SHALOM CARMY

“The Heart Pained by the

Pain of the People”:
Rabbinic Leadership in Two
Discussions by R. Joseph B.
Soloveitchik

A
s far as I know, Maran ha-Rav Joseph Soloveitchik never devoted
a discourse to the halakhic or theological question of rabbinic
authority in our time as it applies to subjects outside the bound-
aries of Halakhah, narrowly defined. As a spiritual leader, his goal was
the teaching of Torah and the cultivation of authentic religious experi-
ence. In this connection, he spoke and wrote often, almost obsessively,
about the relationship between teacher and student. However, the pre-
cise delineation of the authority that can, or should be exercised by pri-
mary Torah mentors was probably not an important question from this
perspective. It did not contribute, in a significant way, to one’s knowl-
edge of Torah, or ability to think independently in studying Torah and
confronting life’s challenges. Not infrequently, the Rav told us that the
role of a Rebbi is not to tell his disciples what to do, but rather to create
the appropriate “frame of reference” for their decisions. By this he
SHALOM CARMY teaches Bible, Jewish thought and philosophy at Yeshiva University
and is editor of Tradition. Rabbi Carmy has published extensively and is the edi-
tor of two volumes in the Orthodox Forum series, most recently Jewish Perspec-
tives on the Experience of Suffering.
1 The Torah u-Madda Journal (13/2005)
2 The Torah u-Madda Journal

meant not only an introduction to halakhic literature and its analysis,

but also a “philosophy,” a way of thinking about, and weighing, the
principles underlying the Halakhah, a living sense of religious experi-
ence, and a sensitivity to human variety and particular circumstance.
There are many anecdotes about the latitude he allowed his students,
when they encountered problems in their work, recognizing that each
person has his, or her, own individual dispositions that facilitate or
hamper their response to specific situations, and urging them to rely on
their hard won perceptions of local conditions.
This reputation has led many in the community, both lay people
and rabbis, to assume that the Rav limited rabbinic authority to the
adjudication of halakhic law, that he did not assign the opinions of
Gedolim very much weight in determining public and private policy,
and that he therefore did not consider consultation with Torah authori-
ties an essential, or even an important ingredient in a healthy religious
community. People who otherwise exhibit little interest in the Rav’s
substantial achievement as a religious thinker and writer contentiously
attempt to rehabilitate him as a conventional “authoritarian” gadol.
They are countered by equally desperate voices, anxious to save him for
modernity. Much of this debate takes place with little or no reference to
the Rav’s own published record.
Let us examine the Rav’s most pertinent written remarks on the
subject. The subject is that of momentous matters concerning Jewish
destiny, not trivial decisions or very particular choices facing individuals
in their secular lives. These documents are separated by an interval of
two very eventful decades. For that reason it is not implausible that dif-
ferences in emphasis and even in doctrine are due to a change of mind.
Instead of pre-judging the issue, however, we will analyze the proposi-
tions arising from both texts, and compare them to the famous doctrine
of rabbinic authority found in the work of R. Eliyahu Dessler. I believe
that the Rav says both more and less, at several points, than many of us
may recall.

Eulogy for a Gadol

R. H.ayyim Ozer Grodzinski of Vilna, venerable sage of the Moetzes

Gedolei Hatorah, was the recognized authority, in matters of public pol-
icy, for Agudath Israel, and in particular for the Lithuanian Torah
world. He died, of natural causes, shortly after the outbreak of World
War II. R. Soloveitchik, at the time, was vice president of Agudah in
 Shalom Carmy 3

America. In that capacity, he delivered a eulogy, part of which was later

published as “Bearers of the Z. iz. and the H.oshen,” referring to the head-
band and breastplate worn by the High Priest.1
In the Rav’s homiletic elaboration, the Z. iz. symbolizes the purely
intellectual, halakhic aspect of Torah leadership, while the H.oshen rep-
resents the guidance provided by Torah authority on public questions.
The Z. iz., which atones for impurity, was placed on the priest’s forehead,
the locus of intellect. The H. oshen, covering the heart, ruled on an
entirely different sort of problem. In Bible and Talmud, the standard
examples of such consultation have to do with war. The Rav offers con-
temporary examples: the advisability of public protest against a threat-
ening regime (a question of great import in the 1930’s); attitudes
towards various phenomena of modernity; Jewish responses to social
conditions. These challenges require engagement of the heart: “the heart
pained by the pain of its people, the heart sensitive to the trouble of the
nation, the heart that sorrows with Israel” (192).
For thousands of years of exile and wandering, continues the Rav,
the same authority that decided halakhic questions also exercised leader-
ship in the public arena. The “priest” who responded to technical
halakhic inquiries was also the leader who addressed the questions of war
and peace, hope and despair, Jewish attitudes towards the nations of the
world. He contrasts this time-honored practice with a recent tendency to
separate the two roles. Those who adopt this modernist approach con-
fine Gedolei Yisrael to the “private domain,” while new leaders, “distant
from God’s Torah, have donned the H. oshen and tried to instruct the
people about the proper path” (193). The Rav cites a rabbinic dictum:
“Any priest who does not speak with the divine spirit (ruah. ha-kodesh)
should not be consulted [as bearer of the urim ve-tummim].” He con-
cludes: “it is impossible for the heart to be suffused with love of Israel
unless the intellect is consecrated to God.”
R. H. ayyim Ozer’s outstanding virtue, according to this eulogy, was
his insistence on the unity of the two roles. He recognized that if “mod-
ern leaders, who reject Torah and tradition, take hold of the H.oshen ha-
Mishpat, they will misdirect the people” (193-4). Experience demon-
strates that such leaders, “partially assimilated” in form and content,
given to flattery and obsequiousness, are prone to error in their political
life as much as in their religious orientation. R. H.ayyim Ozer’s testament,
then, is “conquer the H.oshen, for the fate of the Z. iz. depends on it.”
Overall this text appears to provide aid and comfort to supporters of
da‘at Torah. It is hard to imagine advocates of lay authority reading it
4 The Torah u-Madda Journal

without cringing. Yet before moving on we should note that the Rav does
not argue here for the existence of a contemporary institution embody-
ing da‘at Torah, a central authoritative body, operating in our time, on
the model of the Sanhedrin, whose pronouncements Jews are obligated
to follow. He does not, in other words, use the opportunity of the hesped
to endorse the hard line ideology that something like Moetzes Gedolei
Hatorah ought to serve as the final clearinghouse for practical political
policy. Instead he delineates an ideal of Torah scholarship, piety and
political leadership that is not tied to a specific political alignment, and
that is exemplified in the charismatic personality of R. H . ayyim Ozer.
It is worth noting that the Rav’s father, R. Moshe Soloveichik, judged
Agudah harshly because it treated rabbinic leaders too much as if they
were instruments of the political apparatus. R. Moshe maintained pub-
licly, and strenuously, that his father, R. H . ayyim Brisker, had associated
with Agudah for only a brief period, at the time of its founding, but had
soon become disillusioned with the political atmosphere that, in his opin-
ion, usurped the place of genuine Torah authority in the movement.2
Later, in the 1960’s, after becoming spiritual leader of the Mizrachi, the
Rav was attacked for statements deviating from his party’s position and
lending potential support to its electoral rivals. In a letter of complaint to
S. Z. Shragai, the Rav allowed himself some choice words about being
expected to toe the party line and being abused like a renegade when he
failed to conform. If it was honor that he wanted, he says, he could have
done better to join an unnamed party of “zealots” who “demand nothing
of their followers (not diligence at the gates of Torah, nor unadulterated
fear of Heaven, nor dispersal of funds for charity, nor punctilious obser-
vance of miz.vot) except expressions of vilification and scorn regarding our
movement.” In other words, it was precisely the politicization of Torah
that had displeased him in the unnamed movement antagonistic to
Mizrachi.3 The Rav’s later reactions could be ascribed to hindsight, but it
is impossible to dismiss the weight that his father’s opinion must have
carried for him, even during his Agudah phase.
Why are Torah sages better qualified to offer worldly guidance to
the Jewish people than the new secular leadership? Though he does not
mount a discursive argument, the Rav indicates several reasons. He
takes it for granted that unified leadership is hallowed by the tradition
of millennia. At several points he refers to the ignorance of the new
leaders and to their distance from authentic Judaism. His eulogy, how-
ever, is built around the image of the two priestly vestments and the
complementary functions of head and heart. Thus the major theme is
 Shalom Carmy 5

that the intellectual leaders of the Jewish people, the great scholars of
Torah, are also the custodians of the Jewish heart. Those who are not
immersed in the world of Torah cannot truly identify with the true life
of the people, their pain and their welfare.
The Rav is addressing a receptive audience. It is not evident how he
would justify his thesis in the face of skepticism. He does not take advan-
tage of one effective strategy often employed today by defenders of
expanded rabbinic authority. He does not claim that all practical ques-
tions ultimately have halakhic ramifications, so that one cannot approach
decisions about the advisability of protest or allocation of resources with-
out employing an explicit and specific “Torah perspective.” Thus, for
example, if the highest priority for Judaism is the establishment of yeshiv-
ot, then any political activity that might jeopardize that goal must be
eschewed as a matter of strict Halakhah. Perhaps the Rav avoided this
road because even the observant community of that time might balk at
the notion that worldly and spiritual problems are always so inextricably
intertwined that one cannot be decided without expertise in the other.
After all, Halakhah itself, as the Briskers knew well, relied on medical
authority in case of illness.
Within the framework of this text one might derive from the Rav a
two-pronged justification of the thesis that gedolei Torah are uniquely
qualified to measure the practical needs and troubles of the Jewish peo-
ple. On the negative side, as the Rav notes, the new leadership is charac-
terized by a tendency toward assimilation. Consequently the new leaders
fail to appreciate the true needs of their fellow Jews, even at a practical
“secular” level. Furthermore, the temptation to identify with and flatter
Gentile society might also lead them to exaggerate the benevolence and
beneficence of that society, even while minimizing the suffering and
risks of their Jewish brethren. By the 1950’s the Rav spoke bitterly of the
Jewish cult of Roosevelt that deterred Jewish leaders from speaking out
during the Holocaust.4
The positive argument for Torah leadership in the secular realm
would be that possessors of Torah, in addition to their role in transmit-
ting Torah she-be-al peh, are also, virtually by definition, the authentic
representatives of kelal Yisrael. In a well-known talmudic lecture on the
role of Bet Din in setting the calendar, delivered a couple of years after the
eulogy for R. H . ayyim Ozer, the Rav highlighted this dual aspect of Torah
leadership. Even if he does not identify contemporary Torah leaders with
the ideal Sanhedrin, the analogy may be reflected in the claim that Torah
authorities enjoy special access to the heart of the Jewish people.5
6 The Torah u-Madda Journal

In the coming decades the Rav’s orientation changed significantly.

Yet, when we study his later utterances, I do not believe that we can
detect straightforward contradiction between his pronouncements as a
leader of Agudah and the thoughts communicated to the Religious
Zionists of America.

The Loneliness of the Religious Zionist

The first of the Rav’s discourses on Zionism, published together as Four

Derashot in Yiddish and Five Derashot in Hebrew, is dominated by the
contemporary interpretation of Joseph and his brothers. 6 As in the
biblical version, Joseph stands alone among his family. But while the
biblical Joseph is hated because his brothers resent his favored status
with their father and discern in his demeanor and dreams a lust for
domination, the Joseph of the discourse is hated because his dreams
foresee future challenges that will necessitate difficult changes. The
Rav’s Joseph is a religious Zionist, who knows that the tried and true
model of life in exile can no longer flourish in the modern world.
Joseph’s brothers represent the Lithuanian rabbinic world from which
the Rav emerged, which opposed Zionism. As history vindicated the
biblical Joseph, who saved his family in time of famine, so history justi-
fies the Zionist venture.
The religious Zionist, in 1902 and after, was lonely because he was
estranged from his brothers, meaning the great body of the Torah com-
munity. This estrangement came to expression in ridicule directed at
the religious Zionist, in suspicion about his piety and in keeping their
distance from him (19). Here the Rav alludes to widespread attitudes in
Orthodox circles towards religious Zionism and its rabbis, including the
conviction that Zionism was not only wrong but that is also inevitably
went along with an attenuated commitment to Torah. He spells out
exactly who Joseph’s brothers are. The sons of Jacob—the elite of Ortho-
doxy—include the great teachers of Torah (Levi), the leaders of the gen-
eration, “the genuine providers who were concerned with the needs of
the congregation, whose words were like the words of the urim ve-tum-
mim on all political and social questions” (Judah), and the charismatic
H. asidic leaders (Benjamin). Alienation from his brothers is so painful to
Joseph because he totally identifies with their community: “Joseph too
possessed greatness in Torah, leadership and piety. . . . That they, not
just some of them, but most of them, separated from him, was a tragedy
for Joseph” (20).
 Shalom Carmy 7

According to this discourse, the rift between religious Zionism and

anti-Zionist Orthodoxy, like the enmity between Joseph and his broth-
ers, was rooted in misunderstanding. For Joseph, there was a disquieting
dream of agriculture replacing shepherding in a strange land. The
prophecy to Abraham of sojourning in a foreign country required fore-
sight and planning. In order to survive as a distinctive entity under new
conditions, the family would have to learn new skills, adapt to new tech-
nology in a radically different civilization. The brothers stubbornly
resisted his initiative, and as he tried to persuade them, disagreement
hardened into resentment. They were satisfied that their present way of
life in Canaan could sustain them in a manner compatible with a life of
sanctity and purity.
The contemporary application is obvious. Like Joseph’s brothers,
“the great men of Israel and supreme saints” a century ago, were reason-
ably satisfied with the status quo. Faithful Jewry constituted the quanti-
tative and qualitative plurality of Eastern European Jewry: the syna-
gogues flourished; so did Torah study (22). The religious Zionist of 1902
agreed that under these circumstances, there was no justification to join
a movement headed by secularists. However, the Joseph of 1902 experi-
enced a disquieting vision of the future. He felt, even though he might
not have been able to explain his intuition of disaster, his sense that
hard, unprecedented days were coming.
After these remarks comes the oft-quoted distinction between
halakhic adjudication and history that is taken to define the Rav’s rejec-
tion of da‘at Torah. In the domain of Halakhah, “the Torah is not in
Heaven:” “God granted the sages of Israel the authority to rule” (23).
With respect to historical questions, pertaining not to the ritual purity
of an oven or a loaf or the ownership of a sum of money, but rather to
the “fate of the eternal people,” God Himself hands down the verdict.
And the Rav wonders what would have happened to the yeshivot and
Torah scholars after the Holocaust had the Zionist Joseph not secured a
place in the land of Israel.
The Rav’s version of the inter-Orthodox debate on Zionism is not a
systematic unbiased outline. Most of his comments concern the wide
range of challenges posed by modernity—adaptation to industrial soci-
ety and to an economy that sets a premium on advanced job training,
secular education, mass relocation in America, the transplantation of
Torah institutions and so forth. Building up the land of Israel is only
one item on this list. To be sure many of these issues occupied the atten-
tion of religious Zionists; R. Reines, for example, founded a yeshivah with
8 The Torah u-Madda Journal

general studies. Yet it is safe to say that the Rav is speaking about his
own dreams and projects rather than engaging in dispassionate histori-
ography of events at the turn of the 20th century.
It appears to me that the Rav shapes the story so as to minimize the
gap between the religious Zionist vision he has come to share and the
h.aredi background he reluctantly separated from. He acknowledges, in
passing, that the world of 1902 was not as beautiful and as whole as he
pretends: the old order was visibly breaking down. It was not as if tradi-
tional Orthodoxy had reason to look at the present with equanimity,
and only the visionary, inarticulate Joseph who sensed obscurely the
cataclysms of secularism and persecution. The crisis was unmistakable.
The question was whether the situation required drastic responses, and
whether those policies could be justified halakhically and religiously.
Traditionalists resisted new approaches because they did not expect the
proposed remedies to justify the risks; or they might have believed that
deviants from Orthodoxy could be written off and Judaism sustained by
the hard core of the committed, standing alone; or they might hold that
certain choices, such as joining the Zionist Congress led by secularists,
were simply out of bounds. The Rav recognizes that the latter step was
highly problematic and he uses the example of Chaim Weizman to illus-
trate his own deep discomfort with the secular Zionist program. He
does not, however, concede that for some of his traditionalist adver-
saries of Zionism cooperation with “the wicked” was not only unpleas-
ant and risky but strictly prohibited.
The upshot of the Rav’s presentation defuses the antagonism of the
Zionist controversy within Orthodoxy. The religious Zionists were not
really “softer” on secularism than the rigorists. They did not accept
compromise for its own sake. In the light of later events, the greatest
enemies of the Zionist project might very well have recognized the
rightness of Joseph’s lonely path. At a time when religious Zionism
enjoyed its greatest preponderance of numbers and prestige vis-à-vis the
h.aredim, the Rav simultaneously reinforced the confidence of religious
Zionists, many of whom suffered from a lingering sense of ideological
inferiority, and explained their opposition in terms that a triumphant
religious Zionism could not dismiss with contempt. In situations like
these, I believe that the Rav frequently saw himself as an emissary of tra-
ditionalist Orthodoxy to the modernists, testifying to the power and
integrity of the world from which he emerged, and with which he iden-
tified, even as he vigorously proclaimed the legitimacy of the modernist
positions he advocated.
 Shalom Carmy 9

Does the Rav’s discussion in this speech rescind the views set forth in
the eulogy? To begin with, the Mizrachi address states that retrospective
assessment can reveal that the preponderance of Gedolim did not make
the best decision. They are not infallible. This does not tell us what to do
prospectively. Try this analogy: medical diagnoses, based on the best
available science, sometimes turn out to be mistaken. This demonstrates
the fallibility of the medical profession; it does not constitute an argu-
ment against relying on the doctors in the future. Or imagine that
halakhic authorities erroneously, in point of fact, but legitimately, in
terms of their responsibility to halakhic method, rule that a husband is
dead and his wife able to remarry. Likewise, even assuming that the his-
tory of the 20th century—epidemic secularism, the Holocaust, the politi-
cal achievements of Zionism, and the educational achievements of reli-
gious Zionism—all justify, in hindsight, Joseph’s path, that does not
imply that rabbinic judgment should be eschewed in the future.
Much more important: nowhere in this lecture does the Rav say that
we should prefer the insight of secular politicians to that of Torah mas-
ters where the heart and soul of kelal Yisrael is touched. Nowhere does he
express preference for the judgment of religiously observant politicians
or even for that of middle rank talmidei h.akhamim disagreeing with the
truly great. To the contrary, the Rav goes out of his way to emphasize
that “Joseph” is as much a citizen of the republic of high-level Torah
scholarship as his more numerous brethren. When he recalls the sleepless
nights and long deliberation that brought him to religious Zionism, and
presumably to other divergences from the standard h.aredi line (e.g. lib-
eral arts education) that occurred well before his eulogy on R. H . ayyim
Ozer, he says a great deal about the pain of loneliness and the heavy
weight of soul-searching, but he says nothing about a putative sense of
guilt at overturning some conventional doctrine of da‘at Torah articulat-
ed in his earlier pronouncements. Thus there is nothing in the Rav’s
statements here to show that he repented the ideas in the eulogy or that
he now advocated the untrammeled sovereignty of lay leadership in sen-
sitive areas of public policy. To suggest, as some liberals do, that recogni-
tion of the “verdict of Heaven” in history effectively removes Torah
authorities from public affairs, to be supplanted by the vox populi of lay
leaders, elected or self-appointed, goes against the import of both essays.
This is not to say that the differences between the two addresses do
not reflect a change in attitude. The audience for the eulogy would have
absorbed the clear message that gedolim should have a major role in the
decision-making process and that enhancing their authority is a high
10 The Torah u-Madda Journal

priority. No such exhortations characterize the Rav’s later utterances.

There is enough public oral evidence that the Rav did not favor direct
rabbinic intervention in political affairs, especially where they lack the
requisite expertise to speak with authority. His 1967 ruling that deci-
sions about possible territorial compromise in the land of Israel for the
sake of peace should be made by experts in the field, rather than by rab-
bis, is currently the most discussed example of his outlook. While I am
reluctant to rely on private comments, I am sure that many who enjoyed
the Rav’s company can confirm my recollections of sarcasm on the sub-
ject of rabbis whose adherents encourage them to pontificate on matters
of which they were inadequately informed. If his outlook can be inferred
from his practice, it is appropriate for gedolei Torah who comment on
public matters to recognize the complexity of human affairs and the
existence of different informed opinions on most contested questions,
and to modulate their voices accordingly. As noted earlier, such leader-
ship inculcates the right “frame of reference” for individual and com-
munal decisions rather than imposing such decisions from above. This
model of teaching authority is alive and well in certain segments of our
community, though not as much as one might wish, where laity and
middle–level rabbinic scholars respectfully solicit and listen to multiple
perspectives among their teachers, who, in turn, treat their audience
and opponents with respect. But the details of seeking practical guid-
ance from gedolim and how to learn from them in these areas are not to
be derived from the Rav’s published writings.

Between R. Soloveitchik and R. Dessler

It may be illuminating to compare the Rav’s texts with one of the best-
known briefs for the superior insight of gedolei Torah on worldly mat-
ters confronting the Jewish people, that of R. Eliyahu Dessler. 7 R.
Dessler, writing after World War II, is speaking to a community urgently
in need of a defense of the superior status of Torah sages. Not only does
he assert the incomparable quality of their insight. Having witnessed
their conclaves, he appeals to the evidence of his eyes: “Whoever saw
their gatherings . . . the scene was awesome, to see the greatness and
depth of responsibility on their faces. Whoever was privileged to be in
their presence at such a time, knew clearly that he saw the Shekhinah
resting on their deeds” (75).
Countering the view that contemporary gedolim do not possess the
perspicuity associated with the rabbis of the Talmud, R. Dessler calls our
 Shalom Carmy 11

attention to the talmudic interpretation of the background to Haman’s

persecutions. According to H . azal, the Jews of that generation were pun-
ished for taking part in Ahasuerus’s feast. The proximate cause of the
persecution, as recorded in the Bible, was Mordekhai’s refusal to bow
down to Haman. To the untrained eye, the Biblical account sounds
more rational. As R. Dessler puts it: “Had we been there, what would we
have said? What caused the persecution? Is it that Mordekhai took the
situation of the Jewish people lightly, or is it that nine years earlier there
were those who took the sages’ prohibition lightly? (76)” Whoever is
faithful to the Talmud must acknowledge that H.azal understood the
deeper causation of Haman’s threat, despite its counter-intuitiveness. By
the same token, the judgments of contemporary Torah authorities must
be preferred to those of hoi polloi.8
R. Dessler contrasts the apparent explanation of Haman, based on
visible causality, the kind of causal connection that might be identified
by shrewd political observers, with the deeper causation discerned by
the Rabbis, which traces events to their true spiritual roots. It is striking
that the Rav, in his address to the Mizrachi, also distinguishes two
approaches to historical reality. But for the Rav, it is the consensus of
Torah authorities that evaluates reality by the light of everyday percep-
tions of the present moment, while “Joseph,” the maverick among his
brethren, intuits the deeper direction of history. Thus the Rav enacts, in
the story of Joseph, a theme that comes up, in a variety of forms, else-
where in his thought: the tension between the rational, analytic tenden-
cy of intellectual activity, on the one hand, and the intuitive apprehen-
sion of reality, on the other hand. It is also pertinent that the Rav’s
discussion is not about causality—what led to the exile in Egypt or
Haman, or to the breakdown of the Jewish religious community and the
unprecedented eruption of anti-Semitism in the modern world. Instead
he devotes his attention to the question of the needed response to his-
torical challenges. Here we encounter, in passing, the approach to histo-
ry, theodicy and repentance that takes center stage in Kol Dodi Dofek
and other works.
R. Dessler’s stress on the earnestness with which the pre-War gedolim
shouldered their responsibility may be a tacit response to an implicit
skepticism about the way consensus bodies like the Moetzes Gedolei
Hatorah actually operated. The parallel formulation by the Rav, in his
eulogy for R. H . ayyim Ozer, avoids vivid impressions in favor of the the-
ological and historical claim that it is the bearers of the Z. iz., the Torah
elite, who are also the bearers of the H.oshen. The convincingness of this
12 The Torah u-Madda Journal

assertion, for those not committed to it dogmatically, depends on the

degree to which we can believe that the great rabbis have the greatest
access to the heart and soul of the Jewish people.
The Rav’s practical orientation towards the idea of da‘at Torah has
been presented by some of his most faithful talmidim. R. Aharon
Lichtenstein, for example, has written about the importance of such
guidance.9 And R. Walter Wurzburger, in arguing that religious ethics
requires personal examples, model individuals who embody Torah and
are worthy of emulation, especially in areas where right conduct cannot
be formulated in precise halakhic categories, has observed the relation
between this insight and the special status of gedolim.10 Though we
believe, following the Mishnah (Avot 3:1) that wisdom is the ability to
learn from all human beings, how can we not grant pride of place to
those who have seen Torah steadily and seen in whole (to adapt Matthew
Arnold’s line)? The alternative is virtually unthinkable.
The logic of this reasoning is compelling. It is hard to imagine a
serious Orthodox Jew who would willingly dispense with the guidance
of our greatest teachers in pursuing our spiritual destiny, either as indi-
viduals or as members of the community. It is out of the question to
erect a high wall of separation between halakhic authority and public
(or private) affairs. Yet these are arguments that compel the head rather
than the heart. I wonder how successfully we could make the case for
da‘at Torah today on the grounds the Rav set forth 65 years ago—that
the Torah sages are the true voice of the Jewish heart, and that they not
only speak to, but also speak for, the Jewish people. I wonder how many
of us would even try.
We sometimes try to pretend that the kelal Yisrael that really counts
is coextensive with the Orthodox community, and then we can nostalgi-
cally imagine ourselves part and parcel of a flourishing, authentic, har-
monious community where the faithful congregation gathers around its
rabbinic royalty as in the days of yore we never knew. We can thus nod
happily at the thought of our gedolim with their fingers on the pulse of
the Jewish people. This requires of us the illusion that the large majority
of Jews who are distant from Torah and miz. vot, and who are likely to
remain divided from us for the foreseeable future, is of no account to
us. The “balkanization” (to use David Berger’s term) within contempo-
rary Orthodoxy is itself too pronounced to let us forget that unity or
fraternity does not characterize our own camp either. Yet despite every-
thing, we resonate metaphysically and emotionally to the Rav’s halakhic
vision of authority, combining the head with the heart. Therefore we are
 Shalom Carmy 13

attracted to those great individuals in whom we detect the promise of

such intellectual integrity and encompassing concern—we can dream of
the Sanhedrin or the Moetzes Gedolei Hatorah that would bring togeth-
er R. H.ayyim Ozer, R. Kook, H.azon Ish, R. Moshe Feinstein, the late
Lubavitcher rebbe and the Rav. That there is no way that such a consor-
tium can become a reality under present social conditions is no small
cause for sorrow.11

Notes

I appreciate comments by Jeffrey Saks, Bernard Stahl and especially Avi

Shmidman.

1. References are to Divrei Hagut ve-Ha‘arakhah (Jerusalem, 1981)187-194.

2. See the statements cited in Zvi Vinman, Mi-Katowic ad He be-Iyyar
(Jerusalem 1995), 46-58 and especially 52-56, implying sharp disagreement
between R. Moshe and R. H . ayyim Ozer about R. H . ayyim Soloveitchik’s atti-
tude towards Agudah.
3. See Shragai, Be‘ayot Aktualiyyot le-Or ha-Halakhah, ed. A. Bick (Jerusalem,
1993), 124-25. Translation is from R. Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant
and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications, ed. Nathaniel Helfgot
(Jersey City, NJ, 2005), 206.
4. See interview in Morgen Journal 1/17/1955, entitled “The Great Sin of Our
Generation that Undermines Our Judaism.”
5. See in Kovez. H.iddushei Torah (Jerusalem, n.d) 47-65. On the implied politi-
cal theory, see Gerald Blidstein, “On the Jewish People in the Writings of
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” in Exploring the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B.
Soloveitchik, ed. M. Angel (Hoboken, 1997), 321 n. 28. Given the Rav’s reluc-
tance to publish at this stage in his career, especially in Halakhah, the histori-
an cannot fail to remark on the prompt appearance of this lecture, delivered
in June 1943, as a special supplement to HaPardes 17:11 (February 1944).
Most of the papers in Kovez. H. iddushei Torah, which collects the Rav’s
halakhic articles of the early years, were initiated by the Rav’s father, R.
Moshe Soloveichik, at a time when the Rav was in search of a permanent
educational position. This was no longer the case in the 1940’s. Perhaps the
supplement was prompted by the public vindication (reported in HaPardes
17:10 [January 1944]: 23-27) that dispelled the cloud of vilification and false
accusation under which the Rav had labored for three years. Perhaps, à la
Kierkegaard, he wanted the publication of a philosophical work—Ish ha-
Halakhah—to coincide with that of a halakhic one. Is it not likely, however,
that the decision to publish the shiur on the calendar, and the Aggadta deliv-
ered at the same time, reflects an ideological agenda?
6. Citations are from the Hebrew H.amesh Derashot (Jerusalem. 1974)
7. Mikhtav me-Eliyahu (Jerusalem, 1963), I , 75ff.
8. I assume that R. Dessler, in the spirit of ein mikra yoz. ei mi-yedei peshuto,
would not dismiss completely the “superficial” narrative supported by the
Biblical text. But this issue is not raised in his essay.
14 The Torah u-Madda Journal

9. See his “Legitimation of Modernity: Classical and Contemporary,” in

Engaging Modernity, ed. Moshe Sokol (Northvale, NJ, 1997), 3-34.
10. See his “Covenantal Imperatives” in Samuel K. Mirsky Memorial Volume, ed.
Gersion Appel (New York, 1970), 3-12.
11. For general comments on the contemporary place of rabbinic authority in
the public square, see, in addition to R. Lichtenstein's essay, my “Who
Speaks for Torah—And How?” in Religious Zionism: After 40 Years of
Statehood, ed. Shubert Spero and Yitzchak Pessin (Jerusalem, 1989) 156-172.
For a survey of the literature see Lawrence Kaplan, “Daas Torah: A Modern
Conception of Rabbinic Authority,” in Rabbinic Authority and Personal
Autonomy," ed. Moshe Z. Sokol (Northvale, NJ, 1992), 1-60, updated in Bein
Samkhut le-Otonomiyyah be-Masoret Yisrael, ed. Zeev Safrai and Avi Sagi
(Jerusalem, 1997) 105-145.