A Rabbi for Christians

Kant sought to pry Judaism and Christianity apart, but instead he joined their fates together. His vision of a Christianity cleansed of Jewish residues, but true to its liberating moral message, offered an uncanny preview of the revolutions that would convulse modern Christianity. It was not long before theologians would announce that “modernity” required the supersession of notions of religious obedience, Jewish or Christian, whose continuation was an offense against human enlightenment. Whether Joseph Soloveitchik was thinking about German philosophers in 1965 is anyone’s guess. ...oloveitchik’s passion was for teaching Torah—he once joked that he was a “drunkard” for Torah instruction—and over the course of his career he trained thousands of rabbis, to whom he was known affectionately as “the Rav,” a Hebrew honorific that means “master.” But his 1965 book addressed universal themes, made few references to Jewish sources outside of the footnotes, and offered thoughtful critiques of the faith of his audience. Soloveitchik was influenced by Christian thinkers. References to Pascal, Kierkegaard, Barth, and Emil Brunner appear frequently in his writing. Yet he was not a proponent of interfaith dialogue.