... I have argued up to this point that R. Soloveitchik must be seen as a thoroughly modern figure. However, this does not imply that the choices he made as a thoroughly modern figure are all that might usually be called modern. A thoroughly modern figure can, in his quest for theological and existential self-definition, make some very traditionalist choices, and that R. Soloveitchik most assuredly did.
Perhaps the best way to see this is by reflecting on Walter Wurzburger’s paper in this issue. While Dr. Wurzburger identifies numerous instances in which R. Soloveitchik takes a conservative position in halakhic matters as evidence of his traditionalism, conservative halakha itself is not ipso facto traditionalist. Why shouldn’t the modernist too be mahmir where his reading of the sources or even his reading of the times leads to humra? Instead, I should like to focus on those three areas that R. Wurzburger itemizes as evidence of his modernity: (1) R. Soloveitchik’s endorsement of secular studies and the study of philosophy; (2) his espousal of Religious Zionism; (3) and his advocacy of intensive Jewish education for women.
There can be very little doubt, as R. Wurzburger maintains, that each of these areas reflects R. Soloveitchik’s modernity. Nevertheless, there are strong traditionalist elements in R. Soloveitchik”s views on each of these issues.
Consider first his programmatic advocacy of intensive Jewish education for women, including the study of Talmud. What theoretical framework does R. Soloveitchik use to justify this position, either halakhic or theological? We have no teshuva or theological essay from R. Soloveitchik which lays the conceptual groundwork for egalitarianism on this or related issues. Quite to the contrary. Theologically, R. Soloveitchik insists on role differentiation rather than egalitarianism. In his “A Tribute to the Rebbitzen of Talne,” R. Soloveitchik maintains that it is the father’s task to instill in his child “discipline of thought as well as . . . discipline of action”, whereas it is the mother’s task to reach the child emotionally and spiritually, to help him “feel the presence of God . . . to appreciate mitzvot and spiritual values, to enjoy the warmth of a dedicated life”5. Talmud study for women hardly emerges naturally from this conception of the female role.
A similar observation must be made concerning the second area Wurzburger cites as evidence of R. Soloveitchik’s modernity: his Religious Zionism. Without question, R. Soloveitchik here has made a radical break with Traditionalist Orthodoxy and with his own family, a point he makes with great poignancy in Hamesh Derarhot. Nevertheless, R. Soloveitchik’s zionism is of a clearly traditionalist stripe. As Wurzburger himself correctly notes, R. Soloveitchik justifies the State of Israel by conservative religious categories, and these include the amelioration of Jewish suffering after the Holocaust, the biblical command to conquer and settle the Land of Israel, and the promotion of Jewish pride. We have none of the potent eschatology implicit in R. Kook’s writings or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the reconceived religious challenges central to the thinking of David Hartman.
Finally, and I think most importantly, we come to the first area Wurzburger delineates: R. Soloveitchik’s openness to secular culture and philosophy. The significance of his position in this area, especially in light of his family heritage and the prevailing values of Traditionalist Orthodoxy, cannot be overstated. As I noted above, R. Soloveitchik does not simply appropriate a nifty bit of philosophical lore to explain the random midrash: his entire world-view was shaped by his encounter with secular culture, as his theological essays make readily apparent. Even where he specifically asserts that he is making use of philosophical ideas “le-saber et ha-ozen,” to explain halakhic man to the uninitiated reader, which of course is a thoroughly conservative aim, his systematic use of neo-Kantianism reflects more than a mere casual intellectual parlor trick. The ideas themselves re-orient the conception of halakhic man, and it seems likely that R. Soloveitchik himself intellectually identified to at least some extent with the doctrines he used. This is surely the case with “Lonely Man of Faith” and many of his other major essays. While R. Soloveitchik may have harnessed his secular learning in some instances to traditionalist aims, that learning itself fashioned his own theological world-view to a significant degree.
This said, the picture which emerges is still not altogether straightforward. While R. Soloveitchik assimilated secular culture to a remarkable degree, he did so in a highly selective manner. Perhaps the most striking lacuna in this regard is the almost complete absence of historical sensibility in his picture of Judaism. To confront secular culture but to ignore the findings of Wissenschaft scholarship, especially with respect to the influence of historical factors in both the development of texts and in the development of halakha, is nothing short of remarkable.
To assert, as Wurzburger does, that for R. Soloveitchik halakha follows its own logic and a priori categories, hardly solves the problem. No doubt R. Soloveitchik did believe that halakha follows its own logic and a priori categories. But even if this is true, what the halakhic text actually says — understood of course within the parameters of its own logic — surely depends upon getting the text right. And critical scholarship has much to say about precisely this question. This is not a matter of applying alien scientific categories to halakhic reasoning, but rather, in the case of lower criticism, following common sense in making sure the text one reads is correct, a methodological principle for when there is ample classic Jewish precedent, as is well known.
Moreover, by Wurzburger’s own testimony, R. Soloveitchik’s halakhic decisions were profoundly, and often apparently even self-consciously, influenced by his perception of the needs of the times, e.g., his opposition to announcing pages during hazarat hashatz; his advocacy of Talmud study for women; his approach to membership in the Synagogue Council of America; and his attitude towards celebrating Thanksgiving, to cite just several examples. As Wurzburger himself notes, “A posek is not a computer”, and subjective elements necessarily play a role in the halakhic decision-making process.
But to concede this is surely to concede too much, for if this is all true, then historical factors do indeed play a role in halakhic decision-making. The “needs of the times” from the perspective of 1965 amount to historical influences from the perspective of 2010.
Of course, it isn’t that R. Soloveitchik was ignorant of the positions of the biblical critics and Wissenschaft scholars. He was surely exposed to them during his student days in Berlin, while at the yeshiva headed by R. Hayyim Heller, and later at Yeshiva University. At least in the case of biblical criticism, he simply asserts that he was never troubled by it. His lengthy discussion of the a priori nature of halakha is at very best an argument by indirection only. He never in his published writings confronts head-on the challenges posed by history and Wissenschaft. The problem becomes even more striking when one considers that Wissenschaft spawned the major denominational and intellectual competitor to Orthodoxy, Conservative Judaism, and of course did much as well to nourish its other major competitor, Reform Judaism. Here surely we have challenges to Orthodoxy which cry out for a response.
Several factors may have played a role in R. Soloveitchik’s avoidance of the problem. First, there is his overwhelmingly philosophical orientation in which abstract ideas and logical categories rather than history and text criticism predominate. Second, he may have understood the grave dangers to the tradition which these disciplines posed, and without any clear-cut solution to the problems, which in any case would have fallen outside his personal and professional expertise, he may have felt it would be best simply not to take the problem on.
But according to this second explanation, what might R. Soloveitchik’s own rationale have been for denying the problem? This leads me to the third, and I think central, consideration. R. Soloveitchik portrays the simple man of faith, the “man-child” to use his felicitous formulation, as a religious ideal:
The great man whose intellect has been raised to a superior level through the study of Torah, gifted with well-developed, overflowing powers — depth, scope, sharpness — should not be viewed as totally adult… he remains the young and playful child, naive curiosity, natural enthusiasm, eagerness and spiritual restfulness have not abandoned him. Only the child with his simple faith and fiery enthusiasm can make the miraculous leap into the bosom of God.
In this depiction of the religious life, R. Soloveitchik was capturing his own faith with stunning accuracy. R. Soloveitchik secured for himself at least one tranquil island of faith amidst the torrent of existential and theological issues with which he mightily struggled and which occasioned his most creative and brilliant theological works. Halakhic Mind is a far more sophisticated statement with much the same thesis: that the life of religious faith is epistemically justifiable.
It must be stressed that R. Soloveitchik’s affirmation of the faith of the “man-child” is distinctively modern. It represents a “heretic,” autonomous and even creative choice in the face of intellectual pressure from those precincts of Berlin which he was unprepared to confront with the philosophical weapons he had at his disposal. Surely this should not be surprising. It seems altogether likely that most Modern Orthodox Jewish intellectuals have said to themselves at some point in their intellectual odyssey: “In the end, after all is said and done, with a solution or without, I just believe” Or, in the pungent Yiddish variant, “Fun a kashe shtarbt min nisht (One doesn’t die from a question.)” Given all the penetrating intellectual honesty of the Brisker dynasty to which R. Soloveitchik was heir, we find in his writings no lame excuses, no half-hearted attempts to white-wash a truly serious problem. We find instead a fideistic affirmation of faith, out of the secure corner of the man-child’s soul. How self-conscious was R. Soloveitchik in this regard? Did he choose to make a “heretic” faith affirmation in self-conscious response to the challenges of Wissenschaft? Unfortunately, this question is difficult to answer with any certainty. Either way, however, I wish to stress that his stance is in many ways a prototypic strategy in the Orthodox struggle with modernity. This in turn helps make R. Soloveitchik into a prototypic Modern Orthodox Jewish intellectual whose personal struggle with modernity became paradigmatic for the Modern Orthodox of his generation.
But here we may run into an objection. Isn’t R. Soloveitchik the Maimonidean figure of twentieth century Judaism, courageously rising to confront the full set of challenges that modernity poses, working out comprehensive solutions to the nevukhim, the perplexed of the generation?
In my judgment this is the myth of R. Soloveitchik, a myth which for good sociological reasons found enormous currency amongst many Modern Orthodox Jews, who required an authority figure to make sense of and to some degree justify their participation in modernity. Who better could serve this role than the Rav, brilliant talmid hakham, bearer of the august Soloveitchik name, devoted Brisker interpreter of the Rambam, and philosopher par excellence? I shall have more to say about R. Soloveitchik’s success in fulfilling this role shortly, but for now I want to stress that this Maimonidean image of R. Soloveitchik is a mistaken one. To see this, it would be instructive to start by comparing Maimonides’ response to the most serious challenge he faced in his world-view with R. Soloveitchik’s response to the challenge of history and Wissenschaft. I refer of course to the problem creation ex nihilo posed for Maimonides.
However one reads Maimonides’ true position on this subject, a question of continuing debate amongst Maimonides scholars, there can be very little doubt that he met the challenge head-on. Some thirty chapters of the Moreh focus in one way or another on this question, and Maimonides submits the dilemma to the must rigorous philosophical analysis. The absence of a similar discussion in R. Soloveitchik’s writings on a central divide between Orthodoxy and its rebellious children is altogether telling. And this is indicative of a much more fundamental difference. Maimonides took up the full range of challenges posed by the philosophy of his day, and wrote a comprehensive, if somewhat veiled treatise to serve as a guide to the perplexed of his day. S. R. Hirsch undertook much the same task for his own generation, although he carried out the project in a very anti-Maimonidean way. The key point I wish to make, however, is that we get no such comprehensive treatment of the challenges posed by modernity in the writings of R. Soloveitchik.
Quite apart from the really critical problem of Wissenschaft, we have no published essay by R. Soloveitchik on the question of whether engaging in secular studies is legitimate, on the very doctrine of synthesis so central to the self-understanding of Modern Orthodoxy, as his son-in-law R. Aharon Lichtenstein produced thirty years ago, and as Dr. Norman Lamm published more recently. We do not have full-fledged studies on the nature of authority and ta’amei ha-mitzvot, nor do we even have a fully-worked out philosophy of halakha. In addition, as I noted above, we have no full-fledged theological or halakhic study of the role of women and egalitarianism, as we don’t have a study in political philosophy on the role and function of the State of Israel, to cite just several more examples of issues which press hard in the self-understanding of Modern Orthodoxy.
The probable reason for these lacunae, I believe, is that R. Soloveitchik simply wasn’t interested in producing a comprehensive guide to the perplexed of his era. This is either because some of the issues weren’t dilemmas he was struggling with when he chose to pick up his pen and write, or because he may have believed he hadn’t anything “Soloveitchikean” to add to the discussion. By and large, I believe he wrote about matters (a) that touched to the core of his own personal struggles with Jewish self-definition in the modern era; and (b) about which he believed that with his unique blend of Brisk and Berlin he had much to contribute. As he explains in the beginning of the “Lonely Man of Faith,” he wrote in personal confession; if others benefit, then of course all the better. While there may be an element of coyness here, beneath the coyness lies a profound truth.
Tradition 29:1, 1994
