Love and Terror in the God Encounter p.211

R. Soloveitchik was a traditional talmudic master who devoted his life to teaching Talmud and to offering penetrating analyses of talmudic texts. At the same time, his religious thought was nurtured by more than one tradition. The attempt to locate him in only one tradition is a shortsighted distortion of his complex religious thought and personality. The inability to appreciate that a religious thinker may inhabit and be nurtured by distinct and often opposing religious frames of reference was also responsible for the mistaken attempt at establishing either the Guide for the Perplexed or the Mishneh Torah as the true expression of Maimonides’ thinking. When you study giants of the spirit such as Maimonides or R. Soloveitchik, you witness the intellectual honesty and courage of talmudists firmly anchored in the halakhic tradition who allowed their intellectual and religious sensibilities to be influenced by frameworks of knowledge and experience independent of their particular Judaic halakhic traditions.

Those who simplify R. Soloveitchik’s thought without appreciating its rich and multifaceted nature fail to do justice to the conflicting frameworks to which he was committed. His anthropocentric halakhic passion and his theocentric understanding of what it means to stand in the presence of God express the different theological traditions that nurtured his religious worldview.

Maimonides’ references to Aristotle and Islamic philosophers were not motivated by pragmatic apologetic reasons but represented his sincere religious convictions and love for God. Similarly, it is deeply mistaken to assume that R. Soloveitchik’s references to Western philosophers and theologians were meant to impress secular Jewish youth by dressing the halakhic tradition in sophisticated intellectual Western garb. The portrayal of R. Soloveitchik as a traditional Westernized Orthodox apologist does injustice to the authentic religious struggle reflected in his writings. It is not easy to harmonize an anthropocentric tradition mediated by mitzvah and Talmud Torah with a theocentric passion nurtured by the experiential dimensions of standing in the presence of God.

David Hartman – Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik p.211

Love and Terror in the God Encounter p.140

In “Confrontation,” R. Soloveitchik discusses three images of the human condition. The first is natural man, who lives in total harmony with nature and exhibits no separate selfhood. The “I” is absorbed by the womb of nature and lives with nature’s rhythms. This portrait is similar to Kierkegaard’s aesthetic or hedonistic stage, in which human existence is not regarded as at all problematic. R. Soloveichik argues gives them the modern representatives of this type of person and gives them the label “non-confronted man.”

Man who was created out of the dust of the ground, enveloped in a mist rising from the jungle, determined by biological immediacy and mechanical necessity, knows of no responsibility, no opposition, no fear, and no dichotomy, and hence he is free from carrying the load of humanity.

In a word, this man is a non-confronted being. He is neither conscious of his assignment vis-à-vis something which is outside of himself nor is he aware of his existential otherness as a being summoned by his Maker to rise to tragic greatness.

When I refer to man at the level of naturalness, I have in mind not the Urmensch of bygone times but modern man. I am speaking not in anthropological but typological categories. For non-confronted man is to be found not only in the cave or the jungle but also in the seats of learning and the halls of philosophers and artists. Non-confrontation is not necessarily restricted to a primitive existence but applies to human existence at all times, no matter how cultured and sophisticated. The hedone-oriented, egocentric person, the beauty-worshipper, committed to the goods of sense and craving exclusively for boundless aesthetic experience, the voluptuary, inventing needs in order to give himself the opportunity of continual gratification, the sybarite, constantly discovering new areas where pleasure is pursued and happiness found and lost, leads a non-confronted existence. (1964: 6-7)

David Hartman – Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik p.140

Love and Terror in the God Encounter p.176

Both the prophet and the praying individual recognize the centrality of ethical action in their covenantal experience with God.

When confronted with God, the prophet receives an ethico-moral message to be handed down to and realized by the members of the covenantal community which is mainly a community in action . . . Prayer likewise consists not only of an awareness of the presence of God, but of an act of committing oneself to God and accepting His ethico-moral authority . . . Prayer is always the harbinger of moral reformation. (1965: 39-42)

Prayer is here defined as a prologue to practice. Its essence, which is drawn from the covenantal encounter, is to awaken the worshiper to the centrality of acting with justice in the world. As the continuation of the prophetic encounter, prayer casts the individual into social action. It is not resignation, helplessness, or withdrawal. It is not quietism or a relinquishment of personal responsibility. For R. Soloveitchik, prayer as encounter, as discovery of God as Thou, is consummated only in moral action. In prayer the powers of love and solidarity become so intense that the prayerful individual must become an active being within the social and political reality.

David Hartman – Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik p.176

Love and Terror in the God Encounter p.84

According to R. Soloveitchik, the contrast between the Jewish doctrine of creation and the Aristotelian belief that the universe has existed from all eternity must be understood in terms of the different normative perspectives and challenges they pose. Since the Greeks ascribed greater reality to whatever is unchanging and uncreated, they saw human excellence not in the active transformation of the world, but in the philosophical contemplation of eternal verities. Judaism emphasizes the unfolding of the principle of will and energy, the dynamic longing for shaping, transforming, and controlling the world.

The whole concept of creation never really took hold in Greek philosophy. As a result of this, Greek philosophy had no room for the true creative act . . . The pure, first form does not create; therefore, man is not obliged to create . . . Neither the intellectual virtues of Aristotelian ethics nor the aspiration for the contemplative life (Bios theoretikos) are in any way equivalent with the yearning for creation that has so entirely seized hold of the Jewish imagination.

The halakhic personality’s longing to create is expressed not only in the desire to change the world, but equally, and perhaps even to a greater extent, in the yearning to complete the creation of one’s individual being by unfolding one’s own unique individual capacities. By emphasizing the notion of God as Creator, Judaism introduced the significance of self-creation as a profound ethical ideal.

The most fundamental principle of all is that man must create himself. It is this idea that Judaism introduced into the world.

The belief that God created the world is translated into a normative challenge to live a heroic existence where freedom replaces necessity, where hopefulness and confidence guide one’s perception of the future. Halakhic man does not live a melancholy life waiting to be liberated from the prison of human sin and the human body. It is not grace alone that liberates halakhic man, but rather, the sense that God calls on him to build a free and spontaneous existence.

David Hartman – Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik p.84

On Sacrifice p.61

The logic of this reading works as follows: God is actually the one who is obligated to provide for the poor. The destitute are his creatures, whom he brought into the world. When a person provides charity to the poor, he is in fact paying God’s debt. Charity is, therefore, like lending to God. The charity giver, by paying God’s debt, transforms his relationship to God from a debtor to a lender. In that act of giving, the giver reverses the relationship of dependence between himself and God, since the one who owes is considered a slave to the lender. Charity is thus described as enslaving God, shifting from a creditor to a debtor.

This reversal relates to the trauma of sacrifice in a complex fashion. As was explained above, sacrifice—korban—assumes that a person offers up a gift that might be rejected. It maintains an essential, hierarchical gap between giving and receiving. But in giving to the poor, no such gap exists. The poor person stretching forth his hand is not typically in a position to exercise his power of refusal; he must keep his hand outstretched to accept the offer of assistance. Since God is the one who has to feed the poor, however, the hand of the poor stands for God’s hand. Charity is an actual gift to God that he couldn’t refuse, because it is mediated through the hand of the desperate. A person binds God—his superior—to the gift cycle precisely by giving to a dependent—the poor.

This Talmudic position doesn’t aim at providing an incentive for charity; if this were the case, the poor might become a mere instrument in “forcing” God into a debtor status. The statement rather provides a description of what actually happens in giving; it doesn’t prescribe the aim of giving or the motivation for it. When someone gives out of compassion for the plight of the poor, he is entering a gift cycle that reverses the structure of the offering. Charity is preferred over sacrifice because it erases the abyss between giving and receiving without recourse to ritual, which minimizes individualization. What is more, this way of giving reverses the hierarchical order implied in the offering of a sacrifice; charity reverses God’s position from a lender to a borrower.

Moshe Halbertal – On Sacrifice p.61

DMT and the Soul of Prophecy p.266

What are the external forces that the beings may represent? They may include healing and illness, strength and weakness, love and hate, evil and good, wisdom and folly. Using the medieval Jewish philosophers’ metaphysics, these are what one might consider Gods intermediaries, the vehicles through which Godly efflux works providentially. For example, the angel Raphael may represent healing forces, and Gabriel the force of strength. These world-affecting forces manifest in apprehensible visual, somatic, and other modalities using the repertoire our minds possess.

Rick Strassman – DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible p.266

DMT and the Soul of Prophecy p.250

The medieval Jewish philosophers debate whether prophecy is a “mission” or a “perfection.” The prophecy-as-a-perfection viewpoint posits that one trains for prophecy and then attains it. This requires possessing optimal physical capacities from birth, especially the brain—where the medieval Jewish philosophers believe the imagination resides—and undergoing suitable education and training of the rational faculty. Some commentators add the variables of love, virtue, piety, and courage.

When one has met these conditions, she or he attains prophecy.

The notion of prophecy-as-a-mission proposes that God chooses someone for prophecy simply because of necessity. The time and place require God’s communication with an individual or group. As a concession to the medieval authors who consider prophecy a perfection, proponents of the “mission” viewpoint add that God perfects the intellect and imagination of such people to suit the requirements of the moment.

This issue has significant implications with respect to whether prophecy today remains within our reach. If prophecy is a perfection, then we may strive for it, and some of us may attain it. There have been, and will continue to be, athletic, artistic, scientific, and political geniuses whose constitutions and training have allowed them to attain such heights. However, if prophecy is strictly a mission, in the sense that God chooses whom He will regardless of one’s qualifications, there is little we can do to experience it. . .

Most medieval authors take a compromise position and suggest that God chooses for His mission someone who is qualified. Jeremiah’s call to prophecy exemplifies the interplay of mission and perfection. God tells him: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you left the womb, I sanctified you. I established you as a prophet unto the nations (Jer. 1:5). This suggests that Jeremiah’s biological constitution at birth, the bases for his imaginative faculty, qualified him for his mission.

Rick Strassman – DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible p.250

Love and Terror in the God Encounter p.28

It should now be clear that R. Soloveitchik’s essay Halakhic Man is neither a historical analysis of the rabbinic mind in the talmudic era nor a comprehensive discussion of contemporary halakhic spirituality. R. Soloveitchik is a midrashic artist using diverse Judaic strands drawn from the Brisker-Lithuanian tradition of Jewish religiosity to develop a phenomenology of what he sees as an ideal halakhic type. This particular Judaic spiritual type, he believes, was unknown and possibly unintelligible to Western religious thought, which has identified religious life with spiritual asceticism, mystical devotion, and the longing for immortality, characteristics that Soloveitchik lumps together under the definition of homo religiosus.

David Hartman –Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik p.28

To This Very Day p.406

The multiplicity of potential readings of the text means that the Torah anticipates different possibilities for interpretation in accordance with changing circumstances. The Torah proceeds from the assumption that, over time, the practical halakha may change in accordance with the circumstances of each generation, and no single criterion of practice can be applied to all generations or to all circumstances. In fact, this fundamental principle is set forth explicitly in the Jerusalem Talmud:

Had the Torah been given in the form of clear-cut instructions, the world would have been unable to exist. What does this mean? “And the Lord said to Moses” – [Moses] said to Him: “Master of the Universe, tell me the halakha!” [God] said to him: “Incline in accordance with the majority” – if there are more who favor acquittal, he is acquitted; if there are more who favor conviction, he is convicted. Thus the Torah may be explained in forty-nine ways to arrive at a conclusion of ritual impurity and in forty-nine to arrive at a conclusion of ritual purity” (Y. Sanhedrin 4:2, 22a)

According to the Jerusalem Talmud, God refused to give Moses a Torah that was unequivocal in its interpretation, for if He had, it would have not been fit for “eternal existence” (Penei Moshe, ad loc.). Instead, God gave him an eternal Torah of life, in which there are many different interpretative possibilities, all of them correct, and the decisions as to how to interpret it are the responsibility of the Sanhedrin in each generation.

The possibility of interpreting the Torah in accordance with the manner appropriate to it in each and every generation rests exclusively with the Beit Din HaGadol (Sanhedrin), in the ideal situation and conditions of the Jews dwelling in the land. Under those conditions, the Sanhedrin may rule, in accordance with their “ethical notions,” that a certain law of the Torah “pertains only to situations that no longer exist,” and, in light of changed circumstances, they are able to reinterpret the verses and God’s will in a manner that is appropriate to the new conditions that have arisen. It is the conjunction of the interpretation of the text and the decision of the Sanhedrin, in view of contemporary events, that allows for changes in halakha that are made on the basis of moral considerations, in step with changes in human society? Thus, Rabbi Kook maintained faith in the divine source of the Torah, along with its ability to be changed by the Sanhedrin in every generation, in accordance with changing circumstances. Rabbi Kook was well aware of the potential risks in stating such a view, and saw fit to emphasize that no such possibility exists at this time, in the absence of a Sanhedrin, “May God save us from such a view,” he said.

In the biblical period, of course, there was little compunction about severing limbs as a form of corporal punishment, allowing for the possibility that “an eye for an eye” was indeed followed literally at that time, as suggested by the author of Dor Revi’i. As the generations passed, and moral norms shifted, one who had maimed his fellow no longer had to have his own limb removed. The Sanhedrin therefore used its authority to interpret the verses in a different way, with the faith that this was God’s will and that the Torah had permitted this change from the outset.

Amnon Bazak – To This Very Day: Fundamental Questions in Bible Study p.406

Filled with Fire and Light p.72

There is a passage in the Mishnaic tractate Ethics of the Fathers that states: “Whoever interrupts his learning and says, ‘Look at the tree, look how beautiful it is,’ has only himself to blame should something happen to him.” I never understood this saying. What is wrong with admiring the beauty of nature—which, after all, is part of God’s creation? The answer is that there is nothing wrong with admiring nature. What is wrong is the interruption of learning. The emphasis is on “whoever interrupts his learning.” The admiration of beauty must be part of one’s learning, not instead of learning. Learning must never be interrupted by beauty, for there is beauty in learning texts, in exploring their hidden messages, in meeting ancient masters and encountering the secrets they possess. There is beauty even in arguments, and what would the Talmud be without its arguments?

The real meaning of Talmud lies not in monologue but in dialogue. Not in solitary introspection but in confrontation. Hillel and Shammai, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael, Rav and Shmuel, Abbaye and Rava: the law is decided according to the one or the other, but the decision-making process, the collective debate preceding the decision, is as important as the outcome. No legislative process, no history of ideas and events, no joint venture of intellectual pursuit and discourse is as rich, as colorful, and as liberal: Talmudic debate is centered on issues, not on personalities. The quest for truth is the goal of all participants, winners and losers alike.

No wonder that ta shema come and listen—is a characteristic phrase of the Talmud, whereas ta chazi—come and see—is a characteristic phrase of the Zohar, the book of mystical wisdom. To see you don’t need someone else; to hear you do. If mysticism is an exploration of solitude, Talmud is a negation of solitude. The quest for mystical truth takes one through silence; Talmudic clarity is obtained through language.

A remedy against loneliness and absurdity, the Talmud cannot be comprehended alone. You plunge into its pages at first with a teacher, and later on with a companion. You say the word “Talmud” and your mind is filled with gatherings of scholars and disciples in academies in the land of Israel and Babylon.

You hear their stormy arguments, which often lasted more than a lifetime. An issue is raised by one master, explained by his disciple, disputed by the disciple’s disciple, and resolved one generation later. Four generations of masters and pupils thus participated in the same debate, expressed in one short passage, in one image, in one sound.

Elie Wiesel – Filled with Fire and Light: Portraits and Legends from the Bible, Talmud, and Hasidic World p.72