I am proud that this was cited in books discussing the Rav since it was published. Unfortunately, Kol Hamevaser's site has lost all of its articles, and so I am putting this here.
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Rabbi
Joseph B. Soloveitchik and the Problem of Biblical Criticism
Since the advent of the field of
Biblical criticism, Orthodox Jewish thinkers have generally dealt with with the
issues raised by higher Biblical criticism by either ignoring the field, or
rejecting it entirely. R. Abraham Isaac Kook, for example, though expansive in
his views on modernity, asked his close correspondence Moshe Seidel, a teacher
of Bible at YU’s RIETS, not to engage with Biblical criticism, because, he
said, it was filled with falsehood.[1]
R. Zvi Tau, a student of R. Kook’s son, Tzvi Yehudah, follows this trend by
writing, “One who does not believe in the Divine origin and sublimity of the
words, that they all flow from Divine truth that is infinite, absolute and
eternal – one who lacks this faith will not understand the holy Scriptures whatsoever.
All of his analyses, all of his investigations, all of his theories, and all of
his discoveries fall into the category of nonsense….”[2] Those
who did investigate and counter the assertions of Biblical critics include
Professor Umberto Cassuto in his “The Documentary Hypothesis”, and Rabbi David
Zvi Hoffmann in his, “The Main Arguments Against the Graf-Wellhausen
Hypothesis”. But generally, it can be said that though Modern Orthodox Judaism
accepts the conclusions of almost every other field of academia, there has been
very little movement theologically as regards to the important and growing
field of Biblical criticism.
In the late 1950’s, this entered
into the public eye when the “Jacobs Affair,” scandal erupted, which led to the
creation of the Masorti movement in England, and the complete rejection by the
Chief Rabbinate of the British Commonwealth of any acceptance of acceptance of
Biblical criticism. Rabbi Louis Jacobs, a teacher in Jews’ College in London, a
United Synagogue pulpit rabbi, and on the fast-track to becoming the Chief
Rabbi, published a book based on his group discussions within his synagogue on
Judaism in the modern world, titled, “We
Have Reason To Believe.” Much of the book can easily be agreed upon by any
Orthodox Jew, and his erudition in Jewish source material is evident on every
page. It was meant to meet the challenges of modernity to Judaism. But he
enters controversial waters when he writes, “While Judaism stands or falls on
the belief in revelation, there is no ‘official’ interpretation on the way in
which God spoke to man.” Though he believes, “there is nothing to deter the
faithful Jew from accepting the principle of textual criticism,” he admits that
“to talk about ‘reconciling’ the Maimonidean idea and the Documentary Hypothesis…
is futile, for you cannot reconcile two contradictory theories. But to say this
is not to preclude the possibility of a synthesis between the old knowledge and
the new knowledge.”
Jacobs was set to succeed Rabbi
Isidore Epstein at the Jews’ College, (which
itself was often a stepping stone for the position of Chief Rabbi) and
was officially invited to do so in 1961. When the then-Chief Rabbi and
President of the Jew’s College, R. Israel Brodie, caught wind of this, he
blocked Jacob’s advancement, because of Jacob's views in “We Have Reason to Believe.” When in 1962 Jacobs sought to return to
his pulpit at the New West End Synagogue, Brodie blocked this as well, forcing
him and his followers to create a synagogue separate from the Chief Rabbinate.
In doing so, it created a schism that has existed to this day. It scandalized
the UK Jewish community and became known as “The Jacobs Affair.”
This issue
is as pertinent today as it was 50 years ago. Recently, certain Open Orthodox
ordinated members have expressed their agreement with some of the conclusions
of Biblical criticism, and this has caused some push-back to the movement.
Interestingly, Rabbi Avi Weiss, who started the movement, stated that belief in
the Torah’s divine origin is one of the factors that distinguishes Open
Orthodoxy from Conservative Judaism.[3]
However, R. Zev Farber, a prominent member of Open Orthodoxy and on many of its
boards, in starting TheTorah.com (which incorporates Biblical criticism into
its articles and resources), has proven this not to be so at least for some.
This has garnered controversy not only within right-wing Orthodoxy today, but
even within Open Orthodoxy itself.
It thus
seems strange that Modern Orthodox thinkers, who belong to a type of Orthodoxy
that generally accepts modern scientific and philosophic conclusions, and
idealizes that knowledge as part of its spirituality, have generally not
grappled with this very pressing problem in a serious way. Indeed, some have
taken to task Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (“the Rav”), the leader of Modern
Orthodox Jewry in American in the last generation, for not engaging with this
topic in his writings. Tamar Ross, sounding frustrated, writes, (referring to
Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own statement on the issue, to be discussed below) “In the
end, we must admit that R. Soloveitchik offers us no real explanation for his
lack of perplexity regarding what he obviously recognizes as a dilemma and
‘impossibility’.”[4]
In an article published in Modern Judaism,
Moshe Sokol along with David Singer discuss the Rav’s aversion to the
historical-critical method, concluding that the Rav should not be considered
truly “Modern Orthodox,” citing this stance of his as evidence that he selected
what appealed to him in secular knowledge and eschewed the rest.[5]
As they put it quite boldly, regarding the question many would have on their
interpretation, “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.”[6]
Sokol, for his part, suggests
several reasons why he thinks the Rav did not deal with these issues.[7]
Firstly, he suggests, the Rav had a philosophical orientation that did not care
overly much about history and texts, but instead about abstract categories. I
would add that R. Soloveitchik states this explicitly. As Alan Brill
transcribes, the Rav said the following in a speech in 1959 that would become the
precursor to his publishing Lonely Man of
Faith:
As you know, Bible critics already
pointed out these two accounts as differing. The Bible critics always claim two
sources. The Bible critics, they make one mistake: they don’t try to solve the
problem philosophically. [Umberto] Cassuto says they substituted source
criticism for philosophic ideas. I tell you this not because I am a rabbi and
am dedicated to this text, and not because of fundamentalism. I like to
understand the text. Even if you want to
accept the Bible critics… I am not interested in the source, [but] rather the
literary structure for the two accounts. The story is not something arbitrary.
The story of bringing Eve was intended to show that one account is not
sufficient. The two theses are
contradictory and Judaism accepts both: man created alone and together. There
are two theories about society: the individual and the communal, Robinson
Crusoe and the Hegel corporal state.[8]
Sokol’s second suggestion is that
the Rav understood all too well the potential problems inherent in the study
and discussion of Biblical criticism, and decided therefore not to confront it
at all. He suggests that this ties into what he believes is a third reason,
that the Rav sees the religious “man-child” as an ideal.
The adult is too smart. Utility is
his guiding-light. The experience of God is not a businesslike affair. Only the
child can breach the boundaries that segregate the finite from the infinite.
Only the child with his simple faith and fiery enthusiasm can make the
miraculous leap into the bosom of God.[9]
Sokol argues that the Rav believed that the “man-child”
doesn’t require rational proofs. Only the experience is important to him. To
Sokol, this explains why the Rav claims in Lonely Man of Faith that he has
“never even been troubled” by Biblical criticism. When one reads the Rav’s
words closely, one can see this:
I have never been seriously troubled
by the problem of the Biblical doctrine of creation vis-a-vis the scientific
story of evolution at both the cosmic and the organic levels, nor have I been
perturbed by the confrontation of the mechanistic interpretation of the human
mind with the Biblical spiritual concept of man. I have not been perplexed by
the impossibility of fitting the mystery of revelation into the framework of
historical empiricism. Moreover, I have not even been troubled by the theories
of Biblical criticism which contradict the very foundations upon which the
sanctity and integrity of the Scriptures rest. However, while theoretical oppositions
and dichotomies have never tormented my thoughts, I could not shake off the
disquieting feeling that the practical role of the man of faith within modern
society is a very difficult, indeed, a paradoxical one…[10]
Read in this way, the Rav was never troubled by problems of
history and academia (“I have never been seriously troubled…”) because he was
focused on the experience of existentialism (“I could not shake off the
disquieting feeling…”), which is not given to rational proofs one way or another.
To Sokol, the Rav idealized an avoidance and aversion to rationality in the God
experience, and therefore he did not attempt to resolve historical scholarship
when it came to the Bible. Indeed, I would add, the Rav implies this kind of
approach in “Emergence of Ethical Man,” where he writes:
[O]ne of the most annoying
scientific facts which the modern homo religiosus encounters and tries vainly
to harmonize with his belief is the so-called theory of evolution. In our daily
jargon, we call this antinomy “evolution versus creation.” The phrase does not
exactly reflect the crux of the controversy, for the question does not revolve
around divine creation and mechanistic evolution as such. We could find a
solution of some kind to this controversy. What in fact is theoretically
irreconcilable is the concept of man as the bearer of the divine image with the
equaling of man and animal-plant existences. In other words, the ontic autonomy
or heteronomy of man is the problem.[11]
As we will see, others have interpreted Sokol’s three
reasons for the Rav’s ignoring of the problem of Biblical criticism as
themselves answers to the issue, not an avoidance of it.
That
passage, early on in Lonely Man of Faith,
has become the most often quoted of the Rav on Biblical criticism, so arresting
perhaps because of its triggering of curiosity on part of the reader. R.
Jonathan Sacks calls that passage from Lonely Man of Faith “tantalising,
because nowhere in his writings does Soloveitchik explain the reason for his
lack of perplexity.”[12]
Curiously, Tamar Ross also calls this line “tantalizing,” writing that, “R.
Soloveitchik makes tantalizing references, in passing, to the disparity between
the traditional account of the ‘mystery of revelation’ and the ‘framework of
historical empiricism’, and to the ‘theories of Biblical criticism which
contradict the very foundations upon which the sanctity and integrity of the
Scriptures rest’.”[13]
Instead of taking the Rav at his word that he was simply disinterested in
Biblical criticism, the scholars we shall discuss understood there to be a
reason behind that feigned disinterest. It is almost as if this passage
represents a necessary piece of the puzzle to be solved by whichever idea one
takes up regarding the Rav’s relationship to Biblical criticism.
R. Shalom
Carmy, for example, claims that though “the Rav was avowedly untroubled by, and
manifestly not preoccupied with, the methods and conclusions” of Biblical
criticism and other academic disciplines, it should not “signify lack of
curiosity.”[14]
Carmy reports that even in the Rav’s old age, he would allude to issues raised
by Biblical critics. On the other hand, and paradoxically, says Carmy, R.
Soloveitchik was not nuanced when it came to acceptance of any of the
conclusions of academic Biblical scholarship, which was met with his adamant
refusal. Carmy quotes,[15]
on more than one occasion,[16]
the following letter of the Rav, in response to the possibility of the RCA’s
involvement in the 1953 JPS translation of the Bible:[17]
After all, we live in an age which
admires the expert and which expects him to tell how things are and how they
ought to be done. The expert, on the other hand, does not tolerate any
opposition; all we ought to do is listen to him and swallow his ideas. I am not
ready to swallow the ideas of the modern expert and scholar on our Tanakh.
I noticed in your letter that you
are a bit disturbed about the probability of being left out. Let me tell you that this attitude of fear is
responsible for many commissions and omissions, compromises and fallacies on
our part which have contributed greatly to the prevailing confusion within the
Jewish community and to the loss of our self-esteem, our experience of
ourselves as independent entities committed to a unique philosophy and way of
life.[18]
However,
others have proposed resolutions within the Rav’s thought that could be viewed
as directly or indirectly responding to Biblical criticism. In this essay, I
will outline several approaches, some suggested by others and some of my own
creation, regarding the Rav and Biblical criticism.
I.
The Man of Faith
Dov Schwartz suggests that the Rav’s
emphasis on the man of faith, as opposed to the man of nature, suggesting that
this notion explains the Rav’s approach to Biblical criticism. Though Sokol, as
we saw above, read the passage in Lonely Man of Faith quoted above as a reason
why the Rav didn’t try to discuss Biblical criticism at all, Schwartz sees it
as a philosophical outlook that is a response indeed to the issues of Biblical
criticism.
He is well aware of the concern that
biblical criticism had evoked in the nineteenth century among a considerable
number of Jewish thinkers. Nevertheless, he holds that the faith of the modern
individual is not at all troubled by this question... Soloveitchik, then,
removes the modern concept of “faith” from its traditional contexts and
problems.[19]
Why is the man of faith, with whom the Rav identifies
himself in the Lonely Man of Faith, not concerned with such problems? Because,
according to Schwartz, the Rav believes that:
“Majestic man” strives to control
reality and its forces in his benefit (“and subdue it” [Genesis 1:28]). For
this purpose, he creates an array of ideal structures—mathematical and
physical—that imitate reality, through which he indeed subdues it according to
his needs. In contrast, “the man of faith” “explores not the scientific
abstract universe but the irresistibly fascinating qualitative world where he
establishes an intimate relation with God.” Soloveitchik’s version of faith is
thus closely linked to an understanding of the foundations of concrete
existence—removed from ideal existence—and characterizes life as an
“existential experience.”
To Schwartz, the man of faith is concerned about the
existential experience and the constant searching for a solution to the
loneliness that pursues him through the God experience, which obtains redemption
through community and sacrifice. Schwartz notes that this approach makes the
man of faith impervious to the kind of issues raised by Biblical criticism. “A
faith of this type, allowing a dialogue with the other and with God, cannot be
subject to cognitive or pragmatic reduction.”
Another
approach exists within the “Man of Faith” paradigm. We noted earlier that Sokol
attributes the Rav’s idealized form of religious cognition, the “man-child,” as
one of the reasons why he did not discuss the issue of Biblical criticism.
Rational proofs are not needed to the man of faith. Indeed, the Rav has high
praise for Kierkegaard in a lengthy footnote to Lonely Man of Faith:
Does the loving bride in the embrace
of her beloved ask for proof that he is alive and real? Must the prayerful soul
clinging in passionate love ecstasy to her Beloved demonstrate that He
exists? So asked Soren Kierkegaard
sarcastically when told that Anselm of Canterbury, the father of the very
abstract and complex ontological proof, spent many days in prayer and
supplication that he be presented with rational evidence of the existence of
God.
Though this would seem, as Sokol
suggests, a non-answer to Biblical criticism, the Rav actually uses this
concept of non-rational, “apodictic,” truth when it comes to historicity and
the Bible in the same way. In his discussion early on in Abraham’s Journey,[20]
he discusses the problem presented by Bible critics, “Jew or gentile,” who
“cast serious doubt upon the authenticity of the narrative.” There, the Rav
presents two arguments to head off this issue. Firstly, new discoveries are
occurring constantly in archeology that could prove or buttress the biblical
report, creating a situation now where “skepticism regarding the the
biblico-historical account has, of late, lost much of its vigor and arrogance…
The fury of the historian - the passionate seeker of truth - against the
‘Abraham myth’ has abated.”[21]
Secondly, and more importantly for our discussion, the Rav states that “to us,
this problem” of historicity is “almost irrelevant.” He goes on, “We need no
evidence of the historical existence of our patriarch, just as there is no
necessity for clear-cut logical evidence concerning the reality of God.” The
Rav posits that just as God is axiomatic to any cognitive activity, so is
belief in the historical reality of Abraham. This is because,
As the architect and founder of our
nation, Abraham left such an indelible imprint upon our unfolding historic
destiny that he has been integrated into our historical consciousness; he is so
singular a motif of our historical emergence that the whole paradoxical,
complex experience of our charisma would be impossible if we denied the reality
of the Abraham-personality. The narrative about his life is almost, to use a
Kantian term, an apodictic truth, a constitutive category that activates our
great historical experience and lends it meaning and worth. If we were to deny
the truth of the Abraham story, our historic march would be a fathomless
mystery, an insensate, cruel, absurd occurrence that prosecutes no goal and
moves on toward nothingness, running down to its own doom. The great figure of
our patriarch is indispensable because it suggests a meaning and an end that
are within the grasp of historical realization. The axiological character of
our historical process can be determined only in relation to the figure of
Abraham. If Abraham were a myth, a legend, a beautiful but fantastic vision,
then we would be faced with a tragic hoax and the ridicule of the centuries and
millennia.
Presumably, this would apply to many other areas of the
Biblical account, including the forefathers and Moses, and therefore the
Bible’s revelatory event itself.
II. The Use of
Typological Categories
A similar
approach is taken by Rabbi Ronnie Ziegler (citing Rabbi Shalom Carmy),[22]
namely that the Rav employs differing assumptions as an exegete of the text of
the Bible, as opposed to the common assumptions employed by Bible critics. This
is exemplified in Lonely Man of Faith. After saying that he is uninterested in
the problems of Biblical criticism, the Rav uses a method of exegesis that
resolves a problem of textual scholarship - the two incongruent descriptions of
man’s creation and his purpose in the Garden of Eden. His resolution, that the
two narratives represent the multi-faceted and dialectical nature of man, can
be broadly characterized as based on a differing understanding of the authorial
intent of the Bible. The Bible contains dialectical approaches, which don’t
have to be resolved or harmonized in any way, but rather interpreted as such.
Carmy suggests that this represents the best kind of approach to Biblical
criticism is to deal with it obliquely by presenting “a compelling alternate
understanding.” The other way is to “respond to them point-by-point,” which is
problematic because “one is playing in their arena and is constantly on the
defensive.”
III. The Halakhic Man and Interpretation of Biblical
Narrative
In the first hundred pages of Halakhic Man, Part I, the Rav builds up
the personality of the ideal Jew, the Halakhic Man, who successfully harmonizes
the dialectic present in every human through the use of the Halakha. In Part
II, he describes Halakhic Man’s great capacity for creativity. He takes every
theoretical position and converts it to practical Halakha. The Rav describes
this man looking at Scripture and deriving Halakhic principles out of even the
most mundane narrative. He celebrates the Midrashic passage that speaks of the
narrative portions as even more important than the legal portions, and sees
practical Halakha even in the eschatological vision. Every line and letter of
Scripture “alludes to basic principles of Torah law.”[23] The
story of creation is neither mere dogma nor the revelation of metaphysical
mysteries, “but rather in order to teach practical
Halakha. The Scriptural portion of the creation narrative is a legal portion…
that man is obliged to engage in creation and the renewal of the cosmos.”
The Rav’s Halakhic Man may have been
able to respond to Biblical criticism through conversion of narrative into
Halakhic imperatives and principles. Scripture becomes ahistorical when viewed
as a legal textbook that is not bound in time. A Bible scholar’s objections
regarding the historical realities of the Bible’s creation are a non-sequitur
to the Halakhic Man, who ignores such theories in favor of his own worldview
and vision.
IV. The Halakhic Mind and Epistemological Pluralism
Rabbi
Jonathan Sacks, in several places, writes about what he sees as the Rav’s
concept of epistemological pluralism. In his book Crisis and Covenant, he uses this idea to answer the question of
the Rav’s response to Biblical criticism. Science and religion never require
synthesis because, “The scientist, the sociologist and the poet each bring
their different methodologies to bear on reality and as a result they see it in
different ways, through different concepts.”[24] Sacks
identifies this train of thought most explicitly in Halakhic Mind, in which the
Rav wrote that “the object reveals itself in manifold ways to the subject,” and
that “a certain telos corresponds to
each of these ontical manifestations.” Thus, the reason why Biblical criticism
and other fields of scholarship seem to conflict with religious belief is
because of a misapplication of categories. The scientific outlook is concerned
for causality, but the religionist’s faith is completely unconcerned with how
it came to be and is, in the Rav’s words, “aboriginal.” The religious faith in
revelation, explains Sacks, “resists explanation in terms of prior causes...The
fact that the biblical text, for example, contains apparent contradictions is
not the result of its having been written by many hands, but rather evidence
that it reflects and endorses conflicting dimensions of the human condition,
with which the religious personality has to struggle in ceaseless dialectic.”
Both Sacks,
and Walter Wurzburger, see this ceaseless dialectic in the Rav’s emphasis on
typological categories. If, in Lonely Man of Faith, Adam I and Adam II are
meant to be in constant dialectical tension, a similar situation occurs when
one is confronted with issues of Biblical criticism. Adam I recognizes the ways
of nature, archeology, and the scientific world. However, he also lives as a
man of faith, in a religious, God-conscious mode of thinking through which he
seeks to solve his existential loneliness. These will always be in tension, and
never be fully and actually resolved. Walter Wurzberger argues that the Rav
only accepted scientific conclusions outside of the religious experience: “for
the Rav the endorsement of scientific methods is strictly limited to the realm
of Adam I…causal explanations are irrelevant in the domain of Adam II, who can
overcome his existential loneliness only through the establishment of a
‘covenantal community,’ enabling him to relate to transcendence.”[25]
Both Sacks
and Wurzburger see the Rav’s use of Halakha as the response to the crisis found
in the tension between the two modes of thinking in the modern world. As
Wurzburger puts it, “According to R. Soloveitchik, scientific methods are
appropriate only for the explanation of natural phenomena but have no place in
the quest for the understanding of the normative and cognitive concepts of
halakha, which imposes its own a priori categories, which differ from those
appropriate in the realm of science. It is for this reason that the Rav
completely ignores Bible criticism…” Thus, there is no place for science within
the realm of the man of Halakha. This brings us to the next kind of answer.
V. The A Priori Torah And The Normative Halakha
To Norman Solomon, because the Rav
believes the Halakha to be an “a priori system,” thus “renders it immune to
history, just like geometry is unaffected by the historical circumstances of
its discovery.”[26]
The Rav’s words in Halakhic Man leave no doubt about this. “When halakhic man
approaches reality, he comes with his Torah, given to him from Sinai, in
hand...When Halakhic Man comes across a spring bubbling quietly, he already
possesses a fixed, a priori relationship with this real phenomenon: the complex
of laws regarding the halakhic construct of a spring.” Can this relate to the
problems of Biblical criticism? The Rav uses the phrase, a “Torah, given to him
from Sinai,” which stakes a historical claim, yet from the perspective of the
Halakhic Man. Solomon assumes that if Halakha is axiomatic to the Rav, the
historicity of the Torah would be as well, though this might be conflating the
two. However, we might combine this with what we saw in Abraham’s Journey above, that the reality of Abraham is a given,
axiological to the historical identity of the Jew. As Solomon puts it, the Rav
represents a change from Maimonides’ assertion of the historicity of the Torah,
because it has transformed from a “historical claim to a metaphysical,
unverifiable, and therefore unfalsifiable one.”
Almut Bruckstein contends that the
Rav was something of a neo-Kantian in his view of the halakha. She writes, “The
traditional formulation of the Halakha as an expression of the divine will is
interpreted in neo-Kantian terms as the objectification of a person's normative
relationship to the world within the context of propositions genuine to
Halakha… Consider then the following intriguing implication of JBS's claim that
halakhic reasoning is a cognitive act based upon a priori, autonomous, and
ideal categories. This claim by definition excludes any external empirical
factor (historical, social, psychological or otherwise) from being a
constituent of the halakhic process. Taking this proposition rigorously, we
will have to reject the idea that the Halakha had a historical beginning. Any
attempt to base the genesis of halakhic thinking upon empirical circumstances
would be a contradiction in terms - even if such an empirical claim were only
to apply to its inception at a single place and a single moment in time; it
would abrogate the a priori character of halakhic reason and turn it into an a
posteriori affair. The concepts "mattan
Torah" and “Moshe kibbel Torah
miSinai," are to be viewed then as halakhic constructs themselves,
rather than as historical constituents.”[27]
Interestingly, Bruckstein suggests
that according to the Rav, normative halakha renders the story of the Sinaitic
revelation true through “the ‘perpetuation’ and ‘reenactment’ of that moment of
Truth at any moment of a person's studying Torah.”[28]
VII. Subjective Truth Turned Objective Perspective
By combining several approaches,
there is the possibility that the Rav has a kind of “objective truth” that
starts with subjectivity of life. If halakha is the objectification of a
subjective data set, then others could have a different objectification using different
a priori facts. Thus, one can legitimize biblical criticism as a different
perspective, but not legitimate within one’s own system. This combines Sack’s
approach of epistemological pluralism, with Solomon’s a priori Torah, together
with Bruckstein’s normative halakha.
We find this used most in the Rav’s
essay on interfaith dialogue, “Confrontation.” Sokol and Singer consider
“Confrontation” as less modern in the Rav’s thinking, containing what they call
“vestiges of “Brisker” conservatism. But I see in “Confrontation” a
far-reaching framework that indicates that one can recognize that others
maintain a conceptual system that is at odds with one own, and their beliefs
are legitimate within their system, but not within one’s own. Thus, the reason
the Rav was against interfaith dialogue was that engagement in faith dialogue
is a philosophical error. Indeed, the Rav applies this even to talking to
people of one’s own faith community! “The great encounter between God and man
is a wholly personal private affair incomprehensible to the outsider - even to
a brother of the same faith community.”[29] Why
can’t you speak to a “brother of the same faith community”, a fellow Jew,
regarding faith? He says it is completely private and personal. What does this
mean? I believe he means to say that everyone carries a subjective view of the
world and their religious experience cannot be compared to others. Thus to
speak and be forced to use similar language to communicate, as if they can be
compared, is inappropriate and incorrect. Yet he cannot be calling another
Jew’s religious experience incorrect. So he must provide for them a legitimacy
outside of his own perspective and his own religious experience.
In fact, we find that the Rav
consistently apologizes for describing his own perspective on Jewish religious
experiences. In introduction to prayer he says that he does “not claim
universal validity for my conclusions.”[30] He
hopes only to allow people to gain insight from his “clear language”,
describing his individual experiences of prayer in such a way that it would
allow others to gain benefit. He does this too in Lonely Man of Faith, where he states, “Before I go any further, I
want to make the following reservation. Whatever I am about to say is to be
seen only as a modest attempt on the part of a man of faith to interpret his
spiritual perceptions and emotions in modern theologico-philosophical
categories. My interpretive gesture is completely subjective and lays no claim
to representing a definitive Halakhic philosophy.”[31] It
seems to me that this is one aspect of his perspectivist philosophy. Thus, I
believe, even among other Jews, it is impossible to relate the perspective of
one to another. Yet the Rav does not hold back from doing so in this sense,
because it can inform the other Jew about his own observance through the
delineation of clear categories. But what can the Jew do in this to help a
Christian, who bears no similarity in his conception, let’s say, to what prayer
is and its experience. Creating Jewish categories of prayer and typological
categories would not aid the Christian very much.
What we have seen from these various
approaches is the use of the vast corpus of the Rav’s writings to respond to
the challenge of Biblical criticism from the Rav’s perspective. There are
multiple avenues of understanding, much of which overlap, as one would expect
from such a varied array of sources and presentations. Is Sokol right in
asserting that the Rav completely ignored the problems of Biblical criticism
facing the modern Jew? As we have shown, many interpreters of the Rav disagree
with this accusation and understand the Rav as having at least laid a
foundation that would render the question irrelevant or as an existential
dialectic that constantly remains in tension. Instead of wondering why the Rav
would not be concerned with the issues of Biblical criticism, as he states in Lonely Man of Faith, we can see that the
groundwork already exists in his thought to deal with it and any other
empirical issue.
[1]
See Igrot HaRe’eiyah, Igeret 478
[2]
Rabbi Zvi Tau, Tzadik Be-emunato Yichye,
pp. 10, 19, quoted here
http://etzion.org.il/vbm/english/archive/bereishit/05bereishit.htm
[3]
Avi Weiss, “Open Orthodoxy! A Modern
Orthodox Rabbi’s Creed,” (Judaism, Fall/1997)
[4]
Tamar Ross, “Orthodoxy and the Challenge of Biblical Criticism,” Journal of
Modern Jewish Studies, 14:1 (2015)
[5]
David Singer, Moshe Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” Modern Judaism, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Oct.,
1982), 227-272.
[6]
Moshe Sokol, Exploring the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “Ger
ve-Toshav Anochi”, 134.
[7]
ibid. 132-133.
[8]
https://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/rav-soloveitchik-religious-definitions-of-man-and-his-social-institutions-1959-part-4-of-7/.
[9]
Shiurei Harav, 63-64.
[10]
Lonely Man of Faith, 7.
[11]
Emergence of Ethical Man, 4-5.
[12]
Jonathan Sacks, Crisis and Covenant: Jewish Thought After the Holocaust,
(Manchester University Press, 1992), 191.
[13]
Tamar Ross, “Orthodoxy And The Challenge Of Biblical Criticism,” 11
[14]
Shalom Carmy, “Of Eagle’s Flight and Snail’s Pace,” in Exploring the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, 113.
[15]
ibid., 114.
[16]
Shalom Carmy, “A Room With A View, But A Room Of Our Own,” Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations,
(Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 27; idem, “The Human Factor: A Plea for
Second Opinions,” Mind, Body, and
Judaism: The Interaction of Jewish Law with Psychology and Biology, (KTAV
Publishing House, Inc., 2004), 99.
[17]
Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, Netanʼel Helfgoṭ, Community,
Covenant, and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications of Rabbi Joseph
B. Soloveitchik, (KTAV Publishing House, Inc., Jan 1, 2005), 110.
[18]
Seth Farber, however, argues that this had more to do with the Rav’s burgeoning
position on inter-denominational dialogue, which was becoming more restrictive
when it came to ideological issues. See Seth Farber, “Reproach, Recognition and
Respect: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Orthodoxy's Mid-Century Attitude
Toward Non-Orthodox Denominations,” American
Jewish History, Vol. 89, No. 2 (June 2001), 199.
[19]
Dov Schwartz, Faith at the Crossroads: A
Theological Profile of Religious Zionism (BRILL, Jan 1, 2002), 38-39.
[20]
Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Abraham's
Journey: Reflections on the Life of the Founding Patriarch, (KTAV
Publishing House, Inc., 2008) 2-4.
[21]
ibid, 2.
[22]
http://etzion.org.il/vbm/english/archive/rav/rav20b.htm.
[23]
Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man,
(Jewish Publication Society of America, 1984), 99-100.
[24]
Jonathan Sacks, Crisis and Covenant: Jewish Thought After the Holocaust,
(Manchester University Press, 1992), 191.
[25]
Walter Wurzburber, “Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik As Posek Of Post-modern
Orthodoxy,’ Exploring the Thought of
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik ( KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1997), 7.
[26]
Norman Solomon, Torah from Heaven: The
Reconstruction of Faith, (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012),
244-247.
[27]
Almut Bruckstein, Jewish Studies
Quarterly, Volume 5 (1998), 352, 359-360
[28]
Ibid 360, n. 68
[29]
Confrontation, 24
[30]
Worship of the Heart, 2
[31]
Tradition, 1965
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