Joseph Soloveitchik Quotes on God
Joseph Ber Soloveitchik was a Russian-born American Orthodox Jewish philosopher and rabbi, the long-time head of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University, and the most influential exponent of Modern Orthodoxy in the twentieth century. This page collects quotes attributed to Joseph Soloveitchik on the topic of god, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Joseph Soloveitchik:
“The man of faith is a lonely man, even in the most religious of communities.”
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Attributed to Joseph Soloveitchik:
“Halakhic man approaches the world with a Torah, as the mathematician approaches the world with his ideal forms.”
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Attributed to Joseph Soloveitchik:
“Adam I masters the world; Adam II covenants with it; we must be both.”
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Attributed to Joseph Soloveitchik:
“The covenant is not a contract; it is the form in which the eternal speaks to the temporal.”
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Attributed to Joseph Soloveitchik:
“The dignity of the religious life is in the seriousness with which it takes the everyday.”
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“Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith , p. 16 (1965)”
Man of old who could not fight disease and succumbed in multitudes to yellow fever or any other plague could not lay claim to dignity. Only the man who builds hospitals, discovers therapeutic techniques, and saves lives is blessed with dignity. -
“On the night of the exodus, the people met God, had a rendezvous with Him, and made His acquaintance for the first time. On Yom Kippur night, man gets very close to his Father in heaven, again meets Him, talks to Him, cries before and implores Him. The grandeur and singularity of these two nights lie in the God-man confrontation.”
Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Festival of Freedom: Essays on Pesah and the Haggadah , p. 3 (2006) -
“Halakhic man, well furnished with rules, judgments, and fundamental principles, draws near the world with an a priori relation. His approach begins with an ideal creation and concludes with a real one. To whom may he be compared? To a mathematician who fashions an ideal world and then uses it for the purpose of establishing a relationship between it and the real world. ... The essence of the Halakhah , which was received from God, consists in creating an ideal world and cognizing the relationship between that ideal world and our concrete environment.”
p. 19