The Last Rabbi

William Kolbrener

Description

Joseph Soloveitchik (1903–1993) was a major American Orthodox rabbi, Talmudist, philosopher, and theologian. In this new work, William Kolbrener takes on Soloveitchik's controversial legacy and shows how he was torn between the traditionalist demands of his European ancestors and the trajectory of his own radical and often pluralist philosophy. A portrait of this self-professed "lonely man of faith" reveals him to be a reluctant modern who responds to the catastrophic trauma of personal and historical loss by underwriting an idiosyncratic, highly conservative conception of law that is distinct from his Talmudic predecessors, and also paves the way for a return to tradition that hinges on the ethical embrace of multiplicity. As Kolbrener melds these contradictions, he presents Soloveitchik as a good deal more complicated and conflicted than others have suggested. The Last Rabbi affords new perspective on the thought of this major Jewish philosopher and his ideas on the nature of religious authority, knowledge, and pluralism.

Abbreviations of Works
Preface
Introduction: The Making of Joseph Soloveitchik and the Unmaking of Talmudic Tradition
Part I: Talmudic Tradition: Mourning
1. Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Mourning
2. Pluralism, Rabbinic Poetry and Dispute
Part II: Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik: Melancholy
Interlude: Primal Scene in Pruzhna
3. Love, Repentance, Sublimation
4. Joseph Soloveitchik, A Melancholy Modern
5. Beyond the Law: Repentance and Gendered Memory
6. From Interpretive Conquest to Antithetic Ethics
Conclusion: The Last Rabbi and Talmudic Irony
Notes
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religión
• Philosophy
• General officer
• Philosophy of religion
• Judaism
• Religion
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 19 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253022325
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Last
RABBI
NEW JEWISH PHILOSOPHY AND THOUGHT
Zachary J. Braiterman
The Last RABBI
Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic Tradition
WILLIAM KOLBRENER
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2016 by William Kolbrener
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kolbrener, William, author.
Title: The last Rabbi : Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic tradition / William Kolbrener.
Description: Bloomington and Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, [2016] | Series: New Jewish philosophy and thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016017125 | ISBN 9780253022240 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253022325 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Soloveitchik, Joseph Dov. | Rabbis-United States-Biography. | Jewish scholars-United States-Biography.
Classification: LCC BM755.S6144 K66 2016 | DDC 296.8/32092aB-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017125
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
For my children
The main thing is to learn Torah with joy and excitement.
-Joseph Soloveitchik, And from There Shall You Seek
Contents
Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction: The Making of Joseph Soloveitchik and the Unmaking of Talmudic Tradition
Part I. Talmudic Tradition: Mourning
1 Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Mourning
2 Pluralism, Rabbinic Poetry, and Dispute
Part II. Joseph Soloveitchik: Melancholy
Interlude: Primal Scene in Pruzhna
3 Love, Repentance, Sublimation
4 Joseph Soloveitchik: A Melancholy Modern
5 Beyond the Law: Repentance and Gendered Memory
6 From Interpretive Conquest to Antithetic Ethics
Conclusion: The Last Rabbi and Talmudic Irony
Notes
Index
Abbreviations
Abbreviations of Works by Joseph B. Soloveitchik
Brisker
Jeffrey Saks, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the Brisker Method, Tradition 33, no. 2 (1999): 50-60.
Catharsis
Catharsis, Tradition 17, no. 2 (1978): 38-54.
Confrontation
Confrontation, Tradition 6, no. 2 (1964): 5-29.
Family
Family Redeemed , ed. David Shatz and Joel B. Wolowelsky (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav 2000).
LMF
The Lonely Man of Faith (Northvale, NY: Jason Aronson, 1997).
Majesty
Majesty and Humility, Tradition 17, no. 2 (1978): 25-37.
Man
Halakhic Man , trans. Lawrence Kaplan (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983).
Mind
The Halakhic Mind (New York: Free Press, 1986).
Repentance
On Repentance: The Thought and Oral Discourses of Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik , ed. Pinchas Peli (Jerusalem: Oroth, 1980).
Sacred
Sacred and Profane, Jewish Thought 3, no. 1 (1993): 55-82.
Seek
And from There Shall You Seek , ed. David Shatz and Reuven Ziegler (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 2008).
Shiurim
Shiurim Le-Zecher Avi Mori (Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 2002), 2 vols.
Talne
A Tribute to the Rebbetzin of Talne, Tradition 17, no. 2 (1978): 73-83.
Vision
Vision and Leadership , ed. David Shatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky, and Reuven Ziegler (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 2012).
Voice
Kol Dodi Dofek : It Is the Voice of My Beloved That Knocketh, in Theological and Halakhic Reflections on the Holocaust , ed. Bernhard H. Rosenberg (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1992), 51-117.
Whirl
Out of the Whirlwind: Essays on Mourning, Suffering and the Human Condition , ed. David Shatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky, and Reuven Ziegler (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 2003).
Abbreviations of Other Works
Action
Jonathan Lear, Therapeutic Action (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
Desire
Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Loewald
Hans Loewald, The Essential Loewald , ed. Norman Quist (Hagerstown, MD: University Publishing Group, 2000).
Love
Jonathan Lear, Love and Its Place in Nature (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).
Midrash
David Stern, Midrash and Theory (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996).
Religion
Dov Schwartz, Religion or Halakha: The Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Leiden: Brill, 2007), vol. 1.
SE
Works by Sigmund Freud cited from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud , trans. James Strachey and Anna Freud (London, 1967-1974), 24 vols.
Sun
Julia Kristeva, Black Sun (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
Preface
That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one s own soul. It is the only civilized form of autobiography as it deals not with the events but with the thoughts of one s life the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind.
-Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist
T HIS BOOK BEGAN in disillusionment.
That all scholarship is personal-that academic inquiry is never strictly objective -informs the argument of this book on Joseph Soloveitchik, namely that what philosophers and historians of science call the constraints of subjectivity and objectivity are always mutually defining, and the insistence on objectivity a fussy remnant of an older scholarship. Not only is the scholarly born out of the personal, indeed, as Wilde writes, even the highest criticism is born out of the passions of the mind. The current work, which evolved from an earlier, in retrospect idealized, perspective on Soloveitchik, aspires to meet Wilde s criteria of high criticism while remaining a deeply personal work.
My first book, written nearly twenty years ago on the historiography of the English poet John Milton s critical reception, was informed by the disciplinary languages of early modern literary studies. But Milton, as I have told skeptical Israeli undergraduates in pedagogical efforts to license a critical encounter with the author of Paradise Lost , has never been a normative figure of authority for me; he is not, as I tell them, a Rebbe. By contrast, the subject of this book, Joseph Soloveitchik, the scion of the Brisk dynasty of Talmudists, did occupy a version of that role for me, as he was for many others, though unlike them, I met him only through his writings. Prefacing the current work with an acknowledgment of a personal engagement with Soloveitchik serves neither as disclaimer nor confession but a disclosure of the personal investments that brought me to writing The Last Rabbi .
Indeed, my engagement with Soloveitchik s work over several decades reflects more than a conventional scholarly commitment. The composition of this book over those years spanned significant changes in my life, including a turn to Jewish observance and study in yeshiva, both enabled through institutions administered by talmidim (students) of Soloveitchik. That I refer to the subject of this book as Soloveitchik and not the Rav, or even R. Soloveitchik, serves a double purpose, to relate to him from a more critical scholarly perspective, but also to accord him the status he deserves as a figure within the intellectual history of the past century, a religious philosopher of consequence, independent of his rabbinic title and the status derived from the institutional frameworks in which he thrived.
The Last Rabbi remains a work of reverence for a teacher, but also registers a distancing from the idealism that my earlier investment in Soloveitchik entailed. Consequently, the current work embraces what may seem like contradictory approaches, for it situates itself internally to the discourses and teachings of Soloveitchik and the traditions he represents while also looking at those discourses from an external perspective, employing the critical methodologies of literary theory, psychoanalysis, and gender studies. That Soloveitchik scholarship, much of it written by his students, has often embraced the former perspective may be a function of both Soloveitchik s brilliance, as well as his charismatic appeal as rabbi and teacher. This work s primary arguments, however, originate from a perspective that is external to that framework and its language, entailing for me bringing different, interdisciplinary methodological assumptions to reencounter works I had first met from within the hermeneutic circle. The Last Rabbi thus employs not only a principle of interpretive charity, reflecting an earlier engagement with the Rav, even if then mediated by the academy s literary critical discourses, but also a critical hermeneutics, and even psychoanalytic suspicion, in relation to Soloveitchik s work as philosopher and theologian.
What has transformed into the current work had unexpected beginnings in my earlier study of Milton and seventeenth-century England. While in graduate school at Columbia University in the 1980s, I focused on the contested nature of authority in the seventeenth century-the ways in which the hermeneutics of Protestant Reformers at once licensed interpretive freedom while at the same time threatening the cohesiveness of community, leading England, in the end, to civil war. The literary careers of Milton, John Donne, and Ben Jonson might all be described as revolving around this tension. Milton s Areopagitica , a tract written in 1644 against state licensing of publications, was the most optimistic, even utopian, representation of pluralism-of a possible balance between the claims of individual and community. My book on Milton represents a meditation