruction in question is limited to law, let alone to any particular body of law. After all, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel are also exemplary prophets for R. Soloveitchik’s purposes, and, as Hazal say, “These are the commandments: from now on no prophet may innovate a new one” (Shabbat 104a). That is, no prophet after Moses may employ prophecy for the issuance of new commandments. If prophecy is to take the form of concrete instruction, therefore, it must take some form of concrete instruction other than that of commandments, or statutory rules, per se.^[5]

If the prophet is not imparting commandments, the question then is what it might mean for an “encounter with God” to be “crystallized and objectified in a normative ethico-moral message.” In the background here is a distinction between two modes of reality. There is the realm of objective, impersonal, external fact – that part of reality ascertained by a detached observer and describable in terms of mathematical formulas. And there is the realm of the personal, subjective, and spiritual – that which we encounter insofar as we are engaged affective persons making our way in the world with open hearts. Think of the experience of a sunset vs. an analysis of the wavelengths and refraction-dynamics at play, or of building a relationship with someone vs. manipulating their behavior through mechanical stimuli.

For R. Soloveitchik, it is in the subjective, spiritual, and qualitative world, rather than in the quantitative one, where we meet God and hear His word. “Only outside of formal symbolic cognition…can the secret be revealed” (And From There You Shall Seek, 13). To engage in that world is to develop ourselves as personalities characterized by inner-spiritual depth and passion. It is to become not just a thing but a personal self, and “If there is a self…there is a living personal God who fills the consciousness of the self” (idem, 12).

While, for R. Soloveitchik, this cultivation of the inner-spiritual life is critical, it is equally critical that we give outward, public expression to that life.^[6] R. Soloveitchik illustrates this dynamic with respect to a range of modes of personal subjectivity. “In the aesthetic sphere,” for instance, “subjectivity finds expression either in the discipline of aesthetics or in works of art. Both are objectified aspects of ephemeral subjectivity” (Halakhic Mind, 67). In creating artwork one translates an indeterminate, free-flowing, and fundamentally private state of one’s soul into a fixed, determinate, objectively accessible, and therefore evaluable, form.

This is a fundamentally personal, subjective process, in that there are no rules determining how the artwork should come out. It is freely created, and so it is expressive of the free person who created it. It has an objective aspect to it as well, however. Free as I am in creating it, my creating is not simply random, as I am constrained and guided by the norms of beauty and excellence as I see them as well as my own vision for the artwork. We often call this vision and the guidance it offers “inspiration.” Moreover, while I might have expressed myself in any way, I chose and executed this way, and this artwork is now in the world as an objective fact. And because it is in the world, it is now available for public evaluation in accordance with interpersonally valid standards.

With regard to the ethical sphere, R. Soloveitchik says that “ethical subjectivity is converted into propositions, norms, values, etc., which are nothing but objectified correlates of an elusive subjective stream” (idem, 67). That is, if we are to be ethical, we must first translate the elusive subjective stream – our passions, broodings, wishes, etc. – into well-articulated propositions, norms, and values. Without recourse to mechanical derivation from or subsumption under a pre-given rule – the procedure remains fundamentally personal in nature – we judge that this or that ought or ought not to be the case. I might, for instance, bring myself to see that the ongoing, disproportionate concentration of black persons in inner-city neighborhoods is unjust and pernicious, even where I cannot show this reality to be in direct, present violation of some or another law.^[7] I might judge further that I ought to seek redress in some way for that injustice, even where my failure to do so would certainly not be in violation of any statute. And even where there are clearly applicable laws – an unarmed man is killed by the police, for instance – it may still require an act of judgment to see that a given instance of such killing was in fact unjust. Should we give the officer the benefit of the doubt? If the victim’s conduct was imperfect, does that imperfection suffice to justify or excuse the killing? Does this particular tragedy implicate a broader web of historical oppression that can’t morally go unaddressed in addressing this particular tragedy?

Computers cannot make these judgments; only subjectively, spiritually-engaged, open-hearted persons can. R. Soloveitchik says we ought to become such subjectively and spiritually engaged, open-hearted persons, and then we ought to do the work of concrete moral judgment.^[8]

But judgment, while critical, is not enough. The ethical person must “not only tend to mold a clear norm with his subjective duty-consciousness, but to realize this norm in concrete life” (Halakhic Mind, 70). This too is a fundamentally personal and subjective process: whether I in fact act on my own moral judgments is up to me. “The decision is the final act of the free will, the agent of the ethical process” (ibid., emphasis added). Both what I decide to do in the world, and that I decide to do it, are and ought to be expressive of my inner selfhood, of the unique individual that I am. Insofar as these judgments and decisions are realized in the world, however, they are made available for the critical work of democratic debate and exchange. I realize my accountability to others, as R. Soloveitchik says the prophet must, through real-world judgment and action.

The imperative toward external crystallization is most vital, R. Soloveitchik says, with regard to religious subjectivity. Here our inner selves are drawn toward ever deeper passion and authenticity in achieving a direct and unmediated connection with the divine – we seek God within ourselves. This is dangerous, however, as it tends to write the world around us out of the equation: “The ethical and religious ideal of homo religiosus is the extrication of his existence from the bonds of this world” (Halakhic Man, 15). The resulting posture is again immoral because it is undemocratic, in that such religious achievement becomes the province of exceptional individuals. “Aristocracy in the religious realm is identical with the decadence of religion” (Halakhic Mind, 80). More pointedly, R. Soloveitchik worries, to take such a posture is to render oneself irresponsible with respect to the realities of human suffering:

See what many religions have done to this world on account of their yearning…They have been so intoxicated by their dreams of an exalted supernal existence that they have failed to hear the sighs of orphans, the groans of the destitute. Had they not desired to unite with infinity and to merge with transcendence, then they might have been able to do something to aid the widow and the orphan, to save the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor. There is nothing so physically and spiritually destructive as diverting one’s attention from this world (Halakhic Man, 41).

Insofar as I am absorbed in myself, I will not hear the cries of the suffering and oppressed. Insofar as I turn self-absorption into a mode of religious devotion, therefore, I am to that degree actively irresponsible with regard to human suffering and oppression.

For R. Soloveitchik, it is the Holocaust which most pointedly illustrates the dangers of failing to concretize subjectivity. It is a theme he returns to repeatedly in his works composed in the 1940’s. “It is,” he says, “no mere coincidence that the most celebrated philosophers of the third Reich were outstanding disciples of Husserl” (Halakhic Mind, 53), who he takes as a paragon of intellectual subjectivism. “Such views,” he says in Halakhic Man, “have brought chaos and disaster to our world, which is drowning in its blood.”^[9] R. Soloveitchik’s concern is not primarily with people like Hitler and Himmler but with all those regular citizens who failed to oppose them: “Subjective faith, lacking commands and laws…cannot stand fast…The terrible Holocaust of World War II proves this. All those who speak of love stood silent and did not protest. Many of them even took part in the extermination of millions of human beings” (And From There You Shall Seek, 55). The most pressing problem is not evil but indifference to evil.

In context, as we have seen, the “commands and laws,” which subjective faith is said to lethally lack, do not refer only or even primarily to any set of literal statutes, let alone any particular set of statutes. “Even the objectified ethical norm,” R. Soloveitchik writes, “does not lend itself to halakhic authoritative legislation and promulgation” (Halakhic Morality, 43). That is, the form of objectified ethical norm required to prevent mass-societal evil is not that of law.^[10] It follows that it is likewise not specifically halakhic law that is needed. Germans were, after all, well acquainted with both legal and religious prohibitions against murder, and in any case Soloveitchik is surely not suggesting that Germans and other complicit citizens ought to have warded off the Holocaust by adherence to the Shulhan Arukh. Those who stood silent are to be blamed, rather, on account of their failure to crystallize their own subjectivities into concrete, worldly action. They ought, R. Soloveitchik argues, to have rendered the determinate judgment that the Nazi program was evil and to have on that basis said so publicly. At the very least they ought to have manifestly withheld their support. Their failure to do so has “brought chaos and disaster to our world.”

R. Soloveitchik’s overriding concern, therefore, is that we take care to prevent mass-societal evil and human suffering more generally. We do this by cultivating engaged personal selfhood which we assiduously crystallize into determinate judgments and norms and then expressively actualize through real-world action. We look to the heavens by way of the world, asking what the world’s suffering and oppressed need from us here and now.

Occasionally, as in cases where we are the direct perpetrators of a crime, this is a matter of improving our adherence to a pre-given rule. More often, as in cases of structural injustice and entrenched societal oppression generally, what we are called to do in response cannot be determined through objective deduction. We require a feat of irreducibly personal, authoritatively binding judgment flowing from and into the irreducibly personal labor of care. “There is no statutory morality,” R. Soloveitchik writes (Halakhic Morality, 5). Again, morality cannot be any set of fixed, generally applicable rules  – it cannot be law. If we require morality, then, we require a form of morality beyond the statutory. We require prophecy.

“Halakhic man,” R. Soloveitchik writes, “takes up his stand in the midst of the concrete world, his feet planted firmly on the ground of reality, and he looks about and sees, listens and hears, and publicly protests against the oppression of the helpless, the defrauding of the poor, the plight of the orphan…The actualization of the ideals of justice and righteousness is the pillar of fire which halakhic man follows” (Halakhic Man, 91). In doing so, he “approaches the level of that godly man, the prophet” (ibid., 90). 

R. Soloveitchik is not alone in identifying prophecy with a form of personal moral discernment. As Hazon Ish puts it, “The good cannot be known by the root of the intellect alone. Rather, his root is to choose the good until one is fit for the prophetic faculty, and then God will command him as to the prohibited things from which he must desist and the good acts which he is obligated to do” (Emunah u-Bitahon, 6:2). There is no comprehensive manual of rules for the moral life to which we enjoy access. To be morally responsible, therefore, we must commit to the good in advance of grasping its requirements in full; in doing so, we open ourselves to the divine insight we need in order to progress further.

This may, Hazon Ish stresses, come to us in some form of “specially created audio experience” — the experience of actually hearing a supernaturally-produced voice — but at times “prophecy enters into the heart of man and shapes in his heart all that which the Creator moves his soul to do in fulfilling the commands of God (idem, 6:1).” We have to listen to our hearts, and so we have to open our hearts to the word of God. The wise, Ramban says, “know the truth through the holy spirit [ru’ah ha-kodesh] within them” (Hiddushei Ramban al Bava Batra 12b).  

Sometimes God confronts us with a prophecy we did not expect; sometimes we call out in desperate hope of hearing God’s word. In all cases, to reach the rank of prophet is to ready ourselves to translate the intensely personal, subjective, inner experience of faith into concrete acts of care for the suffering and of protest against their oppression. We know we are successful if and only if no cry of any widow, orphan, and stranger ever goes unheard. “Prophets,” R. Soloveitchik says, are “above all, men of action dominated by an all consuming passion for reform and change” (Lonely Man of Faith, 80).^[11]

Responding to Objections

I want to respond briefly to three anticipated objections. The first is that, as per the Talmud, the era of prophecy ended with the close of the biblical period: “Once Haggai, Zekhariah, and Malakhi died, the holy spirit was removed from Israel (Sotah, 48b).” Assuming that the “holy spirit” (ru’ah ha-kodesh) is either identical with or a prerequisite for prophecy, it follows that prophecy is not available at present. We might, however, following R. Menashe Klein, simply restrict the import of this passage by arguing that it is painted only in broad strokes: “It can be said that their statement that ‘the holy spirit was removed from Israel’ means that it was removed from the majority of Israel, but that it remains for the extraordinary individuals of every generation” (Mishneh Halakhot, 5:167). And then we might argue that we are all obligated to aspire to extraordinary individual-hood. Indeed, the Talmud maintains that prophecy remains the province of the wise (Bava Batra 12b).

The passage itself, however, says that bat kol – some lesser form of divine communication – remained available, and then cites a bat kol as declaring to a post-biblical gathering that “[t]here is one among you who is worthy of the divine presence resting on them, only that his generation is not fit for this” (Sotah 48b). Even if we cannot today achieve prophecy quite in the manner of Amos or Jeremiah, we can (1) still attain some measure of divine insight, and (2) insofar as we can succeed in adequately reforming our society, we can achieve prophecy in full.

That we live in the post-biblical era, therefore, is no excuse for failure on our part in becoming prophets. It is certainly not grounds for neglecting to try. As the Piaseczner Rebbe, Rav Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, writes, “Because the will of God and His desire is to cleave to the utmost with all of Israel, his beloved nation – not with the prophets alone, but with all of them. And the end of his will for Israel is that they should all be prophets…and even now, in the present world…everyone should still engage in the labor of prophecy and the light of the Holy one Blessed Be He and His holiness will concentrate in the hearts of them all” (Mevo ha-She’arim 1, emphasis added).

The second, remarkably common, objection is that prophecy, whether in the form of protest against Ba’al-worship or protest against injustice and oppression, virtually never works. Therefore, it is argued, we ought to desist from prophetic protest. This argument is a non-sequitur: if we are obligated to do X, then we are obligated to do X even if X is unlikely to succeed. For the prophet, moreover, to make such calculations is already to ask “one thought too many.”^[12] As Amos puts it, “When the lion roars, who will not fear? When the Lord God has spoken, who will not prophesy?” (Amos 3:8). The imperative to prophecy is not only moral but existential – it is simply not up for discussion. And prophecy, R. Moshe Avigdor Amiel writes, is to its audience like wind to a windmill:

The wind swirls and swirls, goes to the south and swirls back to the north, never resting for a moment, but it happens, indeed, that on some isolated hilltop stands a windmill, its arms spinning like the wind…But there are many places in the world where there is no windmill at all, and the swirling wind reaches even there, for indeed the wind does not swirl for the sake of the windmill, but just the opposite, they make windmills on account of the wind’s continuing existence, and it makes no difference to the wind whether they make use of its force or not. And indeed there is a wind (ru’ah) in humanity, and it makes no difference to the prophet whether they make use of their spirit or not (Derashot el Ami, 3:18).

The wind will blow as it blows, windmills or not. But the more it blows, the more windmills it will find, and, as people experience the wind, the more windmills there will come to be.

Prophecy is like a “voice calling in the wilderness” (Isaiah 40:3), and this, R. Amiel says, is “is the tragedy of the prophet.” But this point of despair is precisely the ground of hope:

On the other side, with this you find their whole consolation, for when one calls in the wilderness, not only the voice is heard, but so too the echo (bat kol), for from the voice there comes an echo, as if someone stood and repeated their words, and it can happen that someone calls in the wilderness and there is someone far, far away who does not hear the voice of the caller itself but hears the echo that comes from it. And the voice of the prophet is indeed like a voice calling in the wilderness – the people of their generation did not hear their voice itself. But there have already passed since then two thousand years and we still hear the echo of the voice of the prophet ringing from one end of the world to the other (Derashot el Ami, 3:18). 

It is therefore not only that we must persist in the work of prophecy without regard for the chances of success. It is that, as the still-resounding echo of Isaiah’s voice calls us to hear, the long odds of immediate success mean only that we ought to be playing the long game. And that, prophecy says, is a game prophecy can and must win.

Lastly, one may worry that this conception sets the bar for prophetic status too low, such that anyone inclined to proclaim a moral opinion qualifies as a prophet. But this is a mistake: it is only those whose moral judgments actually are formed through divine inspiration who qualify. How can we determine whose moral judgments are indeed formed through divine inspiration? The performance of signs and wonders (see Exodus 4:1-9, Deuteronomy 13:2-6) and the accurate prediction of the future have traditionally secured some corroboration of true rather than false prophecy (see Deuteronomy 18:21-22), but such evidence is not always available and is in any case always imperfect (see Rambam, Hilkhot Yesodei Ha-Torah 8:2).

More reliable will be whether the would-be prophet speaks in their own unique voice – “No two prophets prophesy in the same style” (Sanhedrin 89a). Participation in echo-chamber choruses is thus unlikely to be prophetic as such. More basically, the question to ask is to what extent the would-be prophet is challenging or reinforcing the salient powers-that-be: the messages of those who are persecuted rather than praised for proclaiming their views are more plausibly genuinely prophetic.^[13] And this is vitally true from a first-person perspective: in asking myself whether or not my prophetic ambitions are genuine, the most important question is to what extent I am willing to accept real cost, risk, and sacrifice in saying what God has purportedly commanded me to say. Prophets are ready to put themselves on the line.

 Conclusion

R. Avraham Grodzinski^[14] writes that “[h]uman reason possesses the possibility to grasp the foundation-of-faith that is prophecy even in absence of a command.” It is, he adds, “not only that he [the human person as such] possesses the capacity to understand the matter of prophecy, but that he is himself capable of reaching the level of prophecy and holy spirit” (Torat Avraham, 276). Largely through the exposition of R. Soloveitchik’s work, I have recommended the set of responsibilities I call prophetic to my readers in the hope that they will, through the operation of their own reason, come to find these responsibilities as or more compelling than I do.

And while I have not offered anything like an exhaustive survey of Jewish thought on these matters, my references to R. Soloveitchik, Hazon Ish, Ramban, and R. Grodzinski suffice to establish the robust Jewish validity of identifying the referent of the biblical and rabbinic term nevu’ah [prophecy] with a form of personal, moral-intellectual discernment like the one I am recommending. ִI regard this, moreover, as peshuto shel mikra (the plain meaning of the biblical text): When Amos, for instance, passionately condemns those who trample into the ground the heads of the poor (Amos 2:7), it is hard but to think that he is not only reporting God’s moral judgment but expressing his own, achieved through prophecy.^[15] “We have found,” Hazal say, “that the Holy One, Blessed Be He is known as the heart of Israel” (Shir Ha-shirim Rabbah 5:2). That is, in discerning the deepest contents of our hearts and minds, we encounter God.^[16]

I conclude that we are all indeed obligated to become and serve as prophets in the cause of justice for the vulnerable and oppressed. We must cultivate in ourselves spiritual depth and passion, and then resolve to translate that depth and passion into concrete moral discernment and action in the world. We must actively seek to hear the cries of the suffering and oppressed, listening to what they say and helping them to say what they as-yet cannot. To succeed in hearing their cries and in formulating the moral judgments that follow from them is to succeed in hearing the word of God. To pursue justice on that basis is to proclaim that word to the world.

What this will look like in a given case we cannot say in advance. There is no manual. Sometimes prophetic action will take the form of mass demonstrations, sometimes giving money and resources to those in a position to help, sometimes engaging in intimate dialogue in the hope of getting one more person to understand and care, sometimes building relationships or simply establishing contact with marginalized persons and communities. What matters is that God’s word becomes a “raging fire in our hearts” (see Jeremiah 20:9), and that we conduct ourselves such as to leave no reasonable doubt to anyone that our souls are indeed aflame. We must not be, or so much as seem to be, indifferent. Which is to say that we must care, and make clear – to others, to God, and to ourselves – that we care.

No matter what, the first step will always be the work of engaged, concrete moral judgment. We powerfully resist doing even this much, arguing that reality is complex and ambiguous; there are two sides to everything; it is not our place to decide one way or another; real political change is impossible anyway; and so on. But these arguments represent the logic of the powers-that-be and the status quo. The prophetic mandate has always been to challenge the status quo in the name of God. That mandate belongs to each of us.

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. Responsibility and Judgment. New York: Schocken Books, 2003.

Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Prophets. New York: Harper Perennial, 2001.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Mathews. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Soloveitchik, Joseph B. And From There You Shall Seek. Translated by Naomi Goldblum. Jersey City: Ktav Publishing, 2008.

____Halakhic Man. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983.

____Halakhic Mind: An Essay On Jewish Tradition and Modern Thought. New York: The Free Press, 1986.

____Halakhic Morality: Essays on Ethics and Mesorah. New Milford: Maggid Books, 2017.

____Lonely Man of Faith. New York: Doubleday Press, 2006.

Williams, Bernard. Moral Luck. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

^[1] All translations are my own.

^[2] The account of R. Soloveitchik presented here is developed more extensively in my “Joseph Soloveitchik as Weimar Intellectual and Prophetic Ethicist” forthcoming in Jewish Quarterly Review.

^[3] In his lectures on Rambam’s account of prophecy, Rav Soloveitchik does speak of “Mystical-Ecstatic” experience, identified with the depiction of perpetual person-God intellectual union in Rambam’s Guide III:51, as the highest form of prophecy. He is careful to clarify, however, that the form of mystical union in question is “intellectual-ethical” rather than “metaphysical.” See Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Maimonides- Between Philosophy and Halakhah: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Lectures on the Guide of the Perplexed, ed. Lawrence Kaplan (New York: Urim Publications, 2016), 108.  

^[4] He refers in this context to “the norm engraved upon the two tablets of stone” (Lonely Man of Faith, 62).

^[5] For a proposed epistemological grounding for this restriction, see my “The Prophets Did Not Take Political Stands, and You Should Too” in Lehrhaus, Nov 29, 2018.

^[6] It is important that for R. Soloveitchik the process of translating the inner contents of one’s soul into concrete outward expression is a natural one: “There is a definite trend toward self-transcendence on the part of the spirit…The arrow points towards externality, spatialization and quantification; and subjectivity rushes along this route” (Halakhic Mind, 67-68).

^[7] For an explanation and exploration of the injustice of America’s still-segregated neighborhoods, see Elizabeth Anderson, The Imperative of Integration (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

^[8] It is critical that while such judgments can only be made by subjects, it does not follow that they are simply subjective. Kant, for instance, distinguishes between judgments as to the “agreeable” – that this ice cream tastes good to me, for instance – and judgments as to beauty. Whereas our judgments of agreeableness entail no expectation that others will share them – my liking this ice cream simply does not mean that you like this ice cream – judgments as to beauty do come with a claim to universal validity: in saying that this artwork is beautiful, I address a claim to all others for their assent. As Kant puts it:

He [someone declaring an object beautiful] judges not merely for himself, but for everyone…Hence he says that the thing is beautiful, and does not count on the agreement of others with his judgment of satisfaction because he has frequently found them to be agreeable with his own, but rather demands it from them. He rebukes them if they judge otherwise, and denies that they have taste, though he nevertheless requires that they ought to have it (Critique of the Power of Judgment, 98, emphasis in original)

Kant here offers a model of judgment which is both fundamentally rooted in personal subjectivity and yet fundamentally non-arbitrary – the answer is up to us to discern, but what the answer is is not up to us. As such, these judgments, while not “objective” in the way, for instance, mathematical deductions are, are inter-subjective in form: what is true for me is necessarily true for you, and vice versa. As such they enjoy a degree of reality which merely subjective judgments do not.

While Kant has relatively little to say about this form of judgment in relation to moral matters, the extension of this model into the moral and political realms was central to the work of R. Soloveitchik’s fellow Weimar-trained, American-immigrant, Jewish contemporary, Hannah Arendt. For Arendt, what distinguishes those who avoid complicity in mass-societal evil from those who do not is that they are committed to the work of “thought” in exercising that “human faculty which enables us to judge rationally without being carried away by either emotion or self-interest, and which at the same time functions spontaneously, that is to say, is not bound by standards and rules under which particular cases are simply subsumed, but on the contrary, produces its own principles by virtue of the judging activity itself” (Responsibility and Judgment, 50). For her most explicit discussion of Kant’s Third Critique as a resource for moral and political thought, see her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy.

^[9] Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 164 n147.

^[10] The empirical, dramatic inadequacy of even the most fastidious adherence to law – secular or religious – in preventing complicity in mass-societal atrocity is a major theme in the work of Arendt. See for example Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 50.

^[11] There are those who worry that granting validity, let alone status as God’s word, to any mode of personal moral discernment may lead to tension with adherence to established halakhic norms. They are right to worry, but wrong to see this worry as an objection to granting validity or status as God’s word to personal moral discernment. First, if it is true that personal moral discernment is valid, then it is valid even if its validity leads to potential complications for the religious life. Second, the risk posed by prophecy in the form of personal moral discernment is posed by prophecy in any form: If we receive new normative information with divine authority which conflicts with divinely authoritative normative information received prior, we will have to judge which is more authoritative. And as Deuteronomy 13 attests, God not only sends us new normative information but may well employ prophecy to send us false information. But Jewish tradition has always claimed that no prophecy would ever achieve corroboration to the degree as Moses’, and so the Torah given to us through Moses will never be abrogated in practice. Third, if personal moral discernment recommends against following, but does not abrogate, the law, then one will have to either determine which normative order they ought to give ultimate priority to or else discern some form of negotiated settlement between the two. In the case of prophecy in tension with the law, the classic settlement comes through the concept of hora’at sha’ah [“temporary ruling”] that suspends but does not permanently supplant the law. More generally, where the prophet’s fire confronts the rabbi’s law, it is possible that the law can be appropriately qualified in application so as to heed the prophecy. In any given case, it is possible that such adjustment will not be possible to satisfaction, in which case the prophet will be called to continue his work even as the law remains as it is. In any case, one hopes that the prophet and rabbi are the same person. 

^[12] See Bernard Williams, Moral Luck (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 18.

^[13] I take this to be the import of Jeremiah 23, which I discuss here.

^[14] R. Grodzinski was the mashgiah ruhani of Slobodka in the early 20th century.

^[15] For a phenomenological reading of the biblical prophets as sympathetically sharing God’s concerns, see Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001).

^[16] For an application of this passage in support of the identification of human intellectual discernment with divine inspiration, see R. Eliyahu Meir Bloch’s introduction to Shiurei Da’at: Ha-Maharil Mi-Telz I.