Speaker 1: Greetings, friends, and welcome to the podcast of Jewish Ideas,
a Torah in motion production. I'm jj Kimbrey. Rabbi Joseph B.
Solivatik was a giant of twentieth century Jewish life. A
Titanic scholar, teacher, and community leader, Rabbis Salavajuk was a
leading light of Yeshiva University for several decades, ordering thousands
of rabbis and cementing his place as a foremost authority
within the modern Orthodox community. In addition to this, from
Solivatrick was also one of the great Jewish thinkers of
the twentieth century, having received a thorough training both in
classical Jewish texts and in modern European philosophy at the
University of Berlin. It was this remarkable combination of the
traditional and academic that lent solav Atrix's ideas a unique
sophistication second to none, and it is this intricate flexity
of thought that we hope to be exploring today with
us to discuss the writings and legacy of Rabbi solav
ajac Is Doctor Daniel Reinholds, the Dean and Professor of
jewsh Philosophy at the Bernard Revel Graduate School Jewish Studies
at Yeshima University. Professor Reinhold has written and edited numerous
works in the field of Jewish thoughts, most saliently nietzsche
sola Agic and Contemporary Jewish Thoughts, published by Cambridge University
Press in twenty and eighteen. It is a pleasure to
welcome Professor Reinholds the podcast of Jewish Ideas Today.
Speaker 2: Professor welcome, Thank you very much, j J. Pleasure to
be here.
Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent. So let us set the stage as I
want with perhaps a bit of a biographical overview, and
can you give us something of the life and times
of a slave ajac When where did he live, his associations,
his pursuits. Let's have a background for this figure.
Speaker 3: Sure, so it's his first It's worth noting that the
as if yet there's no critical biography of of Rosolovachik.
We know plenty about him, obviously as a significant public figure,
constantly wrote, spoke, taught plenty of material thumb short biographies
and articles relevant to his biography, and a good book
by Seth Farber on his work in Boston setting up
my Monody School.
Speaker 2: But yeah, a critical.
Speaker 3: Biography is a certainly something that would be extremely helpful.
But some basics. He's born in nineteen oh three in Prujan,
it's often said in Poland. Truth is, it's been in
many kind of ruled by many different authorities. Where the
Poland Russia it's right now, it's actually in Belarus. And
he was born into a significant rabbinical family of Lithuanian
nug dick persuasion, heavily associated with the Vologian Yeshiva, his
grandfather Raubrieim Soliachik in allgreates, this kind of method, risker
method that I'm sure will get to his father up
Moha Soliachik. He wasn't schooled in the sense that one
would be today. There were no high schools teaching you know,
Jewish studies in the morning and math and physics in
the afternoon. So was homeschooled, and that meant almost exclusively
in Jewish texts with Talmud intended to be at the
fore interestingly taught at home, initially by khasid a Rabbi
Barich Reisberg, who he speaks very fondly of in later
years and clearly had a lasting influence and the story
is told that Solihchik's mother had some concerns and asked
his grandfather reph him to you know, to I guess
examine sol of Hix's learning, and he was concerned that
there was rather too much hussi dut being taught and
not enough talmod. So instead, sola Hchik's father upmost of
sol of Hix took on the educational burden. He received
some general education at home. At the very least he
imbibed a lifelong love of literature from his mother, But
formally speaking, his first real secular qualifications are He gets
a diploma from the Liberal Arts Gymnasium of Dubno in
nineteen twenty two, though we don't actually know if he
formally attended classes there, and then he did a few
semesters studying political science in at the Free Polish University
in nineteen twenty four, but most significantly, of course, in
nineteen twenty six he atturns the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin,
where he pursues a PhD on the philosophy of harramank
Cohen and on the philosophy the pure philosophy if you like.
Speaker 2: Of HERMANK. Cohen not on hermank Coin's Jewish works.
Speaker 3: He gains that in nineteen thirty two, having got married
to the previous year in nine thirty one to his
wife Tanya, who herself was the holder of PhD in education,
and then in nineteen thirty two, following this, he joins
the family in the United States. His father had moved
there in ninety twenty nine to be the Russiashiva at
rietz At Yeshiva ro Yitzak Elhanan the why of Yu
the Yeshiva Yushiba University, So he joins the family there
and shortly thereafter becomes a I suppose Chief Rabbi Boston
Education and Kashrut a major fosi FokI for him at
that time. He sets up in the Mimonod school in
nineteen thirty seven, which is you know, somewhat revolutionary at
co ed school teaching.
Speaker 2: Talmud co ed that.
Speaker 3: He's considered for position of Chief Rabbi tel Aviv in
nineteen thirty five gives a sure at Raf Kook's Yeshiva
americasar Raf that impresses rough Cook. Apparently, he was also
invited in the sixties to become Chief Rabbi of Israel,
but he decides not to anyway. Nineteen forty one, his
father dies and he takes over as head of Rietz
and day to day from nineteen forty one through to
nineteen eighty five, that's what he were. He was a
mugged sheer right. He taught talmud day to day, ordaining
influencing countless rabbis, but at the same time also teaches
at the Bernardo Revel Graduate School as a professor of
Jewish philosophy through the forties and fifties. We're getting now
some student class notes beginning to appear over the past
decade or so, and at that point begins to compose
the theological philosophical works that are the reason we're probably
talking about him today in terms of at least his
fame beyond the modern Orthodox world, though the current extent
of his significance and influence, I suppose as a thinker
took some time to build a colleague of mind.
Speaker 2: David Schatz wrote a piece.
Speaker 3: Where he noted this was already a decade ago, but
he said of three hundred and eighty three English or
Hebrew pieces that would show up as studying Rabbi Soliachik
in Rumby. Only seventy six of them are before he
died in nineteen ninety three, so things really coalesced, if
you like, after his death in terms of him becoming
a major, a significant figure of academic study of his philosophy.
But anyway, so publishes his first major work, kalak man
Isha Halacha in a Hebrew journal in nineteen forty four.
It's translated by Presor Lawrence Captain in nineteen eighty three.
Again that's significant in bringing him to the wider world.
But then other than you know, the odd articles, an
article in nineteen forty five Sacred and Profane as it's
translated College Bohol. It wasn't until the nineteen sixties we
see a series of articles appearing in the journal tradition
there was apparently a tradition of family reticence to publish,
so there isn't, you know, a copious amount of publications.
But in the sixties we start to see we see Confrontation,
a very significant article dealing with interfaith dialogue in nineteen
sixty four, and probably most significantly nineteen sixty five, Lonely
Man of Faith, particularly for me by the way, that's
the work that got me into Jewish philosophy. And then
there's a volume of Tradition consisting of articles by Russell
Regi nineteen seventy eight, Uvi kashtem Michamp published in Hebrew
nineteen seventy nine. Other major essay, though that was begun
in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2: So he seems to.
Speaker 3: Have had works that he was working on for a
long period before they saw the light of day. Notably
among those is his book Balachic Mind, which was only
published in nineteen eighty six, though written initially in the
nineteen forties. So yeah, those that I suppose, of the
major works, there's only of a shift in the nineteen sixties,
people feel where his work becomes more existential. It's kind
of more of an emotional sort of existential peace to it,
and he ultimately he kind of retires from public life
in nineteen eighty six and he dies in nineteen ninety three.
But yeah, kind of potted biography, I guess that will No,
that's that's very good.
Speaker 1: That was the improblem because it covered both his life
and his works. So as you mentioned that he had
I would think it's fair to say two very major
educational formative influences, right, which may be characterized it as
brisk and Berlin. Those are the two schools within which
he gained a very large amount of his uh I
was world view, and then you know of his general
educational orientation. So can you take us a little bit
through those? I mean, what defined these two schools of
intellectual activity and to what extent in what ways do
they shape his future ideas? Right?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean the Brisker method, or you know, the
analytic method is a mode of toll would study inaugurated
by his grandfather at him, and it's revolutionary and it
doesn't simply take the Talmud as a text to be
studied at face value in order to understand just the
flow of the argument, the back and the forth that
shutler for tari as we say, of the legal or
for that matter, non legal discussions, often with a focus
on practical conclusions instead.
Speaker 2: Underlying the Brisker.
Speaker 3: Method is the idea that the time is a self
contained theoretical structure, a system worthy of study for its
own sake, independent of its connection to practical reality. And
what the method does is analyze the text conceptually, searching
for underlying principles or concepts that stand behind the material
being analyzed, systematize it much like in sort of h
it's own view, much like a scientist would conceptualize, you know,
his or her data in consons and principles in order
to categorize the data of the natural world. My monodes
is Mishnertra becomes a key text here where you know,
the legal conclusions are the outer expression of a conceptual
or conceptualization of the law. And that's very very important
to Rasolovchik, this idea, that halarcha, and for the moment,
let's take that narrowly just to mean Jewish law is
the expression of some conceptual system, you know, for Rasolovacik
in his work Halachic Mind, that work is sort of
an argument that concludes with this very famous statement that
there is only a single source from which a Jewish
philosophical Weltenschung worldview could emerge, and that's the Halarja. And
that's that's revolutionary if you think about let's take my
monodies for my monodyes, the repository of Jewish philosophy are
mab Rati, Mars America var the opening chapters of Genesis
and Chapter one Ofzekiel. Not legal texts, right alait legal
texts are not a source of philosophy. It's more the
argadic material. But for Urslochik, halacha itself, the legal text,
the legal disputes, that is a source for Jewish philosophy,
and that's pretty revolutionary actually, and grows out of this
belief of the Briskers that there is this conceptual system
behind the halachic system. What's different for Oslavchik is that
he's going to dig further down, shall we say so,
Just to take one very schematic example, when he talks
about repentance and he finds a contradiction between two halarchic
statements that my monodies makes about repentance, he analyzes that
by seeing them reflecting two different categories of repentance that
he calls atonement or cuparah and purification or Taharah. But
then philosophically he'll go beyond that because he'll start to
look at what theories of time lie behind these concepts
of purification and atonement. So you're digging down kind of
further and further into the background theories and these background
theories that lie behind even the harlachic content. That's really
important to Slovachk and grows out of this kind of
his brisker background.
Speaker 2: Shall we say, in.
Speaker 3: Terms of Berlin, if you want to, if you want
me to go on to kind of straight onto that.
So as we said, he's a PhD. On the philosoph
of Haromon Cohen, I mean, for our purposes, obviously, so
Haran Cohen was the founder of a school of Neo
Kantian thought. I suppose, for our purposes what some of
the most important elements of that that Rasslovata would take
forward through his career. I would say number one is
a fascination with and commitment to science and scientific method.
He writes that in Alaric Man he says that religion
should ally itself with the forces of clear logical cognition,
as uniquely exemplified in the scientific method. Now, exactly what
scientific method means for him is actually an interesting question.
But one of the key things it means for him
is and this again takes us back to the kind
of Alaric basis of his philosophy. It means basing it
on data. Right, you can't pluck philosophy out of thin air.
Jewish philosophy can't be done by just saying, well, I
think and just coming up with something. It has to
be based on data. That's key in terms of if
you're like scientific method. He goes beyond that in terms
of his commitment to science. So, for example, the creation
narrative as he understands it, he states he is more
akin to modern science than it is to the way
that Christianity, or indeed many Jewish thinkers as far as
he's concerned in the past, have read it. You know,
he sees this as continuous human beings emerge through a
natural process, rather than splitting the story into with some
kind of miraculous change that brings about human beings. He's
very naturalistic in the way he approaches his philosophy. Obviously
not a pure naturalist. He believes in God, so that
is far from natural.
Speaker 2: But you know, he has.
Speaker 3: Little time for strange metaphysical properties. His understanding of holiness.
For example, it's not some strange, ghostly other worldly property.
It's more institutional to do with midsvot right, So you
do something and that is a market of holiness. It's
not some strange property that hovers. So you know, those
are key from his Berlin Neocantianism, but also I think
key and emerging out of the tradition of idealism, if
something else that is particularly modern. If you like about
his thought, I'll try and put this as simply as
non technically as I can. But idealism, philosophically speaking, philosophy
is traditionally seen as a search for objective truth. Right,
there's a reality out there. It exists, ready made as
it is, independently of human beings. If I disappear, the
world still out there the same, and knowledge is a
matter of us letting all that flood in. So to speak, Right,
we record or we photograph the reality out there. Right,
it's already made world. We open our eyes. It hits us,
we know it. But they're all manner of problems with
that picture. To give you again a non technical analogy,
think about a newborn baby. So a newborn baby has
presumably all sorts of experience, right, things hitting their retina,
but it's a complete mess. It's a jumble. They can't
actually category, they can't even see shapes or colors. They
don't have those concepts. So the way the world, if
you like, hits us isn't in and of itself necessarily
organized until we formed the concepts to organize it. Thus,
and the idea is the kind of the basic idealist
view would be that it is human cognitiate, right, human
beings that so to speak, organize that into a coherent experience.
It's not a given, it's not already made. So Herman
Cohen sees the world as we experience it as in
some way being constituted by our scientific thinking. We contribute
to the constitution of the experience that we have. It's
not just out there as it is and we simply
passively record it. And that's really important to Rosolovachic because
while that can't be the case in its entirety, there
are real things out there. There's God, there's right, there's
a world. But he does take on the idea that
the idea of some pure objective world as it is
is an illusion, is a chime error. He does think
our knowledge of the world is mediated by our conceptual schemes.
And why that's so important is because for him that
opens up the possibility of studying the Jewish way that
our experience is mediated. Right, How does Judaism understand the
concept of time or space or causality. That's Jewish philosophy.
That's what we can do. We can find the Jewish
perspective by mining our textual tradition halachic and otherwise. It's
not purely halak right, the whole textual tradition. But we
mine that data in order to understand key concepts of Judaism,
of Jewish thought. But the point being those aren't exclusive,
those aren't, so to speak, in competition with a scientific way.
Speaker 2: Of understanding it. It's different.
Speaker 3: If I'm in a laboratory, then you know, time is
something that moves on. I can't change the past. If
I'm doing repentance, then according to Rasslovac, there's a sense
in which I can.
Speaker 2: Change in the past.
Speaker 3: He wouldn't bring that concept of time to bear if
he were in a laboratory doing science. But when you're
doing Jewish so to speak, when you're trying to understand Judaism, well,
then there is a concept of time that you can
bring to bear. So this and this comes from this idealism, right,
the idea that there isn't a single ready made world
out there, that the world is mediated by conceptual schemes,
and there are multiple conceptual schemes that pick up on
different aspects of reality. One of them's a Jewish one,
and that's what he's interested in.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Okay, fine, So I want to ask you a
question wich you've partially answered already, but perhaps to expand
on it, which is looking at Sulovicik's writings as a whole.
I mean, obviously, as you say that, there are many
they are manifold, many of them will published after his death.
He was the most prolific posthumous writer, as has often
been said. But so question is, were there certain major issues,
major difficulties, things that bothered him that could be said
to be animating him across his writings? Were there certain
major not even major themes, but just issues that had
to be addressed and were perhaps addressed in different different
points and different methods, et cetera. So you know, are
there anything that could be readily identified?
Speaker 3: Let's say, Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, in part,
maybe it's worth beginning with the things that didn't bother him.
Some criticize him for this, but he famously says at
the beginning of a Lonely Man of faith, you know,
problems of biblical criticism, for examples, they've never bothered me.
I'm not interested, ye gind of, that's never really perturbed me. Also,
again in line with his Cantian influences.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: He's not really engaged in traditional metaphysics, so you know,
you will find it difficult to find him talking about
proofs for the existence of God, or scholastic discussions of
the nature of God, divine attributes, even you know, questions
about rewill versus omniscience, these kind of traditional questions. For
Russell of Achik, it seems that his central concern is
to do with how to make sense of faith in
the modern world? Right, how does faith speak to modern man?
We live in a world Again, this is in Lonely
Man of Faith, where he talks about, you know, how
can a man of faith who lives by this doctrine
that isn't particularly utilitarian, it's you know, it's not going
to help you conquer the world or make a million bucks?
What meaning does faith have in our contemporary society? And
particularly for him, of course, the Halacic life, which one
might think of as some outmotive, passive, anti modern, you know,
way of life. And he's not really doing this particularly apologetically.
He's not interested in proving the truth of Orthodox studism,
for example, right, it's not interested in justifying it. He
is interested in, if you like, displaying it and in
all its glory in terms of and I think he
thinks he has something very novel to say about it
that maybe hasn't been said before, certainly not from or
within the Orthodox world, whereas he's situated. So I think
it's really to do with trying to explicate the continuing
relevance of faith, you know, within modern society. Probably if
I were going to think about a theme that runs
through I think that might be it interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, fair enough. A question then, about method, which
has always struck me that something interesting, which is that,
in a few of his different works, loves to explore
an issue through archetypes. He sets up, I don't know
if there's a better way to say it, just sort
of idealized figures, gives them names, and proceeds to describe them,
all the while admitting that these figures don't really exists
in actuality. They're they're they're sort of I don't know,
figments of his you know, philosophically vibrant imagination. Let's say, so,
I want to ask on that, you know, typical examples
given an Adam one and Adam too from writing amount
of faith or halak man versus scientific man or whatever
it is. Firstly, where did this come from? This, this
construction of archetypes, and what is what was he seeking
to do through these archetypes, which let's say he couldn't
do through you know, other ways of writing philosophy, other
ways of writing Jewish thoughts. I mean, it's it's a
very strange, very very unusual appearance, let's say, within within
the history of Jewish thoughts. So you talked to us.
Speaker 2: About that, right, so.
Speaker 3: Well, Number one, this this method of typologies, right of
drawing these these ideal typologies, is from a kind of
early twentieth century thinker, Edward Spranger, who used this method.
Speaker 2: And clearly this is.
Speaker 3: Therefore infiltrated, you know, ra soli hi. It's consciousness such
that he feels that it is a useful method for
him to express, I guess, aspects of religious faith. And
this again comes back to his avoidance of metaphysics. Right,
so the fact that human understanding for him cannot, in
a kind of Cansen sense, reach beyond human experience. So
as to talk about, for example, you know, the nature
of God, the nature of the afterlife, I don't know, right,
so we have no data to work.
Speaker 2: On their, right.
Speaker 3: So instead his philosophy is far more phenomenological. It's much
more to do with trying to analyze the nature of
religious experience, the structure of the religious consciousness. So you know,
those are the kinds of things he's able to do
so in trying to talk about the nature of the
religious consciousness, talking about archetypal figures who maybe doing so
allows us to crystallize how Judaism or faith more generally
looks at certain values.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I think the typeological approach is a useful one, and
you know, it would be worth maybe us us digging
down a little deeper because you mentioned this notion of
these made up or you know, not these types not
necessarily being real beings. I think it's interesting because in
Lonely Man of Faith he seems to say he's talking
about a real life, real world problem. So Lonely Man
of Faith strikes me as a real type a man
not so much or I've maybe come to that a
little later. But if we let's take Lonely Man of
Faith as an example, and dig down a little bit
on Adam one and Adam two in order to really,
you know, answer the question. So drawn from the data
as ever right the opening chapters. In this case of
the ratio of Genesis, we have two different accounts of
the creation of man, and he identifies differences, the textual
differences in the accounts in order to speak of Adam
one and Adam two. So the first account, Adam one,
for example, not to go not to you know, go
through the entirety of the text. But Adam one is
famously create in the image of God, right, sell him,
melo him, and is charged with this mission to you know,
to dominate the earth, right to be threw from our
plight and kind of till the earth, if shure, right
to kind of conquer, to dominate. The second story, and
the second is created from the dust of the earth,
and far from being told to dominate, is told to
look after the loved chenre right to till it, to
keep it, to guard it, to look after it. So
you know, what does Solivahik do with these two accounts.
So he builds up, as you say, these archetypes. Adam one.
Adam one's the image of God. That's got to make
you feel pretty good. Image of God is a majestic type.
Speaker 2: More than that. What's God doing right now? What is
it to be in the image of God? Well, he's creating.
Speaker 3: So he reads this as speaking of a type who
is a creative type.
Speaker 2: To be in the image of God is to be
a creative.
Speaker 3: Type, and a creative type who's supposed to dominate, subdue
the earth, right, to in effect take control, to be
a scientist in effect?
Speaker 2: Right, what does science do?
Speaker 3: Not just a scientist, could be a politician, right, but
somebody who is effectively utilizing their intellectual creativity in order
to conquer nature. Right, This is Adam the first. So
Adam the first is this majestic, striding, one could almost
say arrogant type. Adam the second dust of the earth. Right,
it doesn't make you feel quite as powerful, right. And
he's not told to dominate, he's not told to subdue,
he's told to look after it. So Adam the Second
is this kind of humble type, a type who is
asking about the mysteries of creat rather than thinking about
how to dominate it. Who's concerned with the kind of
questions of why am I here? Right, is a lonely type.
Adam the first is created un vaba as a community,
already made community. Adam the second is lonely and has
to be you know, put to sleep and has to sacrifice,
so to speak, a part of himself in order to
form community. This is a very different type, much more
humble type, a type who can only find genuine community
by some type of sacrifice and covenantal commitment, not just
through getting together with people in laboratory with shared interests.
So you have these two very different types, the Adam
one the Adam two, and he draws on those types
in order to explicate this apparent contradiction in the biblical text.
But then you go further, which is, all right, why
are they both there? And that's the key question, and
there could be different answers. Many people might when I
teach this often for the first time, you know, and
you were to people who don't know the work, and
you would ask them what's going on here? They often
think that this is a progression. Well, Adam the first
clearly isn't a religious type, because he's some kind of
utilitarian scientist. Whereas Adam the second, oh, well, he's the
religious type. Who is, you know, imbued with God. God
breathes into Adam the second right in order to give
him life. But that's not what Sulivahik does with it
right for him. The whole point of presenting these two
is that every human being has within him both of
these characteristics. Sometimes you wake up in the morning feeling
like God Almighty, I'm the image of God and I'm grand.
Sometimes you're the dust of the earth. And it is
for soli Achick incredibly important that these are both cultivated.
If we're pure Adam one, then yes, we might well
turn into some kind of all controlling, totalitarian demon. If
we're only Adam two, we never get out of bed
in the morning. As in, both of these have to
be given expression, and what's key to our Slivachick is
that they can only come together intention. You can't just
dollop fifty percent of Adam one fifty percent of Adam two.
Speaker 2: Because they're contradictory.
Speaker 3: If you feel like you're in the image of God,
then humility isn't really getting a looking. If you're humble,
being in the image of God doesn't really get a
looking As in, these two poles are intension with each other.
And therefore what he's doing here is he's drawing these
ideal types like cognitive sorry Adam one Adam two. Nobody's
a pure Adam one or a pure Adam two, but
all of us have elements of both. And therefore what
he's doing here is trying to exhibit these characteristics and
then give us a kind of evaluative takeaway, which is
that according to the Torah. And therefore, at this point
this is the creation narrative applicable to all human beings effectively, right,
the life of faith is actually a life of conflict
where we're oscillating between these two poles, and that's what
we ought to be doing. We should be giving expression to.
Speaker 2: Both of them.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we should be the striding forward Adam one, but
at other times we have to admit defeat and be
Adam two. But being both of those is key. So
what he's done here is tried to through the use
of types. So I find it's significant about the faith experience,
something novel about most people think of faith as the
answer to all your problems, not for our sult of ature,
right that the night of faith has a kind of
tragic paradoxical existence, fighting this sort of tension within that's
the nature of the human personality. It is dialectical nature,
and he's using his types in order to draw out
that point.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a lot there. Let me let me
drill down on another architecrature you said you won once
image later, which, of course halakk Man, which is the
subject of his probably his most I don't know it's
his most read book, but it's certainly a book that
those who take Jews philosophy of the twentieth century seriously find,
as you know, perhaps his most philosophically dense work. There's also,
you know, a Jewish work. At the same time, What
is he trying to do there? It's a question that
actually it's a more difficult question to answer them would
otherwise appear and maybe people read the book, but you know,
he presents this archetype of the Halaric man. Is he
trying to say that everyone ought to strive to be?
That is that ideal that is being held up? Is
it simply a description of what a likely you know,
observant individual ought to be doing. And you know, because
that that is an ideal type that doesn't quite seem
to conform with how you've described the ideal types until now.
This is something something quite different and also seems to
have a certain element of perhaps autobiography within it. I mean,
is he trying to describe what he's doing himself? So
you know what is going on there? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So, yeah, it's interesting. So I do think that you're
right there is there is a distinction between the type
that is halaric man and the type that is lonely
man of faith. And I think many people maybe miss
this not so much kind of nowadays. I think, you know,
people have now cottoned onto this. But I think it's
the very first footnote where he talks about halaric man
as an ideal type. There is no such thing right
in reality. Now, now what does that mean and what
therefore is he doing? So the book is trying to
set up this type, this ideal type of halaric man. Again,
he does so by beginning with two other types who
in combination will become the halaric man, much like Adam
one Adam two together create the lonely man of faith.
I should have said, by the way, the lonely man
of faith is lonely because he's not at home in
either community. He's not at home as Adam one. He's
not at home as Adam too. When he's Adam one,
Adam two is calling him. When he's Adam to Adam
one is calling him. Therefore, he's always lonely, has a
kind of stasis a home. But to come back to
to palak Man the two types that he describes at
the beginning of the book. He starts with cognitive man,
you know, the scientific type. A cognitive man is concerned
with this world and concerned to understand the world in
terms of scientific law, which he creates based on the data.
There's a lot of overlap with Adam one. He's a creative,
intellectual type who manages two understand the world by subjecting
it to scientific analysis, understanding the principles and the laws
that underlie it. That's the cognitive man. The other type,
with which he begins with Homo religiosis, is a very
otherworldly type. The fact that the world works scientifically is
just the beginning of the mystery for him. He's intrigued
by the mystery of existence. It's all very well, but
why am I here? What's the point? Right sees this
world as a peal limitation of the true world that
transcends our reality and where holiness resides. Right, So the
very religious type. What's interesting about Alaric Man is that
Halachic Man for Arsillavat is a combination of the two,
though notably is much more cognitive man than homo religiosis.
Homo religiosis in some senses is the villain of the piece,
certainly in the second part of the book. Now, why
is halak Man so much cognitive man. Well, Halachic Man,
for him is somebody who treats the data of the
Halaric texts the same way that cognitive man treats data
of natural world, by subjecting it, by effectively doing the
brisker thing, right, by imposing a conceptual scheme, by being
a creative intellectual, a kind of scientist of the bait midrush,
so to speak, who you know creates these as Rossloh
speaks in terms of a priori concepts, right, So coming
up with the conceptual understanding of the material in order
to delight in this wonderful theoretical construct that is that
the fruits of tom would study in the brisker mode.
So he's very much an analogue to and this is
stated explicitly by Rassalovh the kind of mathematical scientist. That's
what the halachik man does. However, at the same time,
he's doing it with holy material, right, He's not doing
it with the natural world. He's doing it with the
texts both, you know, whether he's doing it with the
Talmudik texts or frankly, whether he's doing it by understanding
the world through a halachic prism. So there's the intellectual
piece of it that I just mentioned in terms of
understanding in the bake Madrash. There's also the way that
he views the natural world. Right, when he sees a sunset,
it's time to pray, as in understanding the world through
the prism of these so to speak, halachic spectacles. Right,
So this is halachic man. So he combines cognitive man
with the Homer religiosis by doing everything cognitive man does,
but with religious material rather than natural material. So the
point being that cognitive man is a this worldly type.
Religiosis is another worldly type. Halachic man is a deeply
this worldly type. His halachic man has no interest in
the in the next world, in other worlds, in transcending existence.
His interest is in this world and in enacting holiness
in this world. So he's almost exclusively a cognitive man.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 3: And it's obviously a key, but a religious cognitive man.
He's doing this with religious divine material.
Speaker 1: This is all very well, and this is an excellent description,
but it still leaves the reader. And this is the
curious thing about this book. It leaves the reader wonry
is describing what the reader ought to be doing?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Or? Yeah? So is this normative? Is a prescriptive? This
is what does things about this book? It goes This
is very detailed, almost psychoanalysis almost of what this what
this figure is halackic man? Where iss come from? And
what is he applying? And how does he do this?
And then sort of and as I said to what
it's a description of that like is this supposed to
be a lighthouse for how the religious individual in the
twentieth to twenty first century is supposed to behave or think?
Or is this a description of how people used to
make right? What is he recommending here? Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, it's a very good question. It's a very important question.
I guess my one word answer is no, right, he
is not describing any actual individual. And it's not prescriptive.
This is and this goes back to that initial point.
This is an ideal type. Now what does that mean here?
So again let me buy analogy. So this is an
ideal type. There is no such person. And I mean
the following. If people are listening to this, you who
you know, have no idea who I am. But they
now know that Daniel Einhold is a Jewish philosopher. Now
I'm also I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a
beetle maniac. Yeah right, so all kinds of things that
are true of me in my work life, I am
expressing my philosophic man elements, shall we say, But I'm
not and no one is the pure ideal philosophic man. Right,
everybody's got to go out by food, you know, budget,
pay the bills. We're fully fleshed out human beings. Halachic
man is if you like, siphoning off the theoretician of
the bait mid rush. And it's important he's not a rabbi,
right that the joke you make hell like man never
Puskin's a shila, right, He's not your pulpit Rabbi Hall
like man is the scientist in the Bait mid Rush.
He is the theoretician working in order to understand the
halarchic material and of course enacting it right, seeing the
world that way. But primarily what he's doing here is
building out into a whole personality, what is in truth
a part of certain people, like for example, his father
and grandfather were they halahik men? Well yeah, but they
also played with the grandchildren, so not all the time.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: That's the idea of being an ideal type. It's an
idealization of a segment. And what it's therefore talking about
is and talking about certain characteristics and values that accrue
to that endeavor of the religious type. Right, So when
somebody is in the Bake Midrush and they are doing that, right,
what he's doing in this work is trying to describe
that type in again in a somewhat revolutionary way. Most
people would see the rabbi in the Bake Midrush who
is studying Talmud as some you know, extremely passive, asthetic,
submissive type, not as some creative, this worldly intellectual as
portrayed by Rasolovacik. So on the one hand, he you know,
he is portraying a key element, let's say, of his
ancestors and of him, right, kind of. Obviously he did
a lot of this as well, and doing so in
a manner that highlights aspects of that experience that he
feels have been misunderstood, maybe ignored, maybe not always true, right,
kind of. Not everybody always did this with the Tolman
this is the Brisker revolution again. But that's what kind
of he's trying to do here, So a like man's
idealized type. But it allows us to crystallize aspects of
that element of our experience.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It's not everybody has to be a like man. It's
that those who are you know, involved in this endeavor.
These are the kinds of characteristics of it at its
best and how it expresses one's judaic faith.
Speaker 1: Interesting, I'd like to turn to an aspect of Ramislova
that you mentioned earlier, which is is sort of how
someone say existential turn, and that is present throughout much
of his writing, especially as you correctly said, his later writings,
and of course you wrote a book throwing him into
conversation with one of the great existentialists of the nineteenth century,
or at least someone who's you know, associated with the
existential school, let's say, which a free drug nature the
German philosopher of the late nineteenth century. And so let
me ask, I mean, firstly, what do you mean when
you say that rabbisolovtric had an existentialist turn? And secondly,
you know, to what extent could he be said to
be part of the broader world of extensions? Lastly, because
of course most of those who were, well at least okay,
I take that back, some of those associated with that
school were not exactly religious. I mean famously, certainly it
was not. Camu certainly was not, and sub suddenly was not.
So there's there's no shortage of those who you know,
who are not exactly the rabbinic type who existentially So
what do you mean when you say Rabisloc was a
religious extend existentialist? And how does that manifest itself in
his writings? Right?
Speaker 3: So, I mean you begin to see in the description
I gave even a lonely man of faith, where he's
talking about this this tragic existence, right, this conflicted existence.
So he's talking there about grappling with the kind of
existential problems rather than the kind of things he's talking
about in halahk Man where we're talking about you know,
creative a priori systems of Halaha. So you see a
shift immediately in just the very tenor of what's interesting
him and what he's putting out there. But in terms
of in terms of the you know Niature, I guess
as a proto existentialist the the way, well, let me
I guess begin autobiographically. I'd read solo Achik before I
did a philosophy degree, and in my third year doing philosophy,
I took a course on Nietzsche, expecting it to be
my little rebellion right, studying the great atheist for whom
God was dead, and you know, thinking that it would
be deeply challenging. Instead, what I found on reading Nietzsche
is that it all seemed pretty familiar to me, because
it seemed to be highly reminiscent of things i'd read
in rosolo Achik. And what I mean by that is
Nietzsche obviously an atheist, and Roslovchik has no part of that.
But Nietzsche's main critique of religion has little to do
with whether or not God exists, and much more to
do with his view that religion has as he puts it,
it debates, is the concept of man that, as far
as he's concerned, religion is a psychologically damaging, life denying
illusion that acts as a crutch for people too weak
to deal with the terrible truth, which is life is
really hard and inescapably. So, so what do we do
with that as a religious people? According to nietzsure, let's
wide a bad things happen to good people. Okay, Well,
religion answers because you're not good, right, You're a sinner,
and a main sort of source of your sin is
your very humanity. You're led by passions and desires. These
evil must be cut off. You should be an extreme asthetic.
In order to repent for that, we have to wallow
in an orgy of guilt and self torture. That's what
repentance is. And we attempt in doing this to bring
a chaotic world in some way under our control, at
least through being able to understand and blame it. Right,
Suffering isn't the problem. It's not having an explanation for
it that nietzschre thinks is really what bothers us. So
we create what for him as this illusory metaphysical crutch
for the weakening insipid encourages passivity, denial of this world
because everything good and great is in another world, you know,
pathological self hatred for how lousy we are given our humanity,
and for niatsure God is a gross answer to those questions. Right,
and more than that, kind of what he sees us
admiring as god like is actually an error, a crime
against life. As he puts it right, it denigrates this life. Now,
the point for me and my co author Michael J.
Speaker 2: Harris is that.
Speaker 3: We, in reading Solivachik, felt that actually Solivachi agreed with him,
which is not to say a obviously that he's an
atheist or he thought religion is an illusion for the week.
But the point is that Soliveachik is critical of precisely
the form of religion that nietzsure despises, and creates an
interpretation of Judaism that instead does all the thing nietzschre
likes right, go back to a lachk man. He like
man is a this worldly He has no interest in
transcendent worlds afterlife. That doesn't factor in to his religious
life whatsoever. He is a this worldly type. It's all
about what we do in the here and now right
repentance for our Solivacik famously he speaks a great length
about repentance, you know, throughout his life, and gave these
annual repentance she are in, many of which have since
kind of been published. Repentance for him is not about
self flagellation. It's not about torturing yourself for your irredeemable
sins that are in the past and can't be changed.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: He actually states explicitly in Halachic Man, it is impossible
to regret a pass that's already dead. Right, you can't
all make a decision concerning a future as yet unborn.
And he writes this himself. Therefore, Spinosa and Nietzsche, from
this perspective, did well to deride the idea of repentance.
He also hates their version of repentance. His point is,
Halachic repentance, the repentant Alakic man.
Speaker 2: Is nothing like that.
Speaker 3: It's actually a psychological transformation to do with creating a
new self. It is a creative affirmative, not a backwards
looking life denying practice. So Rasolovachik, and this is something
we find throughout his thought. We argue that he ultimately
agrees with Nietzsche if they are talking about the same
form of religion, the religion that Nietzscha is criticizing. So
does russll of Achik right, not as stridently He's willing
to allow people right, but it's absolutely not his version.
His version he makes, you know, very definite choices. Particularly again,
repentance is a very very good example, because he, you know,
actually is highly critical of the kind of traditional views
of repentance you find in medieval works like Sharrey, like
the Gates of Repentance of raben U Yana, extremely critical
and gives us instead this deeply life affirming version of
repentance more than that. And this is if you're looking
for a key theme of russal of Hik's work, you know,
this is certainly one of them. The idea that religion
is some kind of like we say, crutch for the
weak and insipid is anathema to Solivah. He famously believes
that religious consciousness that the most elevated form of it. Famously,
the fourth footnote of Halachic Man that everybody quotes, he
says that, you know, if you think that religion is
some oasis of calm that will solve all your problems.
That is a falseome pernicious view of religion. Instead, for him,
it's complex, it's tortuous, it's antinomic and antithetic, as he
famously says, it's an experience that is deeply challenging. It's
not an answer to all your questions. It's maybe a
way of living with them, coping. It's definitely not an answer.
And therefore, again what Soli refuses to do use religion
as a way of escaping the reality and denying the
terrible truth about existence. And that's exactly what Nietzsche's looking for.
He wants us to maintain that enigma of existence and
not try and cover it up with what he used
to call a kind of gaudy paint job, right that
just you know, pretends that eye it's all works out,
whether that working out is religious or even scientific.
Speaker 1: So, firstly, absolutely, that is a very curious and interesting
parallel between nature and Salivator. I would when I ask
existential I have to state the following, which is that
there's something odd and different about Ramo Salvation's risings, which
is that he seems in a certain way distinctly uncomfortable
in his own skin, if that's fair to say, No
one is. There's something about his life that is throwing
him off and making him, you know, discombobulated in the
deepest possible sense, and which is again just very, very
odd for an Orthodox Jewish thinker. I mean, most of them,
most of most of even address the internal displacement of
the personal psyche. So it's just not it's not a
category they're thinking, it's not a it's not what they
see as a legitimate, you know, avenue of inquiry. Whereas
for Amazon of ag he's numerous times and as you mentioned,
I think man only man a favor of the famous footnote,
et cetera. Many different places he seems to vent his
personal you know, a lack of at homewardness in this world,
you know, you know, for lack of better term. Yeah,
and again I just wonder, am I correct in thinking
of this is just exceedingly unusual. Where does he get
it from?
Speaker 3: I look, I think it is particularly in the Orthodox world.
I think it's very unusual. I think two things. By
the way, he knew this right, and he often spoke
about it. There's a wonderful remark that he makes at
the workswhile School of Social Work at Yeshua University in
nineteen seventy four. He says this, and he's talking about
his own students, and he's saying, look, they think I'm
wonderful when it comes to my lundus, right, so my
traditional learning in told they absolutely enthralled to me. But
he says, and well quote directly, when it comes to
my philosophical experiential viewpoint, I am somehow persona non grata.
My ideas are too radical for them. If they could
find another one, he goes on, it would be all right. However,
the substitutions are completely infantile. Right, this is a tremendous
problem in America, he goes on, and he puts extremism,
fanaticism down to that, to a lack of security, and yeah,
he says that just there's a religious immaturity, right. He
talks about kind of people of thirty and forty. They
act like children and experienced religion like children, even though
they're you know, very they're not stupid people. So he
is aware that his conception of faith as this much
more complex, you know, dialectical type of experience doesn't sit
comfortably with many of his co religious, co orthodox religionalist
religionists in particular, So he definitely is aware of that,
and it is fair to say that this is why,
you know, many of his own students at the, if
you like, practical rumintic level, are not necessarily students of
his at the philosophical level. And whether or not that's
a case of feeling uncomfortable in your own skin, I
think that comes down to one's religious stability. And this
is more I guess me speaking on how I view
Rasslo chic than you know his thought itself. But you
know I do for many people the idea that religion
doesn't have all the answers more than that. But I
can't even prove it's true. Right, Russell of A doesn't
think you can prove that Judaism is the best religion.
He absolutely believes it, but he knows he cannot prove
it to anyone other than a Jew. Right, Because you know,
different religions, coming back to the pluralism with which we began,
you know, start from a different data set and therefore
produce different concepts and principles out of that data set
that are very convincing if you're starting with that data set.
But if not right, then you're not. So he doesn't
believe one second you can even demonstrate this superiority of Judaism, right,
does he have faith that it's the truth one hundred percent?
It's just not something you can philosophically talk about. So, yeah,
there's a discomfort there. But for some people that's very
threatening and troubling. I think for other people it's actually
a comfort because if you don't think if you're a
religious person who's very let's say an Orthodox Jew, and
you're very, very happy living your Orthodox Jewish life, but
at the same time you have real questions in terms
of the problem of evil and whatever, it might be
the view that well, it's okay, God works. If so,
there's an answer and God God did it to you
or whatever put certain people off religion, right. They would
prefer the no, no, you know, that's that's that's not
what it's about. Right. I don't I don't need that
version of God. Indeed, that version of God I would
feel deeply off putting.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Dewey Phillips famously said, it's bad enough of a child
God forbid is suffering from fretful cancer. To think that
God did it to them on purpose makes it even worse.
So if you're kind of, you know, pulling back from
that idea that religion has to have all the answers
for some people, that's actually comforting. And that's why therefore,
the the kind of the emphasis on on the this
worldly life of Judaism, how it can be you know,
seen as an expression of your you know, of your
innermost experience as he experiences halacha, right, the life him
isn't some kind of imposition, it kind of it's his
expressing his innermost being. That's how he experiences it. That's
sufficient for the celebration of the religious life.
Speaker 1: I hear that, and that's definitely a valuable for So
I just want to ask, you know, do you think
that therefore there's limits maybe the potential reach of a
thinker like rs of age. And you get this with
a lot of philosophy and philosophers in general, both in
the Jewish religion and more generally, which is that you know,
they come't at problems from a very certain perspective, which
speaks volumes about their own personality. And if you are
so inclined to that particular personality, traits, so then you
find their philosophy extremely interesting, extremely compelling, et cetera, et cetera.
But for those who don't, then that's just not the case.
And I'm wondering if a certain case can be because
of course Rosavegic is enormously influential in certain areas of
Jewish you know, Jewis communities nowadays, and even outside of
those communities read and started to get great interest. And
I'm just wondering, you know, must one be of a
certain personality disposition, as we've been describing for the last
you know, fifteen twenty minutes, must have those kinds of
personality dispositions in order to find his works interesting and useful.
I mean, what if you're just generally happy or satisfied.
What if you you know, what if the religious world
just naturally makes sense to you? I mean, is reslavgi
gend just not for you?
Speaker 2: It's a good question.
Speaker 3: I suppose that it depends on your level of intellectual
curiosity have in you know, it's one could say the
same about my monogies. Let's put it that way, right
as in, you know, you read mymologies and some people
we'd extremely put off by the extreme rationalism, but we'll
still find it fascinating to you know, understand the world
view of somebody who can apply that type of philosophical
theology to the life of Halachic Judaism.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So, I think that it's certainly the case that there
are people who will and will not find this personally compelling.
I'm not sure that's different for any other thinker of.
Speaker 2: This ilk.
Speaker 3: And and you know, and for some people when they
do read it, they'll suddenly eyes are opened and they're like, wow,
you know, do find it convincing, and do find it,
you know, compelling, But yeah, plenty not. But on that
I like I say, I'm not sure he differs that
much from other thinkers in this arena.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fer enough. I think that's satisfactory answering. Okay,
we'll let you go in a moment. But the last
thing I would like to ask you, and it's something
I'll ast asked him many of my guests, is if
you had the opportunity to speak with Sullivtuk, if you
could sit down this evening with him to dinner, Let's say,
what would you would you be asking him? What would
you want to know? What kind of subjects. Would you
be broaching with him?
Speaker 2: Oh? Goodness me.
Speaker 3: Who? So I think I probably a boring academic answer
a question I should say, because people have grappled long
and hard with the apparent discrepancy between To go back
to our types, halachic man and lonely man of faith,
alack man doesn't seem to be a terribly conflicted individual
unlike lonely man of faith, and scholars have tried to
understand that difference in various ways. So yes, I think
that getting his actual answer to that would be of interest.
Speaker 1: Well, well, then let me ask you some question. Do
you think it will be an enjoyable experience? Then the
reputation for being, shall we say, not the easiest person
to talk to, talk with? You know, what it would
be like to have dinner with him?
Speaker 3: So certainly there are many, you know, stories from students
in his you know Tom share that that certainly would
lead to the conclusion he did not suffer fools gladly
althose who were ill prepared for his classes. But yeah,
I think that I would approach it with great trepidation,
but I would hope that we would find common ground
to speak of.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, Okay, I suppose that I'll have to do.
Professor Daniel Reinhold, thank you so very much. But Johnny
us today on the Podcast of Jewish Ideas. This has
been a most enlightening conversation. We are very grateful for
your time and we look forward to seeing what you
have to published soon in the near future.
Speaker 2: My great pleasure. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: This has been the Podcast of Jewish Ideas by Tora
in Motion, produced by Alisha Kellman and myself jjkimb, edited
and mixed by Alisha Kelman. You can stay up to
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