The Lonely Man of Faith is the finest and simplest representation of Rabbi Soloveitchik's thought—on the meaning of the life of faith amid the many struggles of the modern world.

The Lonely Man of Faith

Religion & Spirituality

Joseph B.Soloveitchik

Judaism

Jason Aronson, Inc.

Text: English, Hebrew (translation)

Soloveitchik on Repentance (English and Hebrew Edition)

Paulist Press

Reflections of the Rav: Lessons in Jewish Thought

Ktav Pub Inc

Community, Covenant and Commitment includes more than seventy private and public letters written by the Rav, where he reveals his private opinions on contemporary issues such as religious Zionism, women studying Torah, interfaith issues, and topics close to his heart in areas of communal, theological, philosophical and personal concerns, as well as a number of detailed interviews conducted with him over the span of some forty years. These correspondences, epistles, and addresses, give us a glimpse into the Rav's thought. The topics addressed in this volume reflect the entire panoply of concerns that confronted the Orthodox and general Jewish community as its matured and grew in the hospitable setting of the American scene. Together with that, the rise of the modern State of Israel and the challenges that this posed became a focal point of the American Jewish community as well as of the thinking of the Rav. Topics include communal policy for Jewish adoption agencies, interfaith discussions with the Catholic Church, religious and theological attitudes to the State of Israel, interdenominational activities within the Jewish community, advanced Jewish education for young women, the training of learned and professional rabbis, as well as personal issues such as why Rabbi Soloveitchik never settled in Israel. Each letter or communication is prefaced by a short introduction giving its historical context. The entire volume is preceded by a lengthy introduction that discusses many of the background issues addressed in the letters. The editor of Community, Covenant and Commitment is Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot, co-editor of the rabbinic journal Or-HaMizrach, published by the Religious Zionists of America, and author of Divrei Berakahah u-Moed. His career in Jewish education includes teaching at the Frisch and Maayanot Yeshiva High Schools and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah.

Community, Covenant And Commitment: Selected Letters And Communications (MeOtzar HoRav, 4)

Biographies & Memoirs

Nathaniel Helfgot

Leaders & Notable People

Ktav Pub & Distributors Inc

Rabbi Soloveitchik's unique and widely influential approach to theodicy is that in the face of catastrophe and misfortune, we cannot ask why, since that question is unanswerable. Instead we must ask how we can grow and individuals and as a community. It is not the why? that is important, but the what? Rav Soloveitchik grapples with the enormity of the Shoah and the miracle of the founding of the State of Israel and what our responses should be to both. He contrasts a life of fate, where one is an object, with the life of destiny, where one is the subject and acts. We ask not about the reason for evil and its purpose, but rather about its rectification and uplifting. How should a person react in a time of distress? What should a person do so as not to rot in his affliction? We can not try to explain the irrational hatred that prevailed in the world between 1935 and 1945, nor should we assign blame within. We must focus instead on what we can learn from that fearsome time. Rav Soloveitchik does not concentrate on theodicy but rather on going forward. He shows that the Covenant of Fate during our suffering in Egypt is completed in the Covenant of Destiny at Sinai. Destiny joined fate to form a unit. A Jew who participates in the suffering of his nation and its fate, but does not join in its destiny, which is expressed in a life of Torah and mitzvot, destroys the essence of Judaism and injures his own uniqueness. By the same token, a Jew who is observant but does not feel the hurt of the nation, and who attempts to distance himself from Jewish fate, desecrates his Jewishness (p.73). He uses the language of the Song of Songs, Shir HaShirim, to describe the relationship between the Jewish people and our Beloved, Hashem. The response of the nation to kol dodi dofek, My Beloved is knocking (5.2) is tragic hesitation, not arising to answer the door, excuses: I have removed my cloak, how shall I put it on again? I have washed my feet, how shall I soil them? (5.3). By the time the nation awakens from its sloth, My Beloved had turned away, and was gone (5.6). Rav Soloveitchik gives examples of Hashem s knocking at our door : the United Nations resolution recognizing Israel; the miraculous victory on the battlefield when the Arab nations united against Israel and ended up ceding more land to the Jewish nation than had originally been planned; the theological implications of a Jewish government in Israel; Israel as a counterforce to assimilation and Jewish self-hatred, and as a factor in maintaining Jewish identity among the unaffiliated; Israel putting the power of self-defense in Jewish hands; Israel as a refuge for Jews how many lives would have been saved if we had possessed a country of our own in 1939. He shows that we have not answered properly, and how we should respond. His essay demonstrates the need for sophistication in many fields of knowledge in order to appreciate the workings of Hashem. For example, he analyzes how problematic the events of 1948 were for Christian theology. Christian belief had been predicated on a new covenant superseding the old one between God and the Jews, a new testament that fulfilled the meaning of the old one (that is why Jews say the Hebrew Bible, not the Old Testament ). Christians could handle the Land of Israel being desolate; they believed that promises about Zion and Jerusalem should be interpreted as foreshadowing Christianity and the Christian Church. But the allegorical reading no longer applied when Zion and Jerusalem were flourishing in Jewish hands.

Kol Dodi Dofek: Listen-my Beloved Knocks

And From There You Shall Seek is Rabbi Soloveitchik s fullest and most elaborate examination of religious consciousness and the dynamics of religious experience. Its presentation of the challenging interplay between cultural creativity, religious practice, and spiritual quest is sure to enrich the contemporary reader. Drawing its title from Deuteronomy 4:29 And from there you shall seek the Lord your God, and you shall find Him if you search for Him with all of your heart and all of your soul and framed by the evocative metaphors of the Song of Songs, the essay charts the individual s search for God, a quest which culminates in the stage of devekut, cleaving to Him. The human being initially seeks God by examining the natural and spiritual worlds. But this search fails; hence God must reveal Himself and express His will. Rabbi Soloveitchik explicates the contrast between these two different modes of experiencing the divine: the natural consciousness, marked by freedom and creativity, and the revelational consciousness, marked by compulsion and discipline. The remainder of the work elaborates on this dialectic, exploring such themes as the imitation of God, devekut, mercy and justice, trust and fear, love and awe, the rule of intellect, elevation of the body, the perpetuity of God s word, and creation and revelation. And From There You Shall Seek is a translation of Rabbi Soloveitchik's classic essay, U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham. Drafted in the 1940 s as a companion to his earlier treatise Halakhic Man, this powerful and wide-ranging work was published in Hebrew only in 1978.

And from There You Shall Seek (MeOtzar HoRav)

Rabbi Soloveitchik, one of the greatest Halakhic minds of the twentieth century, has left a remarkable legacy of public lectures. Among the most popular of venues for these lectures was the Kinus Teshuvah, where the Rav would weave halakhah and homiletics so compellingly that the line between them blurred and often disappeared entirely. Presented in Yiddish, these discourses (teshuvah derashot) combined halakhic depth with emotional power, leaving an enduring imprint on all who attended. 
From 1962 through 1980, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt"l annually presented a two- to- three hour lecture in Yiddish at the Kinus Teshuvah (Repentance Convocation) sponsored by the Rabbinical Council of America. These lectures (derashot) were delivered between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur on the topic of repentance and the Days of Awe.Many of the earlier derashot presented through 1972 were summarized by Rabbi Pinchas Peli inhis classic work Al Hateshuvah, later translated into English as On Repentance. This long-awaited volume is a summary of the derashot delivered from 1973 through 1980. 
Dr. Arnold Lustiger has organized the teshuvah derashot topically, from the pre-Rosh Hashanah Selihot prayers through the Yom Kippur Avodah and concluding Neilah services. He has included Biblical, Talmudic and Midrashic sources. He provides cross-references, with citations from Pelis On Repentance as well as from Rabbi Soloveitchiks written works that address and amplify important themes in these lectures in different and often greater detail. 
With the publication of this book, an audience anxious to see more of Rabbi Soloveitchiks thoughts in print can once again appreciate use of the definite article when his students and followers refer to him simply as "the Rav".

Before Hashem You Shall Be Purified : Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the Days of Awe

Ohr Publishing

The Lonely Man of Faith is a timeless philosophical essay by one of the twentieth century's greatest Jewish philosophers, Talmudic scholars, and religious leaders, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. In this classic work, Rabbi Soloveitchik probes the inner experience of those who seek both redemptive closeness with God and creative engagement with the world. With characteristic brilliance and eloquence, he delineates the struggle of people of faith to navigate between seemingly contradictory aspects of the human condition: the spiritual and the material, the religious and the scientific, the covenantal and the majestic.

Maggid

Now more than ever, the words of Rav Soloveitchik speak to us from across the threshold of time.Popularly known as the ?Hamesh Derashot,? The Rav Speaks consists of five speeches originally delivered by the Rav in the 1960?s. Then, as today, the eternal truth of his words spoke to the concerns and challenges we face as Jews in Israel and America.The essential principles of Judaism, and the eternal links between God, Torah, the Jewish people, and the Land of Israel are the themes that dominate this seminal work.

The Rav Speaks

Judaica Pr

The Koren Masorat HaRav Kinot provides the complete Tisha B'Av Service and an exceptional commentary by seminal scholar and leader, The Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Rabbi Soloveitchik's towering intellect shines through the commentary, which is based upon transcripts of his learning sessions. His exceptional insights and analyses of the themes and contemporary significance of Tisha B'Av are complemented by a new English translation of Kinot by Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb and Binyamin Shalom and an eloquent English translation of the tefilla by Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks. Edited by Rabbi Simon Poser; published in cooperation with the Orthodox Union.

The Koren Mesorat Harav Kinot: The Lookstein Edition (Hebrew and English Edition)

OU Press

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Books by Joseph B.Soloveitchik

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Joseph B.Soloveitchik. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Lonely Man of Faith

Soloveitchik on Repentance (English and Hebrew Edition)

Reflections of the Rav: Lessons in Jewish Thought

Community, Covenant And Commitment: Selected Letters And Communications (MeOtzar HoRav, 4)

Kol Dodi Dofek: Listen-my Beloved Knocks

And from There You Shall Seek (MeOtzar HoRav)

Before Hashem You Shall Be Purified : Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the Days of Awe

The Lonely Man of Faith

The Rav Speaks

The Koren Mesorat Harav Kinot: The Lookstein Edition (Hebrew and English Edition)