Also: Kuk, Abraham Isaac

Also: Kuk, Abraham Isaac

KOOK (Kuk), ABRAHAM ISAAC (1865–1935), rabbinical authority and thinker; first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of modern Erez Israel. Born in Greiva (now Griva), Latvia, Kook received the type of Jewish education that was customary in 19th-century Eastern Europe. At a very early age he showed independence of mind and far-reaching curiosity. Desirous to supplement his traditional education which was restricted to the study of Talmud, he undertook the study of the Bible, Hebrew language, Jewish and general philosophy, and mysticism. In 1888 he was appointed rabbi of Zaumel, and in 1895 became rabbi of Bausk (now Bauska). In 1904 he immigrated to Erez Israel, where he served as rabbi of Jaffa. There he fostered close ties with people of all shades of opinion and belief. He identified with the Zionist movement, thus antagonizing the rabbinical establishment, and at the same time, engaged in a vigorous debate with the irreligious pioneers. In his effort to urge traditional Jews to fulfill the Zionist ideal, he traveled to Europe in 1914 to participate in a conference of Agudat Israel. Unable to return to Erez Israel because of the outbreak of World War I, Kook accepted a temporary position as the rabbi of the Mahzikei ha-Dat congregation in London, where he was very active in trying to influence the Jews of England to back Zionist political activity. Upon returning to Palestine after the war, Kook was appointed chief rabbi of Jerusalem, and with the formation of the chief rabbinate in 1921 he was elected the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Palestine.

Kook developed his own views on the role of Zionism in Jewish history. He held that the return to Erez Israel marked the beginning of divine redemption (athalta di-ge'ullah), and that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 had ushered in a new era in the renewal of the Jewish people. However, in his view, the existing Zionist movement was incomplete insofar as it had taken up only the revival of the secular and material needs of the Jewish people. In the beginning of 1918 he published an open letter, in which he called upon Jews the world over to help in setting up the Degel Yerushalayim movement, which was to emphasize the spiritual aspects of the national revival. For a short while Kook's movement created some interest. However, this interest soon spent itself, and before long, the movement was entirely forgotten.

Kook was often misunderstood by the irreligious and despised by religious extremists. His relations with the religious Zionist party, Mizrachi, were ambivalent. He made it clear that, while he was glad of its existence, he viewed it as a political party which was out to safeguard purely practical religious interests. He was also continually at odds with the rabbis. While Kook thought of the chief rabbinate in Palestine as the first step toward the revival of the Sanhedrin, the majority of the rabbis were concerned with the preservation of the traditional patterns of rabbinical authority.

Kook also formulated a new program for yeshivah education. Critical of the yeshivot of his time for excluding secular subjects from the curriculum, Kook dreamed of establishing a yeshivah which would present to the student an integrated program of higher Jewish education. Students would be chosen not only on the basis of proficiency in Talmud but also on the basis of their knowledge of Bible. Emphasis would be placed on the development of a lucid style in both writing and speaking, for Kook hoped that the graduates would become teachers and spiritual leaders in their communities. While this ambitious program was never put into practice, Kook did, in 1924, set up a yeshivah in Jerusalem which was unique among yeshivot in its religious philosophy and its positive attitude to Zionism. This yeshivah became known as Merkaz ha-Rav.

In the last years of his life, Kook took up an extremely unpopular stance in defense of Stavsky, who was accused of the murder of Arlosoroff, placing himself in the painful position of fighting the Zionist Labor movement. At the same time the Neturei Karta zealots kept up their unrelenting campaign of vilification against him. Through out all this, Kook never gave up his love for the whole of the Jewish people, and not surprisingly, this love has been requited by the Jewish masses.

Mysticism

Kook is an example of a rare 20th-century phenomenon—the deeply religious mystic who takes an active interest in human affairs. There existed in Kook's personality a harmonious blending of mystical speculation and practical activities, which led to a synthesis of these two elements in his thought. Most mystical systems insist that man divest himself of the restraints of physical life in order to enable his soul to unite with the ineffable, i.e., to achieve the unio mystica. In Kook's system, however, the mystical urge for unity was meant to combine the communicable with the ineffable—to infuse the physical life of man with a religious purpose. There was no stress on self-abnegation in his mysticism.

Kook's personal religious experience moved him to be deeply concerned about the contemporary opposition to religion, and throughout his life he carried on a relentless search for the meaning of religion in the modern world. While identifying with the Zionist movement, he felt that it was a great tragedy that Zionism had sprung up toward the end of the 19th century, at a time when there was a general decline of all religions, including Judaism. Zionism, in his view, was a movement of rebellion, which attracted many of the young Jewish intellectuals who had shaken off their religious faith. He believed that the movement of return to the national homeland should be an essentially religious movement, for it was only in the Land of Israel that the Jewish people could work out its full religious life.

Modern Challenges to Religion

In Jewish life the beginning of the 20th century witnessed the most corroding assimilation and the most exhilarating national revival. Kook, who thoroughly understood his age, characterized his generation in dialectical terms as consisting of clashing opposites: "Ours is a wonderful generation... It consists of opposites, darkness and light exist in confusion."

Kook was convinced that in spite of the decline of religion, mankind had moved to a higher stage in cultural growth. The tragedy of modern man was that he had made tremendous progress in everything but religion, so that religion appeared to have stood still. In his analysis of the situation of modern man, Kook traced three main elements of change in man's view of the world, which led to a dissatisfaction with religion. First, man's perception of human society was radically new. For the first time in history the common man became aware of the fact that he belonged not only to his family or narrow circle of acquaintances, but to the large society of man. He was, therefore, critical of traditions that were rooted in his immediate environment and strove for a more universal view of the world. Second, the scientific picture of the universe appeared to clash with the traditional religious view. Third, the idea of evolution, not only as a theory in the natural sciences but also as a general cultural concept, upset the established patterns of religious thought.

Many of the rebellious youth at the beginning of the century were imbued with a "religious" passion for justice and equality, and it seemed to them that the traditional faith in God and revelation was inimical to progress. At best, religion appeared to be indifferent to social issues, at worst, to be actively thwarting reform. Many young Jews in Eastern Europe joined social revolutionary movements and broke all ties with Judaism. While deploring their revolt against the Jewish faith, Kook pointed out that they left Judaism because they passionately felt the need to improve the condition of society and sincerely believed that religion carried no social message. He went on to argue that it was a measure of man's progress that what he called "contemporary heresy," in opposition to pagan barbarism, was associated with the struggle for righteousness and justice. He was firmly convinced that irreligion was a passing phenomenon in history. He maintained that eventually the divine spark which is hidden in the social passion would burst forth and infuse all human endeavor with a selfless nonutilitarian devotion and heightened spiritual enthusiasm.

Social Philosophy

While criticizing social ideologies that limit their interest to material conditions, Kook at the same time criticized religious people who were not interested in social questions, lashing out against "any ideology that ignores the need of improving the state of the world... and instead hovers in a rarefied atmosphere and boasts of the perfection of the soul."

Kook was disturbed by society's preoccupation with the acquisition of wealth. While he did not think that theology should provide a specific formula for political and social reform, he believed that "a consistent application of all the laws of the Torah in social and economic matters" would not tolerate the prevailing capitalist system, since the principle of "Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord" (Deut. 6:18) limits the privileges of the holder of private property and imposes heavy obligations upon him. He interpreted the biblical Jubilee year (Lev. 25:8–12) as a suspension of all acquisitive economic dealings: "A year of quiet and peace, without oppressor or master, a year of equality and tranquility, without any particular private property or any special privilege..." Kook's social philosophy was rooted in his theory of the relationship of religious piety to morality. Thus he wrote: "Piety should on no account push aside the natural sense of morality, for it would then no longer remain pure piety. The criterion of pure piety is that the natural morality, which is inherent in man's nature, steadily improves over and above what it would have been without his piety."

The Sacred and the Profane

In accordance with his harmonistic view of man and of the world, Kook refused to see a sharp dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, maintaining that all that was essential to human life was potentially sacred. All the advances that men achieved in science were part of the intellectual growth of mankind, and if these advances appeared to undermine religion, this was no reason to suspect their intrinsic value. What was wrong, Kook argued, was not the progress of science but the fact that religious thinking did not progress intellectually at an equal rate.

The physical concerns of man are inseparable from his spiritual aspirations. Kook wrote: "The sacred and the profane together influence the spirit of man and he becomes enriched through absorbing from each of them whatever is suitable." In order for holiness to be achieved, the sacred and profane must be synthesized. The activation of the intellect is a prerequisite for the attainment of holiness, and only the man who is physically healthy can activate his intellect. Using the metaphor of ascending a ladder to describe the process of attaining holiness, Kook compared the physical needs of man to the lowest rungs of the ladder. Just as the lower rungs of the ladder must be climbed before the higher rungs can be reached, so man must satisfy his physical needs before he can attain spiritual perfection.

The interpretation of holiness as being in continuous relation to the profane is "the natural view of holiness." The opposite view of holiness as a state of pure spirituality was criticized by Kook for its one-sidedness and lack of balance. He maintained that this view of holiness became prevalent among the Jewish people in the course of their dispersion, when they were cut off from a normal existence in their homeland and, therefore, called this "the holiness of the exile." The renaissance of a normal Jewish life in the national homeland should bring about the return to the ideal of "normal" holiness.

Science

In an address delivered at the opening ceremony of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1925, Kook advocated the synthesis of religious and secular studies. He maintained that the study of the secular sciences should be complementary to the study of Torah, but warned that the exclusive preoccupation with scientific research would alienate man from ultimate religious values.

Kook was critical of the modern predilection for pure scientific research that deliberately ignores ultimate objectives and consequences. Although pure science can explain much about the things that exist, it cannot "create" their meaning and significance, nor can it give shape and direction to man's life. Contrasting the biblical account of man's origin with the Darwinian theory of the origin of the species, Kook wrote: "It is absolutely immaterial to us whether there was in fact in antiquity a golden age when man enjoyed an abundance of material and spiritual wealth, or whether life began from the bottom and rose from the lowest rung of existence toward a higher, and that it continues upwards. What we must recognize is that it is distinctly possible that man, even after he has risen high, can forfeit everything by wickedness, and that he is likely to harm himself and generations to come. This is what we should learn from the story of Adam in paradise." Rejecting the literal exegesis of the second chapter of Genesis, he maintained that the creation chapters required a profound mystical interpretation. While many people regarded the concept of evolution as a threat to religion, Kook considered evolution congenial to the deeper insights of Jewish mysticism which has always viewed the world as continuously evolving toward the goal of ultimate perfection. Unlike Bergson, who regarded evolution as the product of a blind and undirected Mlan vital, Kook maintained that there was a passionate purpose and direction in evolution—the overwhelming longing of man to cleave to God, which can be attained only through the progressive effort of generations, each moving closer to the goal of holiness.

Universalism and Nationalism

Kook believed that the world is continually evolving toward universalism, which is at present only an ideal toward which man must be educated within individual national units. Nationality is, accordingly, an essential step in the divine scheme of evolution toward universalism. In this scheme Jewish nationality is marked by the concept of "chosenness": the Jews are a people who were designated to "work and toil with the utmost devotion" to further the divine goal of human perfection and universalism. According to Kook, God imposed a divine task upon the Jewish nation, but it is up to the Jews to accept upon themselves and carry out this divine task. Jewish nationality differs from that of other nations in that its mainspring is not social, economic, geographical, or historical—but divine. The "sacred connection" between the Jewish nation and the land of Israel cannot be compared with the natural connection that every nation has with its country—a connection that develops in the course of history, after a nation has lived on its land for many years. The divine connection between the people of Israel and the land of Israel is not the result of historical causes. On the contrary, the connection is the cause of the history of the people of Israel. It was the divine plan that led the people of Israel to make the Land of Israel its country, and to create its history there. Thus, the relationship of the Jews to Israel is essential to the divine scheme. According to Kook, just as the people of Israel possesses an immanent holiness so does the Land of Israel.

Works

Kook was a prolific writer, who, according to his students, wrote out of the constant urge to create. He never attempted to construct a comprehensive system, and his style mirrors the quality of his personal insights and mystical reflections. Kook's speculative writings are contained in the following works: Orot ha-Kodesh, 3 vols. (1963–642); Iggerot ha-Re'ayah, 3 vols. (1962–652); Orot (19612); Orot ha-Teshuvah (19552), translated into English as Rabbi Kook's Philosophy of Repentance (1968); Erez Hefez (1930); Eder ha-Yekar ve-Ikvei ha-Zon (19672); and E. Kalmanson (ed.), Ha-Mahashavah ha-Yisre'elit (1920). The following are among his halahkhic works: Shabbat ha-Arez (19372); Da'at Kohen (1942); and Mishpat Kohen (19662).

[Zvi Zinger (Yaron)]

KOOK, ZEVI JUDAH BEN ABRAHAM ISAAC HA-KOHEN (1891–1982), Israel rosh yeshivah. Born in Zimel, Kovno region, Zevi Judah was the only son of A.I. Kook. In 1904 he settled in Erez Israel with his parents and studied in the yeshivah Ez Hayyim in Jerusalem. He helped his father with the administration of the central yeshivah of Israel, Yeshivat Merkaz ha-Rav, and after his father's death in 1935, succeeded him as its head, together with his brother-in-law, Shalom Nathan-Ra'anan (d. 1972). Continuing his father's thought and method in education, he succeeded in educating thousands of pupils from all sections of the population. His positive attitude toward the State of Israel influenced the yeshivah. He published innumerable articles, mainly dealing with the halakhic attitude to topical events, and some were collected in the work Li-Netivot Yisrael (1967). He also devoted himself to editing and publishing his father's writings with source references and notes.

Following the Six-Day War the aged Rabbi Kook achieved considerable prominence as the spiritual father of Gush Emunim, and generally adopted an extreme nationalistic view, strenuously advocating the right of the Jews to the whole of Erez Israel and opposing any withdrawal.

[Editorial Staff Encyclopaedia Judaica]

Also: Soloveichik, Joseph Dov (r., U.S.)

SOLOVEITCHIK, JOSEPH DOV (1903–1993), U.S. talmudic scholar and religious philosopher, and scion of a preeminent Lithuanian rabbinical family (see Soloveitchik Family). Soloveitchik was born in Pruzhan, Poland where his maternal grandfather, Elijah Feinstein, was the rabbi. Soloveitchik spent his early years in Hasloviz, Belorussia, where his father, Moses, served as rabbi. Until his early twenties, Soloveitchik devoted himself almost exclusively to the study of Talmud and halakhah. Under his father's tutelage, he mastered his grandfather's (see Hayyim Soloveichik) method of talmudic study, with its insistence on incisive analysis, exact classification, critical independence, and emphasis on Maimonides' Mishneh Torah. In his late teens Soloveitchik received the equivalent of a high school education from private tutors, and at the age of 22 entered the University of Berlin. He majored in philosophy and was attracted to the neo-Kantian school. In 1931 he received his doctorate for his dissertation on Hermann Cohen's epistemology and metaphysics. That same year he married Tonya Lewit (d. 1967), herself the recipient of a doctorate in education from Jena University, who ably assisted him in all his endeavors. In 1932 they emigrated to the United States. A few months after his arrival, Soloveitchik became rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish community of Boston, the city which remained his home. He founded the first Jewish day school in New England, the Maimonides School, and also conducted postgraduate talmudic classes for young scholars who gathered around him. With the influx of European yeshivah students during the late 1930s, this advanced talmudic institute was organized on a more formal basis as the Hekhal Rabenu Hayim Halevi and Yeshivath Torath Israel. However, this new school was disbanded in 1941 when Soloveitchik succeeded his father as professor of Talmud at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University. For many years he also lectured at the university's Bernard Revel Graduate School, where he served as professor of Jewish philosophy. In these positions Soloveitchik became the spiritual mentor of the majority of the American-trained Orthodox rabbis, and for decades inspired students to follow his teachings. From 1952 Soloveitchik also exerted a decisive influence on Orthodoxy in his capacity as chairman of the Halakhah Commission of the Rabbinical Council of America. He also identified himself with the Religious Zionists of America (Mizrachi), and has been the organization's honorary president since 1946. Following the death of Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog in 1959, Soloveitchik declined to be a candidate to succeed him as Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel. He represented the American Jewish Community in the Advisory Committee on Humane Methods of Slaughter set up by the secretary of agriculture in 1959. Soloveitchik was also the principal Jewish representative in Yeshiva University's Institute of Mental Health project undertaken in 1960 with Harvard and Loyola universities to study religious attitudes to psychological problems.

Soloveitchik was looked up to in North America as the unchallenged leader of enlightened Orthodoxy and was popularly known simply as "the Rav." His main influence was through his lectures and public discourses. As a talmudic and halakhic expositor, Soloveitchik had an unusual facility for explaining difficult technical problems. He was also an orator of note in his native Yiddish, as well as in English and Hebrew. The annual halakhic and aggadic discourse which he delivered in Yeshiva University on the anniversary of his father's death attracted thousands of listeners and was regarded as the major annual academic event for United States Orthodox Jewry. Although he wrote much, Soloveitchik published very little, continuing his family's tradition of reluctance to appear in print due to the demands of perfectionism. His main publication was a lengthy essay, "Ish ha-Halakhah" (Talpioth (1944), 651–735), in which his basic theological position was stated. Soloveitchik's thought focused on assessing the human situation. Man is viewed as both passive and active, cause and effect, and object and subject. When man lives in accordance with the halakhah, he becomes master of himself and the currents of his life. He controls his thoughts, desires, and actions, and he ceases to be a mere creature of habit. His life becomes sanctified, and God and man are drawn into a community of existence which Soloveitchik termed "a covenantal community." This community brings God and man together in an intimate, person-to-person relationship. It is only through the observance of the halakhah that man attains this goal of "nearness to God." Soloveitchik stressed that in halakhah nothing is sacred until man designates it so. A Torah scroll is only holy when it has been sanctified by the scribe, and the Temple and all its appurtenances remain profane unless specifically dedicated by humans. Soloveitchik often pointed out that Mount Sinai, which God sanctified by his descent to man, has retained no trace of holiness whereas Mount Moriah, which Abraham consecrated by his ascent to God, became the site of the Temple and remained eternally holy. Among his other published essays were "The Lonely Man of Faith" (Tradition, 7 no. 2 (1965), 5–67), and Kol Dodi Dofek (in: S. Federbush (ed.), Torah u-Melukhah (1969), 11–44) in which he defined the position of the Religious Zionist Movement confronted with the realities of the reborn State of Israel. Soloveitchik opposed many aspects of the dialogue initiated by the Catholic Church with Jewish leaders as part of the Church's ecumenical movement during the 1960s. He held that there could be no dialogue concerning the uniqueness of each religious community since each is an individual entity which cannot be merged or equated with a community which is committed to a different faith (see his "Confrontation," in Tradition, 6, no. 2 (1964), 5–29). Soloveitchik's position was accepted as official policy by all segments of Orthodox Jewry.

[A.Ro.]

In later years, Soloveitchik seems to have modified his previous refusal to have any of his oral discourses published and Pinchas Peli published two volumes of them, the first, Al ha-Teshuvah ("On Repentance," 1976), and the second, Be-Sod ha-Yahid ("Aloneness and Togetherness," 1977), a collection from his sparse and scattered writings (1977).

An unauthorized version of his halakhic discourses appeared in print in Israel and Soloveitchik took court action to prevent its distribution. In the Spring 1978 edition of Tradition, 17:2, however, there appear five addresses which he delivered on various occasions. "The Lonely Man of Faith" was republished in Studies in Judaism (1975). Other works presenting Soloveitchik's thought are his Reflections of the Rav: Lessons in Jewish Thought (1979) and The Halakhic Mind (1986). These publications, together with further research into his philosophy by, among others, Nathan Rotenstreich, Joseph Dan, Lawrence Kaplan, Ruth Birnbaum, and Pinchas Peli have established Soloveitchik as a religious existentialist of unique quality.

Repentant Man in the Thought of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik

MAN IN RABBI SOLOVEITCHIK'S THOUGHT

Man stands at the center of Rabbi Joseph Dov Halevi Soloveitchik's religious thought. His study of man is not comprehensive, nor does it attempt to encompass the totality of human experience and behavior. Rather, it is presented episodically with the aim of identifying and establishing a typology of man and of human society.1 According to this approach, man must be studied and judged in the light of essentially human criteria. Thus, the Rav (Rabbi Soloveitchik was generally referred to among his many followers and disciples as the Rav meaning the teacher) solidly established the typological characteristics of "Halakhic Man"2 by contrasting him with "Religious Man" and "Rational Man"3; thus, too, he anchored his "Lonely Man of Faith"4 in the prototypes of "Adam the First" and "Adam the Second" as these emerge, according to him, from the two versions of the creation of man in the Torah.

The lines of demarcation between one type and another are not always clear and sharply drawn. Often, characteristics of one type will be shared by another, and though the types portrayed in the Rav's typological system are purely ideal, such as are often used in theoretical philosophy, he was conscious that in reality the types—rarely simple and often complex—at most approximated to their ideal counterparts. That he was aware of this is apparent in his comparison between the ideal "Halakhic Man" and the real "Halakhic Man."5 Similarly, he occasionally noted the congruence between the different types (by way of shared traits).6

The publication of Rabbi Soloveitchik's reflections on repentance7 seems to compel the addition to his typological categories of another type definable, along the lines of the Rav's terminology, as "Repentant Man." Unfortunately, Rabbi Soloveitchik has not yet given a final or systematic presentation of his thought in this matter. We have at our disposal only fragmentary and disjointed evidence upon which to build our analysis. Nonetheless, it appears that "Repentant Man" may be legitimately viewed as inhabiting the highest rung of this typological ladder. To judge from the evidence, "Repentant Man" enjoys an abundance of the positive traits identified by the Rav in the other established types as these endeavor to express their humanity as creatures created in the Divine Image, and are at the same time possessed of independent creative powers coupled with a powerful compulsion to draw near to their Creator. In the person of "Repentant Man" these two ontological tendencies converge and become a unified perfection which propels man towards his ultimate destination—salvation.

Moreover, while the depth of the personality of Rabbi Soloveitchik's other types is measured according to criteria of the torments of duality, contradiction, doubts and struggles which issue in the "emergence of a personality shrouded in sanctity whose soul was purified in the smithy of perplexity and contradiction and refined in the fires of spiritual conflict," from the spiritual struggle which is the lot of "Repentant Man" there emerges a perfection of personality "of incomparable splendor and glory unknown among those, whole and simple, who have never undergone the tribulations of internal spiritual conflict."8 As Rabbi Soloveitchik asserts: "According to the trouble, so the wage; according to the tear, so the patch." In the Rav's conception of human ontology which rests, according to his own testimony,9 on the dialectical philosophies of Heraclitus and Hegel concerning the general process of being, and on the views of Kierkegaard, Karl Barth and Rudolf Otto concerning the religious experience and religious awareness, immense creative power is vested in the antithesis. "Inconsistency enriches existence, contradiction renews Creation, negation builds worlds, and denial deepens and expands consciousness."10 The portrait of "Repentant Man" rests mainly upon these foundations. Should one seek a parallel in the Rav's typological framework, it would be found in the type defined as the "Man of God," about whom the Rav intimates that "his stature is established in the pangs of redemption and appearance crystallizes in the pains of salvation."11

"REPENTANT MAN" AND THE ATTAINMENT OF MAN'S GOAL

If suffering creates, ennobles and toughens, and brings the soul nearer to the object of its yearning, then "Repentant Man" is the type which comes closest to attaining man's goal, for his conception and maturation owe everything to suffering.

Four characteristic traits identify "Repentant Man," according to Rabbi Soloveitchik: profundity of suffering, a depth of experience, the ability to make decisions in the light of free choice, and the capacity to create.

The Rav's conception of ontology is directed to four traits which are to be found, in some measure, in the other types established and described by Rabbi Soloveitchik, but never in so concentrated a form as in his "Al ha-Teshuvah." This comprises man's freedom, his drives, his existence as a repository of the Shekhinah, his investiture with free choice (which allows him to adopt a new Law of causation) and his penchant for salvation. God created man free. This liberty, however, does not represent an abandonment on His part. Rather man, born in the image of God, always remains, as it were, in the Divine Presence. He can never completely liberate himself of the religious attraction which draws him to God, which is akin to an undisseverable umbilical cord.12 Man cannot flee from God because God chose the human soul as a dwelling place much like a Temple. "The House of the God of Old"—where is God's house? "Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this House that I have built?" (I Kings, 8:27); Where lives the Almighty and where lives God the Eternal? The Almighty resides in man, in his heart and soul, and He never departs therefrom even if man sins and defiles the sacred abode. God, as it were, inhabits the deepest recesses of the sinning soul... "that dwelleth with them in the midst of their uncleanliness" (Lev. 16:16).

The Almighty has two dwelling places in man, two temples. One is the temple of the emotions, a holy of holies from which issue human sentiments such as sympathy, astonishment, mercy, goodness, reverence, happiness, sadness, amazement. The other temple is that of the mind. Where a man thinks, as he studies the Torah and refines and sanctifies his intellect, there resides the Almighty. One house of the God of Old is in the heart of man, and the other is in the human brain; one is in the emotions, the other in the mind."14

The permanent religious affinity, the "living together" of God and man in one house, does not produce a calming or tranquilizing effect. On the contrary, "the religious act is essentially one of suffering. When man and God meet, man is called upon by the Divine to embark on a course of self-sacrifice which is manifested in a struggle against his primitive instincts, in a breaking of the individual will, in the acceptance of a 'transcendental burden,' in an occasional dissociation from the pleasant and attractive, and in an addiction to the bitter and the strange... 'Make sacrifices'—that is the command governing the religious man."15

The lot of the religious man is a constant, difficult and tiring struggle, not tranquility. "The beauty of religion, with its grandiose vistas, reveals itself to man not in solutions, but in problems; not in harmony, but in the constant conflict of diversified forces and trends...";16 the attainment of sanctity, according to Rabbi Soloveitchik, does not lead man to paradise, but rather to paradox.

The suffering to which man is condemned is not necessarily a punishment; rather, "suffering is there to uplift man, to cleanse his spirit and sanctify him, to purify his thought and to rid it of all manner of superficial dross and vulgar chaff, to ennoble his soul and to expand his life's vision. In short, the function of suffering is to set right that which is distorted and defective in the human character.... Suffering appears in the world in order to enhance man.... 'It is a time of distress for Jacob and he shall be saved out of it' (Jer. 30:7)—i.e., out of misfortune will spring forth eternal salvation. [Man will be] uplifted to a degree incomparably above that possible in a world devoid of suffering."17 Man's existence in the presence of God involves suffering; man's affinity to God is expressed in constant sacrifice. Only through sacrifice and total subservience to God can man achieve complete freedom and salvation.

Man's subservience to God must be complete and unconditional. This decisive subordination is tantamount to total freedom in relation to the other enslavements to which man is prone. The enslavement to God—which is all-embracing—releases man from a long list of other bondages. Only when a man has one sovereign, to whom he owes unreserved allegiance, is he truly liberated and free. When a man is subservient to more than one being, he is then "taking a hand in some form of idolatry." What then of positive ties of loyalty, such as to children and family? The Torah instructs us to love our children with a great passion... "as a father pities his son" is a common simile of compassion and love in our liturgy. Nonetheless, Rabbi Soloveitchik suggests the daring proposition that the narrative of the sacrifice of Isaac was related only in order to teach later generations that parental love must not be allowed to deteriorate into complete enslavement, i.e., into a form of idolatry.18

Man attains liberty through self-sacrifice. "Total and unreserved offering of soul and body—that is the foundation of Judaism," asserts Rabbi Soloveitchik.19 Moreover, he hazards that, in essence, "Judaism does not prohibit the sacrifice of humans"; i.e., he explains, though the Torah forbids human sacrifice and regards the phenomenon as an example of the obscene in idolatry, it does not ban the notion of self-sacrifice. In the words of the Rav, "God demands not tribute from man, but man himself."20 Rabbi Soloveitchik sees the central philosophical idea underlying the act of sacrifice explained in Maimonides' assertion that man is the property of the Creator. Man and all his belongings, his body and soul, ideas, actions, achievements and possessions, even his wife and children—all belong not to man, but to his Creator. And if man is "the property of the Almighty, then he has no choice when the Voice of God calls out to him to 'take now thy son, thine only son,' and sacrifice him, but to arise and set out to obey the command." Abraham has no rights in the disposal of his son, Isaac; Isaac has no claim over Abraham. Man is free; he attains that freedom through exercising his right to self-sacrifice in the service of his Creator.

Were it allowed, the Law would call for human sacrifices, but the dispensation of Grace precludes this, asserting: "Ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock" (Lev. 1:2). Animal sacrifice is allowed as a substitute for human sacrifice, but the meaningfulness of the sacrifice remains, as it were, undiminished; so in the sacrifice of Isaac, and so in all other sacrificial offerings. "As the sacrifice is burnt upon the altar, so we burn, in the act of confession over the sacrifice, our entrenched tranquility, our well-nurtured pride, our artificial lives. Through the sacrifice, or through the suffering which stands in its stead, we repeatedly feel ourselves 'in the presence of God.'"21

Man's existential condition, in fact, means suffering, doubt, struggles with the world and within oneself. Only "Repentant Man" can attain that highest plateau to which suffering can introduce man, for the very emergence of "Repentant Man" into this world involves conscious and severe birth pangs.

THE CONCEPT OF SIN

In order to understand the concept of repentance, it is necessary to fathom the concept of sin as it emerges from Rabbi Soloveitchik's reflections on the subject of repentance. The two concepts—sin and repentance—are interlocked and bound together in a single, dialectical system, and both constitute stages through which "Repentant Man" must pass on his way to salvation.

Yom Kippur has two aspects: the experience of that day results first in atonement and, secondly, in purification: as it is written (Lev. 16: 30): "For on that day shall atonement be made for you to purify you." Both these elements—atonement and purification—according to Rabbi Soloveitchik, are a direct consequence of sin. For in sin both elements are to be found:

(a) sin binds; atonement or pardon provides a counterweight;

(b) sin defiles; purification or forgiveness restores the sinner to his original state.

The sin that binds does so, much like obligation and subjection in the juridical sense. There is no sin without punishment, which in a terrestrial or in a heavenly court means pardon (mehilah), a word originating in [laws of property]. As a man foreswears (mohel) a sum owed to him by a friend, so God forgoes (mohel) and erases (mekhapper) the punishment which sin entails. However, the sin that defiles is of another order—the metaphysical one. It exists in the domain of man-God relations. Sin deforms and damages the innermost part of man—his soul, wherein dwells the Shekhinah.22

Juridical sin, the sin that binds, is revealed to man by his intellect. Repentance of such a sin is generally undergone through calculation, through a desire to erase an obligation, or through fear of the impending punishment. Metaphysical sin, on the other hand, becomes part of man's existential experience and the deeper the sin, the deeper the experience of repentance which follows.

Sin causes man's remoteness from God. The sinner becomes, in the words of Maimonides—whom Rabbi Soloveitchik is wont to quote: "Separate from the God of Israel, for it is written that your sins separate you from God." To be sure, God remains in man also after he sins, but He is so remote that the sinner does not feel His presence at all. Only afterwards, sooner or later, he begins to feel God's absence and, as a result, is beset by existential dread and fear.

Before the stage of "recognition of sin," which is already an integral part of the act of repentance itself, Rabbi Soloveitchik distinguishes a prior stage defined as a "feeling of sin," which is similar to a man's feeling of an encroaching illness. Het, Holi (sin, illness) is a parallel concept employed by medieval Jewish philosophers, and already hinted at in the Bible (Ps. 103:3): "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases." It was expanded by Rabbi Soloveitchik23 to explain the feeling of sin, which is the initial experience and precondition of all repentance or purification. Sin constitutes a kind of spiritual pathology. As there are pathological physical illnesses in which the tissues cease to function normally and the cells begin to grow wildly, so sin is a sign of a spiritual pathology whose outcome is the disintegration of the whole personality. As in physical disease, so in the spiritual disease of sin. Sometimes a man attempts to erase, to belittle or to deny pain, because of overt or covert fear. Pains begin to engender dread, but man's first reaction is to dismiss them or to belittle their significance. But belittling them will not diminish their importance; on the contrary, had he taken immediate notice and begun to have them treated, it is possible that a cure for his spreading illness would have been found.

The comparison between sin and pathological illness is complemented by the comparison between sin and mourning. The Torah says of the sin of the golden calf: "And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned; and no man did put on him his ornaments" (Ex. 33:4). In the wake of this sin there descended upon the people a strong sense of mourning. Likewise, in the episode of the spies, a sense of mourning overcame the people after the sin (Num. 14:39). Mourning is a reaction to loss; it descends upon man like a vague, almost primitive, sense of loss, of awful incapacity, and develops into a strong feeling of nostalgia, of pining after something, of retrospective memories. The power of mourning, its brutality and loneliness, is centered in the human memory. Were man able to forget, to erase memory, there would be no mourning. The mourner mourns a kindred and loved person who was once and is no more, while the sinner mourns that which has been lost. What has been lost through sin is man's soul, which is like losing everything, for he has lost his closeness to his Creator, that proximity which allowed him access to purity and sanctity, to perfection and spiritual richness; he has lost the inherence of the holy spirit in man and that which gives meaning and the significance of life to human existence.

"Repentant Man" in excelsis reaches repentance not through calculation and fear of punishment, but through the via dolorosa, a sense of sin which fills him with powerful longing and sharp feelings of mourning. The experience of sin completely fills man with boundless fear and a wild, vague dread; the more deeply these are felt, the closer man comes to the possibility of overcoming them through the power of repentance.

"MOURNING OF SIN"

This dread-filled sense of remoteness from God, isolation, longing and mourning is in the main a powerful aesthetic (or anti-aesthetic) experience. Mourning always contains an element of masochism. The mourner tortures and chastises himself; indeed, he hates himself. This applies equally to the "mourning of sin." The sinner begins to feel contempt and abomination of self, and masochistic self-hatred. In his eyes the sin turns into something abominable, loathsome, nauseating.

"The feeling of sin," says Rabbi Soloveitchik, "is not a moral experience." Man's ethical sense is not a very potent factor. This feeling of sin, which draws man towards repentance, is an aesthetic experience; or rather, a negative aesthetic experience. The sinner senses that which is abominable and corrupting in sin. "The pangs of sin lie in the nausea caused by its obnoxious taint."24 This sense of abomination (wonderfully described in the story of Amnon and Tamar [II Sam. 13], as interpreted by Rabbi Soloveitchik),25 is also connected to a sense of shame: shame in one's own acts. The sense of abomination intermingles with the sense of shame and opprobrium. The sin appears to the sinner like a terrible monster; he is filled with shame through having come into contact with the "bestial"; and out of the shame, the sense of abomination, of mourning, and of the other emotions which comprise the sense of sin, he begins to ascend the ladder of "Repentant Man," at last attaining repentance itself. This transition from sin to repentance does not occur on the intellectual plane: "The human intellect takes practically no part [in the process]"; it transpires rather mainly on the emotional, experiential and instinctive planes.

Through all the stages of the ascent of "Repentant Man," Rabbi Soloveitchik lays strong emphasis upon the experiential-emotional element which leads the penitent to the feeling of sin in contrast with the intellectual-cognitive element; the latter leads man to repentance by way of "knowledge of sin," of "consciousness of sin," but not to a "repentance through love"—Teshuvah me-Ahavah—the "higher repentance"—Teshuva Meulah—which is the peak attained by "Repentant Man."

This stress on the experiential-emotional element, side by side with the intellectual-cognitive element, runs like a motif through all Rabbi Soloveitchik's descriptions of the essence of the religious phenomenon in general. Thus, for instance,26 he distinguishes between the mitzvah of "belief in the Divine" (in Maimonides' Sefer ha-Mitzvot) and "the foundation of foundations and the mainstay of wisdom, to know that there exists a First Being" (with which Maimonides' Mishneh Torah opens).

He discerns here two different aspects of the principles of faith, and he adds that "this double employment of the mitzvah of the existence of God in the sense of "believing" and in the sense of "knowing" is not confined to this issue only, but has implications which extend to all the other mitzvot, as this mitzvah lies at the root and source of all the mitzvot."27 Rabbi Soloveitchik applies this "knowing" to all the mitzvot and not merely to the belief in the existence of God, and he interprets it in such a way that the belief in the existence of God will become a continuous and constant awareness of God's reality, a consciousness that never wavers or suffers from absentmindedness. While the phrase "to believe" contains no prohibition against forgetfulness—for it is possible to believe and yet turn one's mind away from the object of that belief—the phrase "to know" implies "that the belief in God shall be constant in man, a permanent orientation, a living reality from which man cannot divert his attention even for a moment. This awareness of the reality of God must be the basis of our thought, ideas, feelings under all conditions and in all circumstances; all must turn upon this faith."28

At this point Rabbi Soloveitchik draws near to the Ba'al Shem Tov's hasidic concept of faith which incorporates this interpretation of faith under the heading of devekut (communion).29 Like the Ba'al Shem Tov, Rabbi Soloveitchik links his interpretation30 to the biblical corroboration of Prov. 3:6: "In all thy ways acknowledge Him," which already in the Talmud (Ber. 53a) was considered "a small matter upon which the whole body of the Torah hangs," and which explains the passage in a manner almost identical with that presented in the name of the Ba'al Shem Tov (which states: "In all thy ways 'know Him'—that is a great rule, 'know Him' in the sense of a coming together... In all His deeds, even in things terrestrial, it is necessary that his work be done only for a higher purpose and let nothing, even the smallest thing, be done for any purpose other than a heavenly one" (Zava'at ha-Ribash, Jerusalem 1969, p. 230). In the words of Rabbi Soloveitchik " 'In all thy ways'—in everything thou doest, in every path thou takest, in all situations, under all conditions—'know Him', retain this awareness of the existence of God."

As is his wont, Rabbi Soloveitchik splendidly and at length describes all the places, situations and circumstances in human life in which man can and should 'know' God. "To believe is necessary, but is not enough; one must also feel and sense the existence of God. The presence of the Almighty must be a personal, intimate experience. And if this experience is not common, and if it proves impossible to achieve that devekut in Him, blessed be He, and if one feels not the touch of His hand, one cannot be a complete Jew."31

This insistence upon experience (which is so close to hasidic thought) is rooted in Soloveitchik's thought, in halakhic categories, and is based on Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, halakhic code 24. Rabbi Lichtenstein has already noted32 that Rabbi Soloveitchik has added a new category to the customary division of the mitzvot into hovot ha-evarim (the duties of the limbs) and hovot ha-levavot (the duties of the heart)—the physical and spiritual duties. Soloveitchik's innovation lies in the identification of a category of mitzvot which are of a dual character; they are compounded of both "fulfillable" and "enactable" elements, in which hovot ha-evarim and hovot ha-levavot come together as one. There are mitzvot in which the fulfillment and the enactment cannot be separated, the mitzvah being fulfilled and enacted at the same time. This, for example, occurs in the mitzvah of the lulav (palm branch). The Torah states: "And you shall take unto you." When one "takes the lulav," one both fulfills and enacts the mitzvah. Similarly, with regard to eating mazzah and "counting the omer." In contrast, there are mitzvot wherein the enactment and the fulfillment are distinct (occurring, as it were, on different planes and, perhaps, at different points in time). This happens, for instance, in mitzvot where the enactment is by hand or through speech, while the fulfillment takes place, perforce, within the heart. Thus a mitzvah may be enacted but not, in fact, fulfilled, since the fulfillment depends upon a certain feeling or state of mind. Among such mitzvot one may count those of mourning. Acts, such as the removal of sandals, are called for, but without a concomitant fulfillment of the mitzvah in the heart of the mourner the mitzvah cannot be said to have been consummated (see Mishneh Sanh. 6:6). Other outstanding examples of this distinction between the enactment and the fulfillment of mitzvot are the reading of the Shema; the enactment is in speech, but the fulfillment lies in the acceptance of Divine Sovereignty. Even more so is this the case with regard to prayer and repentance. Prayer is called avodah she-belev (worship of the heart) and the mitzvah involved is consummated not on the plane of enactment (speech), but on the plane of fulfillment (in the heart), in the experiential happening. The same applies to repentance which is similarly a "silent" or "heart"-centered form of worship.

Rabbi Soloveitchik's teachings about repentance focus on the description of that experiential happening, which he transmits in concepts drawn from the world of halakhah. From these teachings emerges the character of "Repentant Man"; he embodies the experience which begins with a feeling of sin and ends in the redemption of a wondrous proximity to God. Between these two points stands man as a creator of worlds, as he shapes the greatest of his works—himself.

FEELING OF SIN

All that is tragic in man, his sense of nothingness and non-being, is manifest in the feeling of sin. Man scrutinizes himself in shame and says: How remote [from God] am I; how abominable and unclean. He sees that his life is a cul-de-sac, that his whole existence is flat and meaningless. He is completely enveloped by Ecclesiastes' cry: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." This is a terrible feeling; it leads man to total despair, to a burdensome sense of guilt and to self-destruction.33

The sinner feels himself an exile, homeless, marooned on remote shores; his is a schizophrenic personality.34 His spiritual powers, his feelings and thoughts are bereft of internal cohesion and his character lacks any single focus or center of gravity. When a man begins to feel this way he is at the starting point of the process of repentance. This is the initial stage. The next stage, though the antithesis of the former, is also contained in it and is a part of it. This second stage is fashioned out of the capacity for faith in man's spiritual make-up. This faith posits that, though today a man may be unclean and abominable, he can transcend and escape the constraint of his desperate condition. According to Rabbi Soloveitchik, Maimonides already asserted this when he emphasized again and again in Hilkhot Teshuvah that man can shape himself, free himself from deterministic causation and adopt a new system of causality according to his preference. Great is man's power.

It is by virtue of this power that man feels and knows that though all paths are prima facie barred to him, yet there remains a narrow and mysterious route somewhere, which meanders and twists between hills and mountains, climbs and descends, turns upwards and downwards and proceeds backwards and forwards. And if a man chooses this route, none can stop him. On more public pathways, man will immediately encounter obstacles: "Who are you, and what seek you here?" The "king's way" is barred to the sinner. Neither will the angels of mercy allow him passage, for none can pass through the royal gate wearing the sackcloth of sin and iniquity. But though the king's way be barred, yet one may pass along the secret path in the undergrowth; if the main gate is locked, there yet remains a small wicket through which man may enter. The way to reach the goal is not by the public highway, but along the solitary route—and each man has a route of his own.

And as a man feels and knows that he has at least one further path to traverse, so must he believe that, in the depths of his heart, there still subsists, among the piles of burnt-out cinders, one glowing ember, one flickering spark—and from this spark it is possible to rekindle a new flame.

Here is the whole dialectic of the process of repentance. Repentance implies that there are powers in man which allow him to leap from that sense of sin, which profoundly oppresses him and casts him far away, to a different feeling of hazarti le-fanekha (I am again in Your presence). "Yester-eve he was unclean and abominable... and today, beloved and precious"—a gigantic leap within mere minutes. Here is revealed that complete polarity which pervades the soul of man.

This leap lies at the heart of the act of sacrifice, which is at the core of the worship on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). "When a Jew brings a sacrifice for atonement, how are his sins expiated? Is it by virtue of a two-shekel lamb? Certainly not! Atonement comes to him through the recognition and confession of sin embodied in the act of sacrifice. This confession means abnegation and annihilation of self, total submission and subservience, sacrifice of self, of all one's being and possession... as though one were oneself laid upon the altar."35

As a sacrifice upon the altar—so is the man in the whirlpool of purification. A man goes down and takes a dip and when he emerges he is a new man, "Repentant Man."

This leap from sin to repentance, from exile and separation back to the Divine is anchored in the principle of free choice. Rabbi Soloveitchik sees this not as a voluntary option wherein a man can choose to do as he pleases, but as a clear exological imperative, as an existential commitment from which one cannot escape. In free choice man discovers his "self." The assumption that man is free and unconstrained, empowered with the courage of free choice and with the ability to do everything to determine the destiny of his religious and moral life—this assumption cannot be satisfiied by faith alone; it requires awareness as well ("knowing," in the sense used by Maimonides), a feeling which will fill his whole being with the tension of that God-given "free choice." Choice should implant a feeling of self-esteem and responsibility in man. As Hillel put it (Avot 1:6): "If I am here, everything is here." Hillel the Elder was the most humble of men, yet it was he who stressed the "I," for "without a recognition of the self the feeling of free choice would not arise in man; without awareness of the 'I,' man cannot create and cannot decide and determine."36 This possibility of choosing is necessary and man cannot evade it.

Seen in this light, man must look upon himself as a guardian of the fate of the world. As the Talmud puts it (Kid. 40:6): "Man must always regard himself as though he were half guilty and half meritorious"; the world, too, should be viewed as if it is half guilty and half innocent. When performing one mitzvah, man is blessed for tilting his own and the world's scales to the side of merit; when committing one transgression, man is damned for tilting his own and the world's scales to the side of guilt. Choice is a perpetual feeling of maximum responsibility which permits no absent-mindedness even for a moment;37 choice demands of man commitment, courage, valor and bravery." Thus Rabbi Soloveitchik paraphrases Maimonides' reflection on faith, saying: "It is a positive commandment to know that there is free choice and that man is responsible for his actions."38

Man's existence, according to Rabbi Soloveitchik, has two dimensions: fate and destiny. Destiny-directed existence is "an active existence" in which man stands up to the environment into which he has been cast, and defends his individuality and uniqueness, his freedom and his ability not to deprive himself of his essence and independence in his struggle with the external world. The motto of the destiny-directed "self" is: "Against your will you are born and against your will you die, but by the exercise of free will you live." Man is born an object, dies an object, but can live as a subject, as an innovator and as a creator, who impresses upon his life an individual stamp.39

Salvation, the very possibility of a Messiah, according to Rabbi Soloveitchik, is contingent upon the acceptance of the idea of free choice, which confers upon man a power of transcendence and a capacity to rise above himself and to reach the infinite and eternal.40

"Judaism asserts," wrote Rabbi Soloveitchik in "Halakhic Man,"41 "that man stands [forever] at a crossroads and wonders which way to proceed. Confronting him is a terrible choice: between the image of God or a beast of prey; the glory of nobility or the monster of the universe; the choicest of creatures or a corrupt creature; the image of a man of God or the portrait of a Nietzschean >bermensch. Man must always, always determine and decide.

Free choice, which is part of man's being, means that man can create himself at will and, as it were, be born anew. Rabbi Soloveitchik does not completely reject the law of causation which governs mankind, but the distance is great between this and a subscription to total determinism. Following Kant, Rabbi Soloveitchik accepts the dualism of human existence: life unfolding in a mathematical, scientific world governed by physical laws of causation, and the life of the spirit, the internal existence, which is characterized by extreme freedom.42 But, employing the principle of free choice, Soloveitchik demonstrates that man can fashion for himself a new law of causation which will take effect from a specific moment onwards, i.e., the moment of repentance-salvation, when a complete transformation occurs from within.

Indeed, years before voicing his reflections on repentance, Rabbi Soloveitchik asserted that "the acme of moral and religious perfection, which Judaism aspires to, is 'man as a creator.' "43 He wrote: "Almighty, when He created the world, left room for His creature—man—to participate in His creation. It was as if the Creator spoiled reality so that mortals might set it right and modify it. God transmitted the mystery of Creation—the Book of Creation—to man not only that he might read it, but in order that he might carry on the act of Creation. God left an area of evil and chaos in the world so that man might make it good... the abyss breeds misfortune and trouble and chaos lie in ambush in the dark alleys of reality desiring to undermine the Absolute Being and to subvert the radiance of Creation."44 All this was determined early by the Creator Who, on purpose, "diminished the character and stature of Creation in order to leave room for [improvement] by His own creature and to crown man with the laurels of 'improver' and 'creator.'"45 Nothing serves better than the act of repentance "to create a new essence in man; the act of repentance is achieved through the complete application of will and a determined decision of the intellect." These were engraved in man from the commencement of his creation. From here onwards, he was compelled to become a chooser and was obliged to participate in the renewal of Creation; and most important of all is the obligation that man create himself. This is a conception which Judaism gave to the world."46

CONCEPT OF GRACE

En fin the answer lies in the concept of Grace. "The very phenomenon of repentance, the fact that man can transcend his baseness and ascend the mountain of God is one of the great acts of Grace conferred by God on His creations."47 In justice, sin should have caused man's extinction; man's divorce from the seedbed of his existence should have spelled the end of his life. Thus was sin perceived also by the Sages ("the sinning soul shall die") and by the Prophets ("sins will follow evil"). From a metaphysical standpoint, the possibility of repentance is an act of Grace on the part of the Creator, but this Grace becomes explicable through an understanding of the concept of time.

The problem of repentance is tied up with the concept of time, for it involves a future correction of something in the past. According to the definition of time offered by one of the Jewish Sages of the Middle Ages, Rabbi Yedaiah Ha-Penini in his famous epigram, "the past is not; the future—still not; and the present—like batting an eyelid," man's existence is not rooted in time. For time itself, in the case of the past, appears as "was"—"is not," and as future, as "will be"—"still not." "From this perspective the concept of repentance is meaningless and hollow... One cannot feel remorse about a past which is already dead and has sunk into the abyss of oblivion, and one cannot decide about a future which is as yet 'unborn'... In this sense Spinoza and Nietzsche did well to deride the idea of repentance."48 However, according to Rabbi Soloveitchik, whose thought is based upon the different classifications one may apply to time in line with the thinking of Bergson

and Heidegger,49 and especially with Max Scheler's essay on repentance,50 there is time which is actually "nothing"; i.e., quantified time, which flows according to the mechanistic law of causation (in which moment "A" fades and is replaced by moment "B," which gives way to moment "C"). This time is continuous and follows the order of past-present-future; each point evolves from a previous one and is—or is not—self-sufficient. This is physical or technical-quantitative time; it passes and expires at the moment it gives birth to the subsequent point in time. In contrast there exists qualitative time, a dynamic continuity, in which the "past is continuous and stable, does not pass or slip away through one's fingers, but remains static. This past obtrudes and enters the domain of the present which intermingles with the future."51 In this conception of time, the future is not of the "still not" variety; is not "hidden beyond the mists, but is revealed in the here-and-now in all its splendor and beauty... Such a future infuses from its hidden resources power and potency, vitality and freshness into the vessels of the past... Both past and future are alive; act and create in the hub of the present and determine the appearance of existence." In this perspective the order of time is not past-present-future; rather all three intermingle and interpenetrate, and the conception of threefold time erupts and rises forth beshrouded in the glory of unity... until the principle of "one after another" often no longer serves as a clear indication of time. Rather, "man lives in the shadow of the past, future and present simultaneously," and then "the future determines the direction and indicates the way... There exists a phenomenon whose beginning is sin and iniquity and whose end is mitzvot and good deeds, and vice versa. The future transforms the trends and tendencies of the past."52

This intermingling of tenses occurs within man, who lives and acts not as if from one evolving moment to the next, but lives entirely at once.53 Thus it is that "man, as he returns to his Creator, shapes himself out of the living and extant past as he looks to the future which offers up a happy visage." This leads us to the conclusion reached by Rabbi Soloveitchik54 that "the fundamental principle of the essence of repentance is that the future will rule and govern the past unrestrictedly." For repentance, he believes, means nothing other than

(a) retrospective contemplation of the past and the distinction between the living and the dead in it; and

(b) the vision of the future and its utilization according to the free determination of man.

Man's very existence, according to Rabbi Soloveitchik,55 is contingent upon these two realms of activity:

() in the memory of those situations and experiences undergone by man in the past and which, in many senses, have not died nor been erased, but rather continue to exist in the inner recesses of his heart, and

() in his expectations of the future, in his plans and hopes for the morrow and for the day following. In these two realms man responds to the question: Who am I? Memory and expectation come together and focus on the character of man and give significance to the whole of his life, above and beyond the flow of meaningless time, whose flux is devoid of significance and purpose.

Repentance creates and shapes time—in all its tenses—and gives it an image and character in the order of future-past-present. The past returns to life in the light of the future. Occasionally, life is short—as in the case of the dry bones resurrected by Ezekiel in the Valley of Dura who, according to one opinion among the Sages (Sanh. 92b), stood on their feet, sang for a short while and immediately returned to the dead. In this case, though the penitent revisits the sinful past, in his confrontation with it he immediately uproots and destroys it, thoroughly erasing it from his personality. While fully conscious, he divorces himself from this past. Among the signs of teshuvah gemurah (complete repentance) enumerated by Maimonides, appears the following: "And he changes his name, meaning, 'I am different and no longer the same person who did these deeds.' " Nevertheless, true "Repentant Man" is characterized by a creative power which enables him to forgo uprooting the past. Rather, on the contrary, it enables him to take up the past and exalt it, and to shape it so that it can be molded with the future to create the present, himself.

Here lies revealed, in all its forcefulness, the whole creative potency of repentance. It issues from the dialectical dynamic of sin, the very thing which severs man from God, which makes him abominable and unclean, the very thing which leads him—after repentance—to that high peak unattainable even by the "completely righteous."

"MY SIN IS EVER BEFORE ME"

"Repentant Man," if he wishes to attain this high peak, does not forget his sin or tear out or erase the pages of iniquity from the book of his life. Rather he exists in the spirit of "my sin is ever before me" (Ps. 51:3). Instead of uprooting the past and erasing the sin, he carries them up with him to heights he could never have dreamt of had he not sinned.

The force of the sin and the feelings of guilt and shame engendered in man are transmuted in the penitent's heart into an irresistible force propelling him towards the Creator. "The energy of sin pulls, as it were, upwards."56

Thus said the Sages (Ber. 34b): "Where penitents stand the completely righteous cannot." How can it be that the penitent will draw nearer to God than the completely righteous? How can sins turn into a dynamic force propelling towards sanctity? Here, to Rabbi Soloveitchik's mind, is above all a mystery, a manifestation of God's Grace, as is repentance in general. The Ruler and Creator of the world was He who created the possibility that purity might be born out of abomination ("Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" [the only One Who can] Job 14:4). It is also possible that the idea of raising sin to the level of sanctity is contained in this mystery.

Rabbi Soloveitchik does not content himself with indicating the mysterious in this phenomenon. He attempts also to reveal the spiritual, ontological motives underlying the dynamics of sin.

There is a tragic aspect to man's essence: it lies in the fact that people and things closest to his heart are not properly appreciated so long as they are alive and present. Man begins to accord them appropriate recognition only after they have moved away and have become distant and inaccessible. "From afar they now entice him like the stars in heaven; he appreciates their value, but cannot touch them."57 The yearning after one who is gone and no longer lives is extremely difficult to bear and occasionally the soul actually becomes deranged through nostalgia and a craving to return to that original, vanished state. In his lifetime every man confronts this situation of yearning for one who was recently about and is now remote to the point of inaccessibility. Such yearnings are usually accompanied by a strong sense of guilt, which haunts man and may drive him to madness.

In a similar fashion, this phenomenon occurs in the penitent. When a man sins he expels the Almighty from his presence.58 God's departure is like that of a dearly beloved soul. After some time, following the initial shock, a man suddenly feels that his life has been impoverished, that his house has collapsed about him, that he has lost that thing most intimate and precious. As it is in the life of the individual, in the disappearance of a beloved soul, so is it in man's spiritual life, in God's departure from man's bosom in the wake of sin. "Mourning the withdrawal, as it were, of the Almighty from the sinner is like the mourning over a beloved father and mother." Sooner or later the cloud of mourning will inevitably descend, and then will come fear and loneliness, estrangement, alienation, remoteness and separation; sadness will grow and emptiness will spread in the soul, and man will begin to yearn for the Almighty, and when he apparently sights God's Image from afar, he will begin to run towards it rapidly with all his strength. The power of the unleashed nostalgia in man's bosom, after such protracted incarceration, propels him onwards; he will run more quickly now than was his wont before growing apart from God. Through this nostalgic drive the penitent surpasses the completely righteous. "From afar God appeared to me." The distance engenders the tension; the yearning gives birth to a powerful energy which the completely righteous, who has never sinned, does not know or recognize.

Moreover, the Sages of the Kabbalah (and of psychology) assert that in the soul there are two sets of forces: constructive and destructive. Love is a constructive force; it is opposed by the destructive forces of jealousy and hatred. The positive-constructive forces are by and large static and passive, while the negative forces are dynamic and aggressive. Hatred is more emotional and fiercer than love; the destructive forces are more powerful than the constructive forces. The completely righteous person, who has never tasted sin, is not swayed by hatred and jealousy; he excels in love, charity and mercy, which are by nature tranquil and restrained drives. In contrast with him, the man who has sinned and repented can conjure up the dynamic energy of the destructive forces which once prevailed in his soul, and can channel it into his newly-adopted good ways. The future takes from the energy developed by the sinner and refashions it into a gigantic force for good. The same passion exhibited by the sinner in his thirst for iniquity can now be displayed in the fulfillment of mitzvot.59 The same appetite and commitment previously invested in theft and illegal earning can now be funnelled into acts of charity and mercy.

"Through sin man discovered in himself new spiritual forces, a reservoir of energy, of cupidity and obstinacy unknown to him before indulging in sin. Now he can sanctify all these drives and can direct them heavenwards. The aggressiveness within him now will not let him make do with his previous, wonted measure of do-gooding, but will propel him ever closer towards the heavenly throne."58 In support of this point, Rabbi Soloveitchik elucidates the following passage (Ps. 29: 9): "The Voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests...," and explains:61 on the Day of Atonement the Almighty demands that man become "a discoverer of forests"; that he endanger himself and enter the "jungle" of his soul, that place where hides the beast that is in man. The Almighty does not ask man to cut down the trees of the forest, nor that he uproot the jungle completely. For as men need fields for grazing and beds in which to raise flowers, so they need giant forests. These contain a great deal of animality and vivacity; a lot of healthy aggressiveness subsists in the depths of the forest. But heaven help the forest which is impenetrable to the Voice of God which maketh hinds calve and discovers forests.

Our aim is not to kill off the hinds, nor do we wish to burn down the dark forests, but rather to turn them into receptacles of the Voice of God. And after this is achieved, as the verse continues: "And in His Temple doth everyone speak of His glory." The rabbis say that the ingredients of incense of the Day of Atonement are alluded to here. In incense there is an admixture of resin and components of perfume. Why must one place resin, whose smell is unpleasant, among the perfumes? In order to show us that one may take the bad and blend it with the perfumes, in order that it may be exalted and enter the Holy of Holies. The exaltation of evil and not its mere purgation, the past as it is and not only its eradication—these are the goals of "Repentant Man."

PATH OF REPENTANCE

The path of repentance is a lonely road. Alone and solitary, man feels the pain of the sense of sin, and in the inner recesses of his being, he makes his way to repentance. "On the Day of Atonement," writes Rabbi Soloveitchik,62 "we unite with Moses on top of the Mount (to receive the second set of Tablets) as he listened intently to the fine silence which was shattered by the eruption of the wonder of repentance and the Grace of God." The latter presentation of the Law on Mt. Sinai, in which the second set of Tablets was bestowed, does not resemble the first, in which the Tablets were given and broken. On this occasion "no public revelation, in the sight of all, occurred. The primal creatures did not tremble; the sound of the shofar was not heard in the camp; nor did thunder and lightning disturb the sleep of the hosts of Israel," who were still in a profound slumber at this early hour of the morning. "Total silence enveloped the mountain and the half-light of a wondrous and secret dawn shrouded it. Moses alone, unaccompanied by friend or disciple, climbed the cold and steep cliffs of the Mount." Even Joshua, who had never left his side, did not join Moses this time. Thus God commanded (Ex. 34:3): "And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the Mount." As God revealed Himself to Moses on the mountain, he underwent spiritual suffering, out of a sense of aloneness, out of a silence of a man whose life is at a standstill and without foundation; in fear, the fear of a creature when he is for a fleeting moment cut off from his Creator.

The Day of Atonement is the day of "Repentant Man," and "the appearance of the Day of Remembrance (Rosh ha-Shanah) is not that of the Day of Atonement. On the first of the seventh month, God sets out towards man; on the tenth of the month man sets forth towards God. In the public setting-forth of God towards the community is hidden the secret of sovereignty and judgment; in the secret setting forth of the individual towards God, who sits hidden in the shadows, is concealed the secret of repentance."63

Such is the way of "Repentant Man"—alone, in secret, unaccompanied. Repentance buds and transpires in the heart of the individual. However, "Repentant Man" will not reach his goal and the completion of his mission—salvation—as a lonely man of faith, but only as a part of the community of Israel. His whole endeavor as an individual is worthless to him until he renews his connection with the covenantal community and reintegrates in it. This integration does not abolish his loneliness or isolation;64 nor does it help to ease his suffering or diminish his pain, but it gives him a certain status that is a prerequisite to salvation.

The individual Jew constitutes an integral part of Knesset Israel (the community of Israel). This is not a free and voluntary association; it is an ontological-essential one. As Knesset Israel is not a sum total or arithmetic combination of such and such individuals, but a metaphysical personality of singular essence and possessing an individual judicial personality, so the individual Jew does not have an independent existence and is a limb of Knesset Israel—unless he commits such sins as cut him off from the congregation and uproot him from the community of Israel.65 In this manner the way to repentance is sealed off completely. However, remaining tied to Knesset Israel through loyalty to that body and its goals,66 and enjoying the special attitude which such membership elicits—these offer no protection, as it were, except in the one sense of the two compelled by his existential reality as an individual and as part of the community. He still has need of private confession, private spiritual stock-taking, individual purification. In this dialectic of individual and community, Rabbi Soloveitchik sees one of the foundations of Judaism.

"A Jew who has lost his faith in Knesset Israel, even though he may, in his own little corner, sanctify and purify himself through severities and restrictions—this Jew remains incorrigible and totally unequipped to partake of the Day of Atonement which encompasses the whole of Knesset Israel in all its parts and in all its generations... Only a Jew who believes in Knesset Israel will be privileged to partake of the sanctity of the day and of atonement as part of the community of Israel... A Jew who lives as part of Knesset Israel and is ready to lay down his life for it, who is pained by its hurt and is happy at its joy, wages its battles, groans at its failures, and celebrates its victories... a Jew who believes in Knesset Israel is a Jew who binds himself with an indissoluble bond not only to the People of Israel of his generation, but to Knesset Israel through all the generations."67 This necessary loyalty to Knesset Israel is not, according to Rabbi Soloveitchik's explanation, a matter of mysticism or metaphysics; it is rooted and embodied in the halakhic categories which assert, in reference to the sanctity of Israel, that "this sanctity has two roots: firstly, the sanctity of the Fathers, which reaches us as an inheritance transmitted from generation to generation, from the Patriarch Abraham down to the present day; secondly, the sanctity of self. In addition to the sanctity vouchsafed each person of Israel as an inheritance from his forefathers, there is in him a portion of sanctity which the Almighty invests in every man of Israel in every generation." The roots of these two portions of sanctity, explains Rabbi Soloveitchik, lie in the two Covenants between God and His people Israel (in fact there were three, but two of these can be counted as one): the Covenant at Horeb with those who received the Torah, and the Covenant of the Wilderness of Moab with those who entered the land. In these covenants, Israel was sanctified and that sanctity passes down to us from generation to generation. That is the sanctity of the Fathers. These two covenants are joined by a third—the covenant in Deuteronomy. That covenant was not concluded with that generation only, but with all the generations and with all children of Israel down to the end of time, as it is written (Deut. 29:14, 15): "Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath, but with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord our God and also with him that is not here with us this day." From here springs an original sanctity of self, of every generation, and every individual in every age. Before us, therefore, is a double bond between Israel and the Lord, both as individuals and as a people, seed of Abraham.

"The origin of the sanctity is in the making of a covenant, i.e., in a contract entailing mutual obligations. Sin means that if one party to the agreement fails to meet the conditions of the contract, the agreement becomes null and void."68 The sanctity that was conferred by virtue of the contract lapses. This applies also when the sinner has sinned through error or under external covenant-making between the individual and the Almighty... Repentance is not merely the of the Fathers, the sanctity passes down as an inheritance and it does not lie in the power of a sinner to breach or break the contract; the covenant is the inheritance of the whole People of Israel and no power exists which can revoke it. Nevertheless, though the covenant with Israel exists, the sinner—as it were—cuts himself off from it until he repents. Once repentant, "not only does the repentance cleanse the sinner of the filth of iniquity, but it contains a kind of fresh act of covenant-making between the individual and the Almighty... Repentance is not merely the purification of the personality, but a special sanctification of the individual, making him ready once more to conclude a covenant."

The renewal of the personal covenant ("there are no delegates in covenant-making and if repentance is a renewed acceptance of personal sanctity, then there is no escape from direct confrontation with God") leads the individual back to the framework of the complete agreement, the double one, which rests upon the dual connection between God and the People of Israel and God and each individual in Israel.

The prophet Elisha was privileged to enter into just such a renewed covenant, as Rabbi Soloveitchik describes him at the end of his essay "The Lonely Man of Faith." In the depths of his soul Elisha remains the lonely man of faith, but in obedience to God's command he returns to participate in the drama of the covenant and to take part in "the great and festive dialogue" between the God and the People of the Covenant.

WAYS OF REPENTANCE

The ways of repentance are many and varied. Repentance, it is true, is not restricted merely to the ideal "Repentant Man." There are penitents whose repentance is efficacious and perhaps excellent, who yet remain remote from the concept of the typological "Repentant Man." There are also penitents who are not penitents at all, like the usurer who leaves debt-pledges in his drawer lest he have "need" of them again, and like that sinner who retains the address of the woman with whom he had sinned, lest he "desire" her again. These stand on the borderline of repentance and are light years away from resembling "Repentant Man" who, after deep spiritual torment and personal decisiveness, achieved a total and radical transformation of character "until the One who knows all mysteries will testify that he [the penitent] will not revert to this sin ever after,"68 without, in any way, damaging the power of free choice that is in man. "Repentant Man" reaches that rung which is above and beyond the momentary, transient choice that determines the nature of the immediate act; he propels himself, as it were, into a state of permanent, standing sanctity, of "sanctity for the moment and sanctity for the future," insofar as he has placed the whole future in his present life which illuminates afresh his past life as well. Moreover, "Repentant Man" does not live with the past, but with the future of which the past has become a part.

NOTES

1. On the typological categories and their problematics in the writings of Rabbi Soloveitchik, see Eugene B. Borowitz, "A New Jewish Theology in the Making" (Westminster Press. Philadelphia), 164–70. Compare Rabbi Soloveitchik's views on this matter in Notes 5 and 6 below. See also Lawrence Kaplan, "The Religious Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik," Tradition (a Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought), Fall 1973, Vol. XIV, No. 2.

2. Soloveitchik, Rabbi Joseph B., "Ish ha-Halakhah" (Halakhic Man) in "Be-Sod ha-Yahid ve-ha-Yahad" (In Aloneness, In Togetherness), A Selection of Hebrew Writings (henceforth IAIT), ed. Pinchas Peli, Orot, Jerusalem (1976), 37–188.

3. Ibid., 45.

4. Soloveitchik, "The Lonely Man of Faith" (henceforth LMF), Tradition, Summer 1965, Vol. VII, No. 2. 5–67.

5. "Halakhic Man," IAIT, 39, n. 1, where the Rabbi deals with the typological system formulated by Edward Sprenger in his book, "Lebensformen."

6. LMF, 48, n. 38: "In reality there are no pure typological structures." See also Note 66 below.

7. Peli, Pinchas, Al ha-Teshuvah ("On Repentance"), from the oral discourses of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Jerusalem (1975), 354 pp.

8. "Halakhic Man," IAIT, 40.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., 41, n. 4. Soloveitchik offers exegesis on the Biblical passages: "Out of my straits I called upon the Lord..." (Ps. 118:5) and "From the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord" (Ps. 130:1). Out of the straits of contradiction and internal turmoil, spiritual doubts and perplexities; from the depths of the soul riven with antinomianism and negation, from the furthest recesses of the spirit, perplexed and suffering, I called unto God, I called You, O Lord.

12. "On Repentance," 52. Compare with Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, translated by John W. Harvey (Oxford University Press, N.Y. 1958), 8 ff., on man's "creature feeling."

13. Ibid., 124.

14. Ibid., 125.

15. Soloveitchik, Rabbi J. B., "On the Love of the Torah and the Redemption of the Soul of the Generation," an answer to an interlocutor, in IAIT, 403–32.

16. Soloveitchik, Rabbi J. B., "Sacred and Profane: Kodesh and Hol in World Perspectives," in: Gesher, published by Yeshiva University, 2:1 (Sivan 1966), 7.

17. Soloveitchik, Rabbi J. B., "Kol Dodi Dofek" (The Voice of My Love Calls), in IAIT, 339.

18. "On Repentance," 142. The Rav deals with this at greater length in his essay "On the Love of the Torah and the Redemption of the Soul of the Generation" (IAIT, p. 428). "God said to Abraham: 'Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest'... (Gen. 22:2). In other words, I demand of you the greatest sacrifice possible. I want your beloved and only son in sacrifice. Do not delude yourself that after obeying my command and offering up your son, I shall give you another in his place. From the moment Isaac is slaughtered upon the altar, you will remain alone and childless. No other will be born unto you. Your existence will be governed by an incomparable isolation. I want your only son, for whom no substitute exists or shall exist. Similarly, do not imagine that you will succeed in forgetting Isaac or putting him out of mind. For the rest of your days you shall brood upon his fate. I demand that son whom you love and will love forever. Your life will turn into one long epic of suffering. Nonetheless, this is the sacrifice that I demand. Of course, at the end of the experience, whose essence is dread and pain, is endless joy. At the moment Abraham removed his son from atop the altar at the behest of the angel, the suffering changed into boundless joy and the dread into eternal happiness. At the beginning of the religious experience lies the sacrifice of essence; at its end, the discovery of essence. Indeed, man cannot discover himself without the sacrifice of self. For man can find only that which has been lost, and none can retrieve a thing unless it has first left his keeping."

19. Ibid.

20. "On Repentance," 166. Compare with Soloveitchik, "Five Sermons," translated by David Telsner (Tal Orot, Jerusalem 1974, pp. 14–15). Soloveitchik here explains Deut. 20:29: i.e., the means by which a Jew achieves purchase on the Almighty is through his "whole being" (be-khol nafshekha), as explained in Rabbi Akiva's sermon (Ber. 63a): "Even if it costs one's life." The Almighty can be reached through suffering and obstinate devotion: "in short, one reaches the Almighty through sacrifice."

21. "On Repentance," 65, 167. Compare with Rabbi A. I. Kook, "The Lights of Repentance" (Jerusalem 1970), 46–52. In general, there are many points of convergence between the thinking of repentance of the "poet of repentance," Rabbi Kook, and the "philosopher of repentance," Rabbi Soloveitchik, as, for example, on the problems of time, suffering, the individual and the community, etc. A comparative study of the two might prove enlightening.

22. "On Repentance," 68.

23. Ibid., 108 ff.

24. Ibid., 113.

25. Ibid., 115.

26. Ibid., 195.

27. Ibid., 196: Ibid., 118. Compare with Aharon Lichtenstein, "Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik" in Great Jewish Thinkers of the 20th Century, ed. Simon Noveck (Clinton, Mass., 1964). Lichtenstein's assertion (p. 296) that Rabbi Soloveitchik's emphasis upon religious experience is reflected only in some of "recent writings" dealing with the relation of intellect and emotion, is worth reexamining because, as it seems to us, the value of the religious experience is primary in all of the rabbi's published works from "The Halakhic Man" (1944) until today. Compare also: Jacob B. Agus, Guideposts in Modern Judaism (New York 1954), 38–43. Agus argues that one cannot regard Soloveitchik's thought as entirely bound by the confines of the halakhah and that inevitably it ventures beyond these into the realms of the Kabbalah and philosophy.

28. "On Repentance," 197.

29. On the concept of "Dvekut" in hasidism, see Gershom Scholem, "The Messianic idea in Judaism" (Schocken Books, N.Y. 1971), "Dvekut or Communion with God," 203–27.

30. "On Repentance," 196.

31. Ibid., 198. Here and elsewhere Rabbi Soloveitchik reaches unusually intimate and moving confessions, rare in Jewish tradition, of nearness to God.

32. In his splendid biographical essay on Rabbi Soloveitchik (see reference 27), 295.

33. "On Repentance," 160.

34. Ibid., 299.

35. Ibid., 168; compare Sefer Ha-Hinnukh, 91, based on Nahmanides' explanation for the sacrifices.

36. Ibid., 209–10.

37. Ibid., 210.

38. Ibid.

39. 39. "Kol Dodi Dofek," IAIT, 337.

40. "On the Love of the Torah," etc., IAIT, 405.

41. "Halakhic Man," IAIT, 157.

42. Compare to Borowitz, op. cit., 163.

43. "Halakhic Man," 146.

44. Ibid., 148.

45. Ibid., 154.

46. Ibid., 157.

47. "On Repentance," 124.

48. "Halakhic Man," IAIT, 162.

49. Hebrew Encyclopaedia, Vol. IX, 448; Vol. XIV, 52.

50. Scheler, Max, Repentance and Rebirth in his book, "On the Eternal in Man," translated by Bernard Noble (SCM Press Ltd., London 1960), 35–65, and in greater detail and length in a dissertation by Johann Schindler, Gott und Mensch in ihrer gegenseitigen Zuordnung in der philosophischen Konzeption Max Schelers (Augsburg 1968).

51. "Halakhic Man," 162.

52. Ibid., 163.

53. Scheler, op. cit., 40–41. In "Halakhic Man," 72, the rabbi refers to his reliance on Scheler's thinking; compare also Kaplan, op. cit.

54. "Halakhic Man," 187.

55. "On Repentance," 170–71. Rabbi Soloveitchik here develops the idea that the old have more memories and less expectations, and the young less memories and more expectations; the two constitute the elements of the "self" in man. Compare with a similar idea developed in Ahad Ha-Am's essay, "Avar ve-Atid" ("Past and Future"), in Al Parashat Derakhim, Vol. 1, 150, which begins: "A great philosopher inadvertently was Adam, the first person who expressed the word 'I'... the 'self' of each person is the product of the combination of his memory with his will, of the past with the future."

56. "On Repentance," 176. Compare with Max Scheler, op. cit., 42, which speaks of repentance as revealing in man's soul hidden, untainted corners of youthfulness.

57. "On Repentance," 178.

58. Compare Zohar.

59. Here, too, is felt the influence of hasidic thought. Compare with "The Book of the Ba'al Shem Tov," Gen., 158–61. On the influence of hasidic thought upon Rabbi Soloveitchik even from his childhood, compare with Lichtenstein, op. cit., 282.

60. "On Repentance," 184.

61. Ibid., 185.

62. "Ma Dodekh Mi-Dod," in IAIT, 189–254.

63. Ibid., 198.

64. Soloveitchik, "The Lonely Man of Faith,'" op. cit. 22 ff.

65. "On Repentance", 81.

66. Ibid., 93–94.

67. Ibid., 98.

68. Ibid., 134.

[Pinchas Hacohen Peli]

Year Book 1977–78 Feature

Also: Maestre Vidal Bellsom; Moses of Narbonne (14th cent.); Narboni, Moses ben Joshua; Vidal Bellsom

MOSES BEN JOSHUA (Ben Mar David) OF NARBONNE (Narboni, Lat., Maestre Vidal Bellsom [Blasom?]; d. 1362), French philosopher and physician. Moses was born in Perpignan at the end of the 13th, or beginning of the 14th century, to a family originally from Narbonne. As a youth he studied with his father and private tutors, and was introduced to the study of Maimonides at the age of 13. In addition to the Bible, rabbinic literature, and Jewish philosophy, he studied general philosophy and medicine. Moses began his literary career in Perpignan, where he remained until 1344, and continued in Spain, writing most of his works there. Although he lived in various Spanish cities—he mentions Cervera, Barcelona, Soria, Toledo, and Burgos—he never completely severed his ties with Perpignan. He expressed nostalgia for the intellectual circles there and intended to return. He probably spoke Provencal and Catalan, and it is likely that he knew Arabic and some Latin. He shows no familiarity, however, with Christian thinkers, the major philosophical influence on him being Islamic thought, particularly Averroes, whose works he read in Hebrew translation. Moses, who is known primarily for his commentary on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and for his espousal of Averroes' teachings, is the author of some 20 works, an impressive number for the troubled period in which he lived. An early work, Ma'amar ba-Sekhel ha-Hiyyulani or Ma'amar be-Efsharut ha-Devekut, was written in Perpignan under conditions of siege and warfare; in Spain, as a physician, he undoubtedly had to cope with the bubonic plague of 1348–50 and, as a Jew, with the anti-Semitism that followed it. In 1349 he fled Cervera with the rest of the Jewish community, leaving his possessions and books behind. Before his work on Maimonides, Moses had written a number of commentaries and supercommentaries, most of them on Islamic philosophical texts. He composed major commentaries on al-Ghazal<’s Maqa\id al-Falasifa ("Intentions of the Philosophers") and Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan and a number of supercommentaries to Averroes' commentaries on Aristotle's works on logic, physics, metaphysics, astronomy, and psychology. Moses' commentary on the Guide (ed. by I. Euchel, and printed together with text of the Guide, 1791; ed. J. Goldenthal, 1852; the latter reprinted with text, 1946, and in Sheloshah Kadmonei Mefareshei ha-Moreh, 1961), his last work, begun in Toledo in 1355 and finished in Soria in 1362, was based on his thorough knowledge of Islamic philosophy. He opposed Maimonides' neoplatonic interpretations of Aristotle's doctrines, which Maimonides had derived from al-Farab< and Avicenna, with Averroes' more purely Aristotelian interpretations. He criticized, in particular, Maimonides' discussion of the proofs for the existence of God, his concept of God, and his doctrine of divine attributes. In the following, more conservative centuries, critics such as Isaac Arama, Isaac Abrabanel, and Joseph Delmedigo opposed his Averroistic critique of Maimonides' Guide and his clarification of points that Maimonides had left discreetly implicit. They also disparaged his difficult style of writing and highly eclectic, often confusing use of sources.

In Iggeret al Shi'ur Komah (ed. and tr. into English as Epistle on Shiur Qomah by A. Altmann in his Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies (1967), 225–88), one of his early works, Moses attempted a reconciliation between philosophy and Kabbalah, reflecting the influence of Joseph ibn Waqar. He pursued a similar direction in his commentary on Ibn Tufayl's work (see G. Vajda, Recherches sur la philosophie et la Kabbale (1962), 396–403). Though more critical of kabbalistic concepts in his later years, Moses retained throughout his writings an affinity for the mystical phrase and symbol, a trait which has attracted recent scholarly attention (see Altmann's essay, ibid.). Averroes' doctrine of the conjunction of man's perfected intellect with the universal Agent Intellect that Moses accepted in his Ma'amar bi-Shelemut ha-Nefesh ("Treatise on the Perfection of the Soul," Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Ms. Heb., 988) resembles the mystic's experience of eternal being and loss of individuality in his relation to his creator. In his Ma'amar bi-Shelemut ha-Nefesh, Moses quoted almost the whole of Averroes' middle commentary on Aristotle's De Anima, as well as much of his "Treatise on the Possibility of Conjunction," to which he then added his own comments. Among Moses' other works are Ha-Ma'amar bi-Vehirah ("Treatise on Free Will," ed. by E. Ashkenazi in Sefer Divrei Hakhamim (1849), 37–41), a polemical work written in answer to Abner of Burgos' Minhat Kena'ot, which expounds a theory of determinism; a number of medical treatises, in particular Orah Hayyim, in which his reliance on classical and medieval sources is ostensibly tempered by an empirical approach; commentaries on Lamentations and Job; and four works which are no longer extant: a supercommentary on Abraham ibn Ezra's allegorical commentary on Genesis 2:2; Pirkei Moshe, a work containing philosophical aphorisms; a treatise on metaphysics; and a supercommentary on Averroes' commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo et Mundo.

[Alfred L. Ivry]