Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik

Early years

Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik zt"l, known to his talmidim simply as "the Rav", was born on 30 Shevat (February 27, 1903) in Pruzhany, then part of the Russian Empire and today in Belarus. He was the son of Rav Moshe Soloveitchik and the older brother of Rav Ahron Soloveichik.

The Soloveitchiks were a Lithuanian rabbinic dynasty whose line of Torah leaders reaches back about two centuries. His grandfather was Rav Chaim Soloveitchik. His great-grandfather, whose name he carried, was Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, the Beis HaLevi (1820–1892), and his uncle was the Brisker Rav, Rav Velvel (Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik). The Netziv and Rav Chaim of Volozhin also numbered among his forebears. On his mother's side he was a grandson of Rav Eliyahu Feinstein and Guta Feinstein, née Davidovitch, whose family descended from Rashi, the Maharshal, the Shelah and the Tosafos Yom Tov.

His parents recognized his remarkable mind, and he was taught in a Talmud Torah, in an elementary yeshiva and by private tutors. In 1922 he graduated from the Gymnasium (secondary school) in Dubno. In 1924 he enrolled at the Free Polish University in Warsaw and studied political science there for three terms. In 1926 he travelled to Berlin, where the Friedrich Wilhelm University accepted him.

In Berlin he studied philosophy, economics and Hebrew subjects, while keeping up an intensive schedule of Gemara learning. His own curriculum vitae named Professors Heinrich Maier, Max Dessoir, Eugen Mittwoch and Ludwig Bernhard among his teachers there, and he remained a lifelong student of neo-Kantian thought. His doctoral thesis dealt with the epistemology and metaphysics of the philosopher Hermann Cohen. He passed his oral examination on July 24, 1930, and asked for time to expand the thesis, receiving his doctorate on December 19, 1932.

During these years he became a close talmid of Rav Chaim Heller, who ran an institute in Berlin devoted to higher Jewish learning from an Orthodox standpoint. There he befriended Rav Yitzchok Hutner, later rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn, and the two shared the aim of joining Eastern European Torah scholarship with the modern Western world. Others he came to know included Professor Alexander Altmann, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, who headed the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary.

His wife, whom he married in 1931, was Tonya Lewit (1904–1967), a doctor of education who had studied at the University of Jena. Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski was the mesader kiddushin (officiant at the marriage) in Vilna.

Torah and leadership

He arrived in America in 1932 and made his home in Boston, where he liked to call himself "the Soloveitchik of Boston". In 1937 he founded the Maimonides School, among the first Hebrew day schools in that city. When its high school opened in the late 1940s, he introduced several changes to the curriculum, among them teaching Gemara to boys and girls together in the same classes. He took part in religious life across the Boston area. At times he supervised shechitah (kosher slaughter), and he gladly accepted invitations to speak on Jewish and religious philosophy at leading New England colleges and universities.

In 1941 he succeeded his father as head of the rabbinical school, RIETS, at Yeshiva University in New York. He taught there until illness stopped him in 1986. The position of rosh yeshiva was never formally recognized at the university, yet from his first day there until his passing he was regarded as its leading rosh yeshiva. He gave weekly shiurim to senior students and philosophy lectures to graduate students, and he was the first to hold the Leib Merkin chair in Talmud and Jewish Philosophy.

Over the years he ordained about two thousand rabbis, and his public lectures drew thousands from across the Jewish community. He also gave classes at other institutions in New York. He urged deeper textual Torah study for Jewish women and gave the first Gemara class at Stern College for Women. Rav Meir Kahane was among those deeply influenced by his lectures. Tens of thousands of Jews turned to him as an adviser and guide, as a master of Gemara and as a communal leader.

In his early years in America he was active in Agudath Israel of America and in Agudas HaRabbanim (the Union of Orthodox Rabbis), and he was a member of the original Moetzes Chachmei HaTorah in this country. He later withdrew from them and joined the Mizrachi Religious Zionists of America. He also became chairman of the Halachah Commission of the Rabbinical Council of America, together with Rav Chaim Heller and Dr. Samuel Belkin.

Rav Moshe Feinstein, a cousin of his, maintained a warm and deeply respectful relationship with him; before each Yom Tov, at the very least, the two wrote to each other or spoke. Rav Yitzchok Hutner called him a gadol. At a Chinuch Atzmai dinner the Rav introduced Rav Aharon Kotler, an occasion remembered as a sign of unity among Orthodox leaders.

His talmidim Rav Herschel Schacter, Rav Sholem Kowalsky, Rav Julius Berman, Rav Menachem Genack and Rav Fabian Schoenfeld related that the Rav and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson, first met as students in Berlin, often at the home of Rav Chaim Heller. The Rav told Rav Kowalsky that he admired the Rebbe greatly, and told Rav Schoenfeld that during their Berlin years the Rebbe never missed a single day of mikveh. In 1964 the Rav paid a visit of about two hours to the Rebbe while he was mourning the passing of his mother, and he visited again after the passing of the Rebbe's mother-in-law. In 1980, accompanied by Rav Schacter, he came to Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn for a celebration of thirty years of the Rebbe's leadership. The visit again lasted close to two hours, and afterward he told Rav Schacter that the Rebbe was a gaon, a great man and a leader of Klal Yisroel.

The Rav was a lifelong critic of the non-Orthodox movements and held that they were mistaken wherever they departed from halachah. He ruled that it is forbidden to daven in a shul without a separation between men and women and without a mechitza, a ruling that reached every Reform and many Conservative synagogues and the few Orthodox shuls adopting mixed seating. At the same time, in a 1954 responsum he held that working with non-Orthodox Jews on political and welfare matters is permitted and even obligatory, without recognizing their rabbis as rabbis in the Orthodox sense.

Agudath Yisroel's Council of Torah Sages took the opposite view, and in 1956 a group of roshei yeshiva issued a proclamation forbidding their alumni to join rabbinic organizations with Reform and Conservative rabbis. The Rav declined to sign, holding that problems threatening all of Judaism called for cooperation. Afterward the Synagogue Council of America, which closed in 1994, gained the Rabbinical Council of America and the Union of Orthodox Congregations as members. He also did not sign Rav Moshe Feinstein's proposed ban on interfaith dialogue, and published instead his essay Confrontation. In the 1950s he took part in private negotiations with the leaders of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly, among them Saul Lieberman, over a joint beis din for all of American Jewry. The effort did not succeed.

Teachings and seforim

Alongside his Gemara shiurim, the Rav developed a system of thought that joined the best of Torah scholarship with the best of Western learning. The name Torah Umadda ("Torah and secular wisdom") came to be attached to it, and it is the motto of Yeshiva University. Through his lectures, writings and rulings for the Modern Orthodox community, he built up that community's intellectual framework.

His best-known works outside Gemara are The Lonely Man of Faith and Halakhic Man, both of which place halachah at the center of Jewish thought. A shorter work, The Halakhic Mind, was written in 1944 and published forty years later without change. It is a four-part study of the connection between science and philosophy, and only in the fourth part does the author turn to what follows from it for halachah.

The Rav was the leading voice of politically engaged, pro-Zionist Modern Orthodoxy, and leaders from Israel sought his advice and blessing. It is told that Prime Minister Ben Gurion offered him the post of Chief Rabbi of Israel, and that he quietly declined. Although he openly and warmly supported the State, he visited Eretz Yisroel only once, in 1935, before the State was founded. Rav Yosef Blau has written that his Zionism was non-messianic, much like that of Rav Yitzchok Yaakov Reines. His father, Rav Moshe, had himself kept a close relationship with Mizrachi circles in Warsaw.

On Yom HaAtzmaut in 1956, the Rav gave a public address at Yeshiva University titled Kol Dodi Dofek ("The Voice of My Beloved Knocks"). It has become a classic of religious Zionist thought. He pointed to moments in the modern history of the Jewish people, and of the State of Israel, when Hashem's hand was plainly visible, and he called on American Orthodoxy to embrace the State and to commit its resources to building it.

His relatives in Yerushalayim, who had set up their own branch of the Brisk yeshiva, were staunch anti-Zionists. They differed with him sharply on Zionism but respected his greatness in Gemara, which few could challenge.

Later years and passing

Through the 1950s and 1960s, until his wife passed away in 1967, the Rav spent summers in Onset, Massachusetts, near Cape Cod, together with some of his talmidim, and they davened at Congregation Beth Israel. After 1967 he began giving additional public lectures in Boston during the summer months.

He suffered several periods of serious illness in his later years, including Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. The Rav passed away in Boston on 18 Nissan 5753 (April 9, 1993).

His daughter Tovah married Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, who later became rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion. His daughter Atarah married Rav Isadore Twersky, who led the Jewish studies department at Harvard University and was also the Talner Rebbe in Boston. His son, Rav Dr. Haym Soloveitchik, taught Jewish history at Yeshiva University as its University Professor. Among his siblings were Mrs. Anne Gerber (1915–2011), Mrs. Shulamith Meiselman (1912–2009), Dr. Samuel Soloveichik (1909–1967) and Rav Ahron Soloveichik (1917–2001).

Legacy

The Rav's talmidim went on to lead shuls, schools and communities around the world. Many became leaders of centrist Modern Orthodoxy, among them Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, Rav Norman Lamm, Rav Benjamin Blech and Rav Lawrence Kaplan. Others, such as Rav Moshe Meiselman, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Toras Moshe in Yerushalayim, identify his teachings with the Chareidi world. Most Modern Orthodox institutions today, Yeshiva University included, trace a connection to him.

In a eulogy, Rav Isadore Twersky described the Rav's approach this way: begin with a solid grounding in your own Jewish path, and then let philosophy, science and the humanities brighten your learning, sharpen your thinking and uncover the beauty of the mesorah. In his own hesped, Rav Norman Lamm asked that no one reduce the Rav to a lamdan with a touch of general culture, or to a thinker whose Torah scholarship was incidental, but that all accept him as a personality of great depth and breadth.

The Rav himself remarked that he had handed his talmidim Judaism's facts and laws, but had not managed to transmit to them what it feels like to live an authentic Jewish life.