Eliot Dorff on Halachik Man

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Review: A Review EssayAuthor(s): Elliot N. DorffReviewed work(s):

Halakhic Man by Joseph B. Soloveitchik ; Lawrence KaplanSource: Modern Judaism, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb., 1986), pp. 91-98Published by: Oxford University Press

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ElliotN. Dorff

HALAKHIC MAN:

A REVIEW ESSAY*

In the more than four decades since the Hebrew version of this book first

appeared, its author has become a veritable giant in the Orthodox move-ment. His students speak of him with awe. The translator of the presentvolume, himself a disciple, illustrates this. In the first paragraph of his

preface, he describes the book as "a unique, almost unclassifiable work,... a brilliant exposition of Mitnaggedism,... a profound excursion into

religious psychology and phenomenology, a pioneering attempt at a

philosophy of Halakhah, .. ."etc.

I have no desire nor any reason to disparage the aura of respect with

which RabbiSoloveitchik'sstudentssurround him-although Rabbi Solo-veitchik himself recognizes the religious and psychological dangers in

"the cult of the tzaddikn the Hasidic world,"' and one wonders how far

removed from that are his own students' attitudes toward him. This

book, in any case, is not the universal panacea nor the complete and all-

convincing exegesis of Judaism that its translator makes it out to be. It is

much closer to its author's description-"a patchwork of scattered re-

flections, a haphazardcollection of fragmentary observations, an incom-

plete sketch of but a few of halakhic man's features. It is devoid ofscientific precision, of substantive and stylistic clarity."2As a workingpaper I would have little quarrel with it-although I would make someof the same points that I am about to make in an effort to help the author

make his insights clearer and more precise. Forty years after it first

appeared, however, seems much too late to alter a working paper. Onewishes that Rabbi Soloveitchik would have revised his paper long ago in

reaction to criticism of it so that his position now would be much more

refined than it is here.However that may be, we are left with this volume in its present

form, and so it must be judged as it is. Taking my cue from Rabbi Solo-veitchik himself, I will begin with some problems of method and then

proceed to issues of content.

*JosephB. Soloveitchik,HalakhicMan,LawrenceKaplan, translator(Philadelphia, JewishPublication Society of America, 1983).xi + 164pages.

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Elliot N. Dorff

PROBLEMS OF METHOD

The thesis of this book is that there are two types of human temperamentwhich combine to form Halakhic man. Cognitive man seeks to uncover

the secrets of the world so that all is fixed and ordered. Religious man

sees all existence as a mystery, with scientific lawfulness the deepest

mystery of all. Halakhic man combines these personalities, achievingboth self-realization and a meaningful relationship with God through the

Torah and the Talmudic tradition.

First, what is the status of these claims? If they are intended to be

empirical assertions, they surely will not work. There are certainly manypeople who would characterize themselves as "religious" who do not

believe, as Soloveitchik's "religious man" does, that this world must be

negated in the longing for a perfect world and that monism must be

denied.3 That is one form of religiosity, but not thatheld by all "religious"

people. Furthermore, many people, and possibly most, combine elements

of the cognitive and religious in their lives, and they do this in many

ways, of which Soloveitchik's Halakhic man is only one possibility. Con-

sequently Soloveitchik's characterizations are not empirically accurate.It is more likely that Soloveitchik intends to stipulate ideal types in

order to understand different approaches to life, but then his typologymust be judged according to its ability to enlighten more than it obscures.

Unfortunately, his admitted imprecision gets in the way of doing that as

effectively as he otherwise might. He says things which are at best con-

fusing and, at worst, baseless or contradictory. For example, he claims

that Halakhic man "pays no heed to any murmurings of intuition or

other types of mysterious presentiments" as a mark of his intellectualrigor,4but the fact is that even the most rigorous of scientists follows his

intuition in crucial parts of his work, as modern scientists and philoso-

phers of science have made amply clear. Halakhic man "recognizes no

authority other than the authority of the intellect (obviously, in ac-

cordance with the principles of tradition),"5but that seems easier said

than done. Under what conditions and with what justification does he

bow to tradition despite the dictates of the intellect, and when does he do

the reverse? Medieval Jewish philosophers recognized the significance ofthat problem and wrestled with it; they did not try to sweep it under the

rug of a set of parentheses. Moreover, adherence to both intellect and

tradition is not equivalent to hatredof intellectual and legal compromises,Soloveitchik notwithstanding;6one wonders how they are even related-unless one has a very skewed view of both the intellect and the law.

Soloveitchik's conceptual imprecision is matched by a similar impre-cision in the method with which he treats Biblical and Rabbinic sources.He chooses one Midrash that suits his

purposeand makes that the norm.

He either ignores sources which make contrary points or he interprets

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Elliot N. Dorff

ments for taking an historical approach to Judaism in general and Jewishlaw in particular; I will only state emphatically that Jewish law has

existed in human history and has been affected by it, and any approachwhich ignores that is to that extent simply false.

Soloveitchik himself gets tangled in the problems his model raises.

While the law is not supposed to be "ethical-practical,"'2he view of time

embodied in the law is, for him, most definitely practicaland ethical.13In

one place he says that study is not a means to another end,'4 and in

another he expresses virtual disdain for the exigencies of the practical

application of halakhah:

The foundation of foundations and the pillar of halakhic thought isnot the practical ruling but the determination of the theoretical Hala-

khah. Therefore, many of the greatest halakhic men avoided and still

avoid serving in rabbinical posts. They rather join themselves to the

group of those who are reluctant to render practical decisions. And if

necessity - which is not to be decried - compels them to disregard their

preference and to render practical decisions, this is only a small, insig-nificant responsibility which does not stand at the center of their con-

cerns. The theoretical Halakhah, not the practical decision, the ideal

creation, not the empirical one, represent the longing of halakhic man.15

Yet elsewhere he asserts that in Judaism the normative takes precedenceover the cognitive, i.e., knowing is for the purpose of doing.16Moreover,he criticizes both Hasidism and "religious man" for being otherworldlyin contrast to the this worldly approach of halakhah:"It is this world

which constitutes the stage for the Halakhah, the setting for halakhic

man's life."'7

One gets the impression that all of this is an attempted justificationfor his family's mode of study. There is nothing wrong with theoretical

study of halakhah, just as there is a place for theoretical science; but that

should not confuse one into thinking that the whole purpose of halakhah

or science is theory. In both cases it is application to the real world in

which people live that gives them their import.A corollary of Soloveitchick's theoretical formalism and avoidance

of legal applications is his failure to recognize the many factors which are

involved in a legal decision. Law is not simply a matter of the logicalrelations among pure ideas-either in Jewish law or in any other legal

system. Lawrequires thatconflicting values be weighed, thatcompromisesbe struck, and that the law be applied to the individual situation fairlyand sensitively. Moral concerns enter centrally into the process, and

personal, political, educational, social, economic, aesthetic and emotionalfactors also become important at times. The interaction between the

community and the law and the need for compromise between teachingand

realityare crucial features in the formation and

operationof the law.

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Halakhic Man

Soloveitchik's formalistic theory of Jewish law has no room for any of

this.

That comes at an expensive price. As Rabbi Simon Greenberg hasnoted,18refusing to recognize these factors is detrimental to the law itself

since it becomes irrelevant to people's real concerns. It also is detrimental

to the people trying to live by such law since nobody living outside of the

isolated atmosphere of the academycan possibly live in a structure created

for an ideal world, and those who try suffer immense, ungrounded guilt.

Ignoring the many factors mentioned above is also untraditional. The

Rabbis of the Talmud openly recognized the effect of these factorsupon

the law, and in that they were wise.Soloveitchik's staunchly theoretical stance misleads him not only in

regard to the nature of Jewish law; it also leads him to embrace an odd,and frankly un-Jewish, view of mankind. He says that Halakhic man has

no desire to act against the law since the halakhah s written into his

being:

It seems to him as thoughhe discovered he normin his innermost

self, as thoughit was not justa commandmenthat had been imposed

upon him,butan existential aw of his very being.Halakhicman doesnot strugglewith his evil impulses,nordoeshe clash with the tempterwhoseeksto deprivehimof his senses.Halakhicmen arenotsubject othe whisperedprofferof desire,andthey need notexertthemselves oresist its pull.19

It is true that Rabbinic sources say that the Torah is an antidote to the

evil inclination in people, and if Soloveitchik's Halakhic man is an ideal

type, I suppose he would therefore not feel any pangs of desire. In classi-

cal Judaism, though, that human condition occurs only in Messianictimes.20How helpful is it to describe "Halakhic man" in a way which

even the traditionproclaimed wasbeyond the capacityof normal, halakhi-

cally observantpeople? Jewish law does, afterall, provide for repentance,a theme which Soloveitchik himself develops in detail elsewhere. More-

over, according to one famous Rabbinicsource, it is notideal for Halakhic

man to lack desire to transgress the law; he should rather have strong

urges to transgress it but observe it nevertheless as a mark of his fealty

to God:

A man should not say, "It is impossible for me to eat swine's flesh, it is

impossible for me to enter into an incestuous relationship." He should

rather say, "It is certainly possible for me [alternate translation: I cer-

tainly want] to perform such acts, but what can I do, seeing that myFather in Heaven has decreed that I may not?"21

Soloveitchik's Halakhic man lacks not only illegitimate desire; he

also lacks fear andjoy.

"Halakhic man fearsnothing."22

n anotherplace,

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Halakhic Man

The translatorreports that he has consulted with Rabbi Soloveitchikin the process of creating this new translation, and so I trust that it is

faithful to theoriginal

text. Itsstyle is generally clear and its Englishmodern American. I do wish, though, that the translator would have

divided the original into shorter paragraphs. The one beginning on

page 83, for example, is three pages long! That not only is bad Englishform; it is also confusing. This is, though, a welcome addition to the

corpus of Jewish writings available in English-especially since this work

has had such a great influence upon segments of the Orthodox com-

munity.

And, notwithstandingall

mycriticisms

above,one can understand

why. There are some individual points in this work which are put in new

ways-that Judaism intends to make a difference in this world in contrast

to the otherworldliness of other religions; that halakhah s necessary for

that to happen lest Judaism be restricted to the sanctuary;thatrepentanceis an act of self-creation, and the difference between repentance for the

"religious man" (whose description includes many Christians, among

others) and for Halakhic man; and that the outlook and practices of

Halakhic man differmarkedly

from that of themystic, especially

in

regard to the type of intention required.29There is also an attempt, albeit

flawed, to generalize over the life of the halakhic Jew and put it in a per-spective, contrasting it with two other ways of organizing one's life and

thought. When this was written, little, if anything, had been written

within Orthodoxy to reflect upon the philosophical underpinnings of

Orthodox thought and practice in the modern, Western world and to

attempt to justify them. One can understand, then, why this work had the

impactit did on that

community. Subsequentwritings byother Orthodox

writers have gone beyond this and, in my view, have been more successfulin attaining their goal. Even so, it is important that English readers cannow read Rabbi Soloveitchik's "patchworkof scattered reflections" first-

hand in order to get an insight into the strengths and weaknesses of

Orthodoxy.UNIVERSITY OF JUDAISM

NOTES

1. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, HalakhicMan(Philadelphia, 1983),p. 44.2. Ibid.,p. 137.

3. Ibid.,pp. 13, 16, 30.

4. Ibid.,p. 79.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.,pp. 79, 90.

7. Ibid.,p. 63.

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Elliot N. Dorff

8. Ibid.,p. 100,his italics.

9. Ibid.,pp. 17-20,23.

10. Ibid.,p. 57.11. Ze'ev W. Falk, Law and Religion: TheJewishExperience Jerusalem, 1981),

p. 180. Cf. also Ch. 46 there. The citation from Holmes comes from his book,

CommonLaw(1881), p. 1.

12. Soloveitchik, HalakhicMan,pp. 17, 86.

13. Ibid.,p. 120.

14. Ibid.,p. 87.

15. Ibid.,p. 24.

16. Ibid.,p. 63.

17. Ibid.,p. 30; cf. pp. 61-62.18. Simon Greenberg, A JewishPhilosophyand Patternof Life(New York, 1981),

pp. 449-464,esp. pp. 459-462.

19. Soloveitchik, HalakhicMan,p. 65.

20. E.g.,Jeremiah31:32-33;Sanhedrin Ola, etc.

21. Sifra o Leviticus20:26.

22. Soloveitchik, HalakhicMan, p. 74.

23. Ibid.,p. 36; cf. p. 32.

24. Ibid.,p. 76.

25. Ibid.,p. 87; cf. also pp. 83-84.26. Ibid.,p. 17.

27. Ibid.,p. 41.

28. Ibid.,p. 64.

29. The first two points have been discussed above. For the last two cf. Ibid.,

pp. 110-117, 70-72, 59-60.

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Eliot Dorff on Halachik Man