WHO IS HALAKHIC MAN?1 Shlomo H. Pick

WHO IS HALAKHIC MAN?1

Shlomo H. Pick Bar-Ilan University

I am not a philosopher nor trained in the ways of philosophical analysis, and I therefore have felt at a distinct disadvantage while reading, nay studying, Professor Dov Schwartz’s volume Religion or Halakha: The Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.2 This study is a companion volume to R. Soloveitchik’s seminal essay Ish HaHalakha, or Halakhic Man in its English translation. As with the classical commentaries to Moses Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, this book cannot be read by itself; it must be read with a copy of Halakhic Man before the reader, since it refers to the original text on almost every page and is essentially a running commentary on and an extended analysis of R. Soloveitchik’s text, even as it contains novel insights concerning the Rav’s words and thoughts. What right then do I have to review this signiﬁcant volume? Perhaps my credentials as a melamed, a teacher of Talmud and Halakhah, allow me to comment on Professor Schwartz’s thesis. I would add that I have heard some of the Rav’s Talmudic lectures (shiurim) as a student at Yeshiva University, and I have studied the Rav’s shiurim on various tractates and topics. Moreover, my training as a historian permits me to add some historical criticisms and notes.

1 I want to thank Profs. Lawrence Kaplan and Shalom Carmy, Drs. Aryeh Strikovsky and Arnold Lustiger, and Mr. Moshe Feldman for their assistance in assembling some of the material employed in this essay. Throughout this essay I refer to Rabbi Soloveitchik as “the Rav” (the Rabbi par excellence), the appellation used by his students during his lifetime and after his death. 2 Volume One, trans. B. Stein, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2007. Regrettably, the outside cover has Rabbi B. Soloveitchik. In any case, I also prefer the original Hebrew title which was translated (on the inside cover page) as The Philosophy of Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik: (a) Halakhic Man: Religion or Halakha?, for the book is centered around this primary essay in the canon of the late Rabbi Soloveitchik. Undeﬁned parenthetical page numbers in this essay refer to Prof. Schwartz’s book. References to the book Halakhic Man are preceded by HM.

Let us begin with the central themes in Professor Schwartz’s analysis: A. The concept of Halakhah in the ﬁrst part of the Rav’s essay is not practical Jewish Law but the methodology of study employed by mentors and students in Lithuanian yeshivot. It is referred to as lomdus, as especially developed by the Brisk dynasty. Theoretical halakhic laws are analyzed, deconstructed into their components, and then recast as ideal legal constructs (p. 1 and pp. 350–351, n. 2). The result is a description of the Weltanschauung that delineates the entire life, actions, and emotions of Halakhic Man. In the second part of the essay, the term Halakhah also means practical law, for this is the stepping stone to the creativity of Halakhic Man and the bridge between the practical and the ideal concepts of Halakhah. B. Halakhic Man deals only with the Brisk dynasty (p. 6), especially R. Hayyim Soloveitchik, R. Yitzhak Zeev Soloveitchik, and others (p. 1). C. Consequently, Halakhic Man is one dimensional, i.e., “rejecting the alloy of Halakhah and mysticism.” Moreover, “no synthesis is possible between idealist and mystical consciousness (p. 174).” Furthermore, “the pure Brisk Halakhic Man . . . does not have a plurality of cognitions or a multifaceted consciousness, and hence lacks any dialectic” (p. 224). D. In truth, according to Professor Schwartz, Halakhic Man repre- sents a type that the Rav thought no longer was in existence, but had been destroyed in the Holocaust, and essentially he was providing a testimonial to such a character (p. 119). Thus, by means of this essay, the Rav was introducing the modern reader (of the 1940s) to the yeshiva head, especially of the Brisk dynasty (p. 2). E. Moreover, in order to present the personality of Halakhic Man, the Rav made use of Herman Cohen’s epistemological idealism, and the portrayal of Halakhic Man’s will is predicated on Cohen’s idealist view of ethics and aesthetics. Cohen’s neo-Kantian outlook was the philosophical instrument that the Rav found most effective to describe the thought of Halakhic Man (p. 3, n. 2). Hence, one can only really understand Halakhic Man by studying the writings of Hermann Cohen and especially the Rav’s PhD thesis that he wrote in Berlin: [ Josef Solowiejczyk], Das reine Denken und die Seinskonstituierung bei Hermann Cohen (Berlin: Reuther and Reichard, 1932). F. Finally, Rav Soloveitchik himself was not the Halakhic Man described in his essay but is better represented by his other essays, especially U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,3 where religious consciousness is por-

3 Recently published in English as And from There You Shall Seek, translated by