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Maimonides’ method of rationalizing the commandments is examined, placing particular stress on his use of a quasi-Aristotelian method of scientific explanation. Maimonides’ use of Aristotle’s teleological structures for rationalizing the commandments, supplemented by historical explanations for those commandments known as huqqim, is discussed along with a number of well-known objections. Though the historical explanations are usually singled out for criticism, the central thrust of the chapter, building on Soloveitchik’s criticisms, is that these problems are usually symptoms of a deeper question about the adequacy of the whole explanatory approach to rationalizing the commandments.

The apparently contrasting method of rationalization of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik is subjected to a detailed critical analysis. Following a summary of Soloveitchik’s general method of descriptive reconstruction as presented in The Halakhic Mind, we first consider the scientific model of rationalization that Lawrence Kaplan finds within Soloveitchik’s reflections on halakhah. Despite humanistic and hermeneutic strands reminiscent of those found in the later thought of Wilhelm Dilthey, it is argued that ultimately this method remains a scientific explanatory method that attempts to subsume particular instances under general laws. There is, however, a contrasting model of rationalization found in The Halakhic Mind that is far more Gadamerian in tone, focusing on the meaning of the commandments rather than on their explanation. Some of the implications of the differences between the two models are discussed, though both models are argued to be highly conservative and lacking the capacity for objectivity.

It is argued that for all their differences, the naturalist models of both Maimonides and Soloveitchik share certain related assumptions about the nature of rationality and the relationship that subsequently holds between a theory and a practice. Defining and refining this view termed the priority of theory approach (PoT), with particular reference to Maimonides and Soloveitchik, is the task of this chapter. The PoT theorist takes a position described as weak foundationalism that emphasizes the importance of a set of discursive principles for the justification of any practice. Essentially for the normative PoT theorist, a necessary condition of the rationality of any practice is that it should be capable of being articulated in a set of principles to which it must therefore conform in order to be rational.

Develops an anti-theory objection from uncodifiability, which questions the central assumption of the PoT theorist—that we can codify a practice in a set of principles—in order to argue that the PoT approach is unsuited to the justification of practices. Despite the project of codification of the halakhah in Judaism, it is argued that while Halakhic principles might have pragmatic uses, even here there is a degree of scepticism towards codification. In the latter part of the chapter, an alternative functional approach to the analysis of the nature of justification is presented. Here, we begin by asking what the function of justification is for us, and then ask what a concept providing that function would be like. The function of a practical justification is then argued to be the production of a reasoned confidence in one's practice.

We present the alternative to the PoT approach to practical justification, which we term the Priority of Practice approach (PoP). This is developed by applying conceptual categories provided by Aristotle and certain contemporary philosophers, in particular, Charles Taylor and Bernard Williams, to an analysis of faith drawn from the Jewish tradition and some of the tentative remarks that Soloveitchik makes in his second model of rationalization. Simply stated, the PoP theorist holds that the rationality of a practice cannot be reduced to that of a set of discursive principles. The practice itself rather than any alleged propositional representation of it contains its own rationality, a non-discursive form of rationality that is irreducibly practical. According to the PoP theorist, there is such a thing as practical knowledge in a substantive sense that cannot be reduced to knowledge of principles and that can only be fully understood by participation in the practice itself, which provides us with our reasoned confidence.

This chapter covers the writings and interchanges of various Jewish theologians who wrote in America in the late 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s, who included existentialists, and Reform Jewish theologians. These writers include Emil Fackenheim, Will Herberg, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Eugene Borowitz, Bernhard Heller, Jakob Petuchowski, Arthur Cohen, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Joseph Soloveitchik, Lou Silberman, Bernard Martin, Eliezer Berkovits, Richard Rubinstein, and many others. The chapter also covers the debates in various journals as well as ideas put forward in more substantial publications (essays, books, etc.).

This chapter provides background on the life and religious activities of Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, the spiritual mentor of so-called modern Jewish Orthodoxy in the United States. Soloveitchik's biography reflects the intellectual history of the twentieth century and its struggle with religion, which had to find a new standpoint in a secular world. Three cities influenced his religious exercise. These cities are Brisk in Lithuania where he was born in 1930; Berlin, Germany where he studied during the 1920s; and Boston, Massachusetts where he died in 1993. This chapter also discusses the similarity of religious practice with Ignatian spirituality.

This chapter focuses on changes within American Orthodoxy concerning interpretations of Orthodox Jewish beliefs. It discusses American Orthodoxy that was united in its allegiance to the credo of torah min hashamayim, in which both the Written Law and the Oral Law were given by God to Moses at Sinai. It also refers to Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Moshe Tendler, who axiomatically assert a literal version of both parts of the credo. The chapter analyses the absence of any publicly voiced alternative to the literal interpretation of the credo that is rooted in explicit talmudic assertions which were reiterated by Maimonides. It describes how Maimonides laid down the fundamental credo and implied that the Torah is from God.

This concluding chapter links some of the issues raised in the book's chapters to the writings that have been central to theologians engaged in the same enterprise. It firsts examine some of the most explicit statements Levinas made about the post-Nostra Aetate relationship between Christianity and Judaism, followed by echoes of his work in two prominent Christian theologians, the writings of Pope John Paul II and Johann Baptist Metz, as well as two outstanding Jewish theologians, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. It demonstrates that there is a mutual attraction between the thought of Levinas and the theologians who have engaged in the renewed relationship between Jews and Christians after the Second Vatican Council.

This chapter focuses on the reality of persons in a world of things. It begins and ends with some relevant views drawn from the Jewish philosophers Buber (1878–1965), Heschel (1907–72), and Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–93). Framed by the Jewish concerns, it turns to a philosophical exploration of human personhood. The chapter begins by consiering Sellars's classic essay on the scientific and manifest images of “man-in-the-world.” Sellars shows how urgent and difficult it is to sustain a recognizable image of ourselves as persons in the face of scientism. With additional help from Nagel and Kant, it argues that persons cannot be conceptually scanted in a world of things. Notwithstanding the explanatory power of science, there is more to life than explanation. Explanation of what we are needs supplementing by a conception of who we are, how we should live, and why we matter. Those are questions to which Jewish sources can speak.

This chapter talks about the central role of Maimonides in the life and thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, which was attested as a moving autobiographical passage in his work titled And from There You Shall Seek. It describes Rabbi Soloveitchik as an independent thinker who had been deeply involved in European intellectual life before the Second World War but had not blindly adopted Maimonides' philosophical positions. It also mentions how Rabbi Soloveitchik agrees with Maimonides but presents his thought in sharp terms that often evoke resistance among his more traditional readers. The chapter reviews Maimonides' interpretation by Professor Isadore Twersky, Rabbi Soloveitchik's son-in-law. It analyses how Rabbi Soloveitchik presents Maimonides in a language acceptable to contemporary traditional Jews.

This chapter takes a look at the organization and operation of the yeshiva. The way in which the yeshiva was administered largely reflected the personality and values of its leaders. There was no supervisory body, and the staff had wide leeway in determining goals and procedure, though there were often practical limitations on what could be done. In fact, it was the gap between reality and aspiration that determined much of what went on in the yeshiva. Here, the chapter explores how the yeshiva treat supervision and the assessment of progress. Then it turns to the shiur and the importance of this new study method. Finally, the chapter takes a look at staff–student relationships.

The chapter shows how among tradition-oriented scholars of the 20th and early 21st century, the interpersonal in the Talmud became effaced in the notion of a universal subject of reason, ultimately conceived of as pure thought and denying any intrinsic necessity of the intersubjective, let alone the interpersonal. At the center of the discussion is post-Kantian formal transcendental definition of what it means to be human as opposed to any phenomenal description of humanity in external phenomenal terms of a physical, biological, or other objectifying terms. The chapter follows the Jewish thinkers who, in response to Kant’s critique of Jewish law as positive law, argue that Rabbinic law – the Talmud and its interpretation – entail a transcendental rather than positive notion of the law, and a transcendental rather than empirical notion of universal humanity in each human being. The chapter further shows, how for the sake of that argument, modern Jewish thinkers reinvent Jewish law. The chapter displays how that process entails both construction and denial of the Talmud as an allegedly empty form of merely rhetorical arguments to be translated into, and according to the principles of a universal humanity, build, as it is for these Jewish thinkers after Kant, on the principles of intersubjective transcendentalism, and on the resulting understanding of the political in their work.

Reading Barth in conversation with three different post-Holocaust Jewish theologians on the question of God’s relationship to history, Boesel comes to a new appreciation for the diversity within the Jewish tradition itself. This leads him to pose the important question “If one is to rethink Christian faith and theology in response to engagement with the Jewish ‘other,’ which Jewish ‘other’?” He challenges all theologians engaged in comparative work to consider whether a predisposition to seek common ground restricts which “others” we engage. He goes on to reconsider his original critical reading of Barth, recognizing that Barth’s own theology “appears to move with an inter-religious freedom that can be appropriated as responsive to the diversity of intra-Jewish difference itself” because of its own emphasis on the radical judgment of God that stands over every human religious claim. Boesel ends by acknowledging the problem of supersessionism that continues to haunt Barth’s theology.

Sebald’s and Arad’s stagings of presence and absence, including the ethical remainder of illegible headstones and unrecorded victims’ names, represents one of several limit-cases for the questions of remembering, writing, and reading that the book explores and for which our attendance and agency as readers in each case become a necessary dimension. These are questions for secular text and for scripture alike, for both art and ethical adventure—whose practical effects, as the book’s title expresses one formula for the relationship between writing and human touch, make the hands impure. Known rabbinically as metamei et ha’yadayim (substantive, tum’at yadayim) that formula will be advanced in the introductory section, “Laws of Tact and Genre,” which samples analyses of the corporeal by Jean Luc Nancy, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Jacques Derrida and opens the question of embodiment for the special situation of the book in hand.

Moses Nachmanides argues that people who oppose the project of theodicy are “fools who despise wisdom.” Other Jewish thinkers have argued that it is impious and/or imprudent to offer theodicies in explanation of the evils in our world. This chapter critically examines religious arguments put forward against the project of theodicy.