Noted Jewish historian Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter offers an exploration of the subtle philosophy and complex personality of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik—the 20th century’s most important Orthodox Jewish thinker.
Use our in-depth study guide for stimulating discussion questions, key moments in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s life, and recommendations for further study.
Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter is University Professor of Jewish History and Jewish Thought and senior scholar at the Center for the Jewish Future at Yeshiva University. From 2000 to 2005, he served as dean of the Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Institute in Boston, and from 1981 to 2000, he served as rabbi of The Jewish Center in Manhattan. Rabbi Schacter holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages from Harvard University and received rabbinic ordination from Mesivta Torah Vodaath. He was a teaching fellow at Harvard from 1978-1980, director of Yeshiva University’s Torah u-Madda Project from 1986-1997, and an adjunct assistant professor at the Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University from 1993-1999. He is the co-author of A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism (with Jeffrey Gurock, 1996) and the editor of Jewish Tradition and the Nontraditional Jew (1992) and Judaism’s Encounter with other Cultures: Rejection or Integration? (1997). He has published numerous articles and reviews in Hebrew and English and is the founding editor of the Torah u-Madda Journal.
In this opening lecture, Rabbi Schacter outlines the life of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, from his birth in the town of Pruzhana, to his time at the University of Berlin, to his long and fruitful career in the United States.
For Rabbi Soloveitchik, a life lived in obedience to Jewish law can be transformative, inspiring, and even romantic.
Rabbi Soloveitchik was a staunch adherent of Jewish law who was also engaged in learning from and contributing to the general culture.
How is prayer even possible? And what does it have to do with repentance?
Through the lens of Jewish law, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s writings carefully probe the nature of man’s relationship to God as well as man’s relationship to those around him.
Though it represented a break with his family tradition, Rabbi Soloveitchik was a passionate religious Zionist.
Rabbi Soloveitchik believed that different faith communities could cooperate in certain non-religious spheres, but had to maintain absolute independence in theological and spiritual matters.
In this last lecture, Rabbi Schacter discusses key moments of decision in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s life as a communal leader as well as the enduring influence of Rabbi Soloveitchik on world Jewry.
Explore the life and philosophy of Modern Orthodoxy’s most important thinker, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.
