Comments on: Final Exam in Jewish Philosophy of Dr. Joseph Soloveitchik, 1936

By: J. Gilmour

J. Gilmour — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:04:40 +0000

“a bizzare guest lecture the Rav delivered at the 1937 chag ha-semikhah, in which he disparages the school’s ideal of synthesis”

This lecture was in 1956.

By: Dov Schwartz

Dov Schwartz — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:49:38 +0000

The examination shows that the Rav’s philosophical interest on that period focused solely in religious phenomenology (Scheler, Otto etc.). Existentialism appeared later, in the 50s.

By: Mark K.

Mark K. — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:48:58 +0000

Do the archives also contain a syllabus from the course?
It would be interesting to see what readings the Rav was assigning his students at that time.
-MAK

By: J.Gilmour

J.Gilmour — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:31:17 +0000

B”H

A very insightful article which helps the academic reader in clarifying the relationship between the Rav’s articles.

J. Gilmour.

By: G Field

G Field — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:01:47 +0000

While the fact that Rabbi Soloveitchik served as a professor of philosophy is not mentioned in Rabbi Rakaffet’s 2 volumes on the Rav, he did mention it many years earlier in his work on Bernard Revel (of course he was called Rabbi Rothkoff when that was published).

By: Nathaniel Helfgot

Nathaniel Helfgot — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:48:41 +0000

Shavuah Tov. Mr. Grossman, Thank you for your post. Indeed, as is obvious from context, in III a. I intended to write a “dash” and not a hyphen, I am sorry for the inadvertent error.

I reviewed the document again tonight and I saw that there were two other small errors in my transcription that I am asking R. Brody to correct.

In III b, I inadvertently left out “the” before the word “irrational”

In V c- I inadvertently added a “the” before the word “religious”
Kol tuv,
Nati Helfgot

By: Ethan Isenberg

Ethan Isenberg — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:24:38 +0000

I’ve seen the document before. R. J.J. Schacter included it among his handouts in a series of lectures he gave for the now-defunct Soloveitchik Institute, in 2002. He may have gotten it from you, Nati.

[Comment edited]

In any case, the Rav was referred to by the title “Dr.” in both the Boston Jewish Advocate and, I believe, the YU Commentator during that period. One of the old-timers I interviewed — perhaps the late R. Israel Shurin — recalled that when RJBS’s name came up as a possibility to replace the recently deceased Bernard Revel in 1940, he overheard one of the rebbeim at RIETS say, “Oh, you mean DR. Soloveitchik…”, implying that he was viewed as being too secular for the Yeshiva by some.

And just to give things a typical Soloveitchik twist, there’s an alternate theory for why the Rav did not teach at RIETS in the ’30s. R. Bernie Lander, in the piece he wrote for “Mentor of Generations”, mentions a bizzare guest lecture the Rav delivered at the 1937 chag ha-semikhah, in which he disparages the school’s ideal of synthesis. According to Lander, this incident led Bernard Revel to deny the Rav a position at RIETS.

So there you have it: One person portrays the Rav as having been viewed as too secular, while another implies that he was seen as being too insular!

By: J. Grossman

J. Grossman — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:47:27 +0000

Do you have a PDF file of the actual exam that you could post? I question the accuracy of the reproduction posted here, in view of the facts that in the reproduced question III.a. there is a hyphen rather than a dash between the words “consciousness” and “dependence,” that there appear to be other errors that I strongly doubt the Rav would have made, and that people in general make mistakes when they try to quote a lengthy passage. A missing or incorrect word or punctuation mark here or there makes a huge difference, especially in what was clearly a rigorously prepared and exquisitely formulated examination. Thank you.

By: tzvee

tzvee — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:29:57 +0000

What is the answer to question 1?
I. a. What is the basic idea of the “Intellectualist Theory” of the religious act? b. What are the conclusions? Criticism.

By: lawrence kaplan

lawrence kaplan — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:53:20 +0000

A fascinating document. I should point out that most of the questions in the exam reflect the issues discussed in Halahkic Mind. Also, while I do not have it here in front me, in the letter to Rabbi Leo Jung, found in Community, Covenant and Commitment, from circa 1937(?) the Rav discusses an article on the philosophy of Halakhah that he was considering submitting to a volume to be edited by Rabbi Jubg, and it also sounds a lot like Halakhic Mind.

By the way, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the title “Halakhic Mind” was not the title given to the essay by the Rav. He called it “Is a Philosophy of Halakhah Possible?” I once, only half-jokingly, suggested that a more acurate, if rather Germanic, title would be “A Prologomenon to the Halakhah as a Source for a New World View: On the Method of Reconstruction in the Philosophy of Religion.”